This is a point worth reflecting on deeply. 

It is at the core of what I repeatedly encountered when doing my study and writing on forgiveness.  Biblically, forgiveness is something that happens between two parties.

But, in current western thought, forgiveness is a feeling.  It is no longer seen ethically.  Rather, forgiveness is needed so that we don’t feel bitter.  In Embodying Forgiveness, Jones calls this “therapeutic forgiveness.”

My perspective is that Western Society has moved from “moral code” ethics to an ethical philosophy where “right” is seen as “freedom, liberty and choice” and “wrong” as “slavery, oppression and restriction”.  Therefore, I think our society <i>does</i> have an ethical code on which our society is being built, but it is an ethical code made up of radically different values.

If I’m right, there are a couple of interesting points that follow:

1) The Bible itself agrees that liberty is good and oppression is bad.  These are not the <i>primary</i> factors that Christians understand to define “good” and “bad”, but they do provide a shared basis from which we can “converse with society” (albeit with limitations).

2) Young Christians have imbibed and live by these values also, hence the big push for social justice in many parts of the Church (not that there was none before).  Where the values of freedom, liberty and choice do not line up with Biblical values, there is a huge tension that many don’t know what to do with, or even why it exists.

I’m not certain, but I’m fairly sure a similar shifts in ethics have happened historically in other societies.  It’d be interesting to check out.