Then there is Dr. Robert I. Simon, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School, who remarked in the New York Times, "Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us." But having a hard time leaving it at that, Dr. Simon went on to note that such distinctions have little value, because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder; a product of cultural, political and religious influences. Did you catch the self-contradiction there? If evil is inherent in all of us, as Dr. Simon suggests, then contrary to his apologetic postscript, evil cannot be a subjective construct that lies "in the eye of the beholder." It must be something that is truly wrong, against an objective, systemic moral code.

Unfortunately, such confused notions of morality are not limited to the secular mind. The belief in an unchanging moral truth is held by only 32% of born-again adults and 9% of youth. This emasculated Christianity has created a generation of moral eunuchs who embrace an accommodating faith that increasingly gives way and seldom takes stands. Remarking on this phenomenon, New York Times editorialist David Brooks observed that "Americans have tended to assume that all these [religious] differences are temporary. In the final days, the distinctions will fade away, and we will all be united in God's embrace. As a result, evangelical churches, writes sociologist Alan Wolfe, 'are part of mainstream American culture, not dissenters from it.'"

Observations such as those should shake the very foundations of Church. They are evidence that, contrary to Jesus's admonition, the Church has been subsumed into the very culture that it has been commissioned to transform. But how could the Church have gone so far adrift of its countercultural roots?

Judge Not?

In the effort to avoid the pitfalls of bigotry and judgmentalism, many Christians have either privatized their faith or accepted the growing view that Christian love is synonymous with ideological tolerance. There are also those who, because of instances of church hypocrisy and abuse, view any moral teaching as a tool to exalt self and exploit others. For them, the problem of "truth abuse" is with the concept of truth itself, rather than the heart of man; and the solution is to dismantle truth and reconstruct it into something less restrictive and more inclusive.   Taken to its logical end, this project leads to the ethos of existentialist Jean Paul Sartre who challenged all moral codes with, "It is forbidden to forbid."