Negotiating Morality
Another buzzword has recently filtered into use in American society—particularly in academic circles—and is an appropriate expression for the manner in which virtually any decision is made in this “postmodern” world. The word is negotiation. While the traditional connotation of this term conjures images of opposing factions coming to some resolution on a matter of dispute, the new sense of the word assumes no degree of resolution. Instead, it implies that a true decision on any issue may not actually be possible...and will certainly never be correct.

A feature dealing with global warming in the latest issue of Time magazine pictured a polar bear attempting to make its way through the half-solid, half-watery terrain of the Arctic. (Apparently this particular landscape had once been completely and unmistakably glacier-solid before humans’ discovery of hair spray in 1948.) The caption underneath the photo indicated that the polar bear was “negotiating” the icy terrain. And I’m sure the bear was completely cognizant of the fact that it was participating in a discourse of postmodern subjective interpretation...as it hunted a trout.

Because our culture truly is one that says we must come to terms with issues of the day individually, forging our stances within a system of multiple and often contradictory “truths,” the term negotiation is a particularly suitable denotation. Simultaneously, its use is disturbing. When we are forced to negotiate a stance that is to have any bearing over the other individuals in our community, that stance is naturally going to contradict some aspect of another’s negotiation. Because each negotiation has received validity by nature of its being a negotiation, our search for truth has become a stagnating subjectivity, and the issue at hand is not so much addressed as it is pondered separately by a community of individuals.

A negotiated position, in the newer sense of the word, assumes that all positions hold equal value. If I can come to terms with my own stance on a matter, my stance is just as valid as anyone else’s; likewise, anyone else’s stance is just as valid as my own. This assumption forces us to abandon the concept of absolute value to the uncertain shifting of popular culture or to the loudest voices that scream at any given moment. If we give in to this scheme of questioning, we will fail to realize that our questions are wrong to begin with. Pretty soon we are faced with polar bears with rational interpretive skills.

Christian doctrine appears to contain an element of negotiation in its method of interpreting the events of the world—the idea of personal conviction. If a subjectively-negotiated position is ever attributed to personal “Christian” conviction, the postmodern would most likely write off the stance as close-minded. Personal conviction alone is discredited, although, even for a postmodern, it is personal conviction that drives the everyday decisions that each of us makes. The difference between the Christian concept of conviction and the postmodern state of subjective negotiation is the fact that in Christianity, individuals assume an absolute value. The stance is in fact a “divine negotiation” that by which an individual may receive transcendent knowledge in any given situation.

In this sense, the answer to any given question will not necessarily be an absolute one, but the question does demand a right answer. I think the only way followers of Christ can effectively maintain their positions as authentic aliens on this earth while engaging themselves in the negotiating opinions of postmodern American is to seize St. Paul’s advice to “live in the Spirit” at all times. We will slowly learn that absolute right and wrong can exist in our society, yet these labels can only be applied individually as Christ leads.