#MeToo and Why the Moral Law Matters
Recently Ghislaine Maxwell has been in the news, now a sex offender convicted of trafficking underage girls in relation to the 2019 Jeffrey Epstein arrest. Long before the #MeToo movement, this sort of sordid behavior was universally looked at with disdain, especially in the despicable manner in which minors are taken advantage of.
In October 2017, Harvey Weinstein, a high-profile and prominent producer in Hollywood, was publicly confronted with sexual allegations and the #MeToo movement began. The hashtag across the twitterverse showed solidarity with those who have experienced sexual harassment, and let others know they were not alone. Media coverage of sexual misconduct, not just in Hollywood, had spread, and people were terminated from positions and canceled from the culture.
Everyone has a sense of morality, but no one lives up to it. One way to answer the question of a moral law is if objective truth exists. And if it does exist, why does it matter?
The once great Harvey Weinstein’s legacy of Academy Awards was nothing in the wake of his disgrace from Hollywood, and now he will forever be known as the man who started the #MeToo movement. It was an open secret in Hollywood that this sort of thing happened often, but people turned a blind eye for years.
Is there a moral law?
Everyone has a sense of morality, but no one lives up to it. One way to answer the question of a moral law is to ask if objective truth exists. And if it does exist, why does it matter?
An illustration of this is the question about the infamous gold and white dress – or is it black and blue? Subjectively, you might think it’s gold and white or black and blue. It depends on you, your eyes, your senses. Or like me, you might sometimes see one, sometimes the other. The object itself, outside of your personal senses, was created as a blue and black dress, and the light and shadow are playing tricks (and something about the science of our eye’s vision palette, etc. that I can’t get into here). The point is, the facts are the facts, regardless of what you think, much less feel, about them.
We also have an innate sense of justice because we know when a wrong is committed against us–that is us discovering what is already there. The moral law does not describe how we actually behave, but rather it prescribes how we ought to behave.
For us in the industry, another way we know there is moral law is that it comes out in our storytelling. We really understand evil. We understand greed and lust and gluttony. We know those to be not so good for us or society at large. There was a movie about that starring Brad Pitt! But we also know self-sacrifice, honor, bravery, and gratitude are all values that are depicted as “good” things. We see this is in our movies as well – e.g. Saving Private Ryan, The Lord of the Rings, and Life is Beautiful.
We also have an innate sense of justice because we know when a wrong is committed against us – that is us discovering what is already there. The moral law does not describe how we actually behave, but rather it prescribes how we ought to behave. This injustice can be broadly categorized under what might be deemed “evil,” and because evil exists, there must be an opposite. And without God, there would be no way to call evil what it is. Without good, there cannot be evil. Without an objective standard, morals are a matter of opinion. Sauron was just exercising his own moral law, his own truth, in controlling the entire world in pain and darkness!
If there are morals to be accountable for, there must be someone to be accountable to!
There is a simple logic that points to the existence of God, and that is this: 1) Every law has a law-giver; 2) There is a moral law (as we have seen in the existence of objective truth, our recognition of it in our storytelling, and our innate sense of justice); 3) Therefore, there is a moral law-giver – that is, God. If there are morals to be accountable for, there must be someone to be accountable to!
So, why does the moral law matter?
Time’s Up’s CEO Tina Tchen said of Harvey’s conviction, “While we celebrate this historic moment, our fight to fix the broken system that has allowed serial abusers like Harvey Weinstein to abuse women in the first place continues. Abusers everywhere and the powerful forces that protect them should be on notice: There’s no going back.”
Why does it matter? It matters to these women.
More than that, we know that we are subject to the law of God by which we recognize objective morality. Paul says, “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:14-16). We are imago dei, created in the image of God, and we uniquely among creation understand morality, good vs evil. And in recognition of evil, we recognize the need of a Savior.