Relativism and the lessons of a paper cup

The other day my mother-in-law taught me a great lesson about relativism. She definitely didn’t mean to. She is a person who believes in order in the universe. She believes God has a plan and that He listens to prayer. I am ruled by doubt.

My lesson came when she very generously tried to stock us up with pots and pans and other kitchen necessities. Our shipment hasn’t come from America yet, and we don’t want to buy stuff we will be receiving in our container.

Among the things Raquel (Irit’s mom) tried to give us was a big stack of paper cups, and, despite her generosity, I rejected the cups on the grounds that it would be bad for the environment. This was when I learned my lesson. Raquel, rightfully, snapped back at me, “There has been a drought in this country for five years. Here it is better to waste a few paper cups than to waste water washing dishes.”

I know it’s not a major epiphany, but it was a great lesson for me. My environmental righteousness may have been well intended, but it was off-target for the environment I live in, thus the relativism.

The last time I learned this lesson was in a class for my doctorate called The Politics of Assessment. In the class, my teacher Terry Jo Smith, illustrated how standardized tests are inherently unfair because they demand answers that imply an absolute answer for the population. This could be true in most mathematics problems, but it is definitely not reasonable for issues of human behavior.

The example Terry gave was a question off the tests that asked what a person should do if they found a wallet; a) look for the owners information and call him to return it, b) take the money out of the wallet and leave it where it was found, c) return the wallet without the money. The first answer everyone gave was the one that was right for their personal situation in the world. As middle class students, we all said that you give back the wallet with all the money. But Terry challenged us. “What if you are a homeless student or a very poor student with unemployed parents? Would it be such a terrible thing to take the money if you really needed it?”

In essence, we all have relative values. This is why we cheer for Robin Hood or Nazi killers. I remember the uproar when the actor Will Smith said that the Nazis thought they were doing the right thing, but what was so outrageous about that? There are few things I believe about human behavior, but one is that we like to see ourselves as acting righteously. Nazis created a reality in their minds to justify their behavior. They spent a lot of resources on propaganda because they needed to make a societal shift in perceptions.

I learned from my Talmud teacher that the Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Menachem Elon said there was no difference between scripture and interpretation. In essence, even what God said in stone, written with his own finger, is relative. This is the beauty of the oral law. It provides us with a framework for interpreting God, or what we think of as the source of righteousness, because everything is ultimately relative. “Thou shalt not kill,” what about self defense. “Honor your Father and Mother,” what about those parents who abuse their kids, or, for instance, the orthodox Israeli mother who tried to starve her three year old to death.

I know relativism is hard to accept, but I think it is much healthier for us as a society to deal with creating the frameworks for interpreting what a good God would want for us than it is to waste time being dogmatic or fundamental about what we think She wants.