The greatest conflict between Christianity and modern progressivism is not political. It is a conflict over whether human desires should submit to divine authority or whether divine authority must submit to human desires.
I have increasingly come to believe that much of modern secular progressivism is engaged in something far more consequential than a struggle over political power or cultural acceptance. At its philosophical core, it represents an attempt to redefine the human condition independent of God. It is an effort to place human autonomy where divine authority once stood, to make personal fulfillment the ultimate measure of morality, and to transform the pursuit of happiness from a journey of spiritual refinement into an exercise in satisfying earthly desires.
Consider the cultural trajectory of the past several decades. We have moved from debates about abortion to the redefinition of marriage, from the normalization of sexual relationships outside traditional marriage to increasingly expansive understandings of gender identity, and now to growing conversations about polyamory and other unconventional relationship structures.
These issues are not identical, and their advocates do not necessarily share the same motivations. Yet I believe a common philosophical thread runs through many of the arguments offered in their defense.
The underlying proposition is that human beings ought to possess the ultimate authority to determine what is good for themselves, provided their choices do not violate the rights of others.
But Christianity begins with an entirely different proposition. We are not the authors of our own existence. We did not create ourselves. We did not establish the fundamental purposes of our lives. We are creations of an eternal God, endowed with agency, but also accountable to the One who gave us that agency. And that distinction changes everything.
The Difference Between Happiness and Holiness
The Christian worldview does not regard earthly happiness as the ultimate objective of human existence. Our purpose is not simply to maximize pleasure, eliminate discomfort, or satisfy every appetite that arises within us. Our purpose is to become something greater than what our natural impulses would otherwise make us.
In Romans 8:5–8, the Apostle Paul teaches that those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, while those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. He further declares that the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law.
That is an extraordinary declaration because it acknowledges something deeply uncomfortable about human nature. Not everything we naturally desire is necessarily good for us. Not every appetite deserves satisfaction. Not every impulse should be celebrated. And not everything that produces temporary happiness contributes to our eternal well-being.
In Galatians 5:22–24, Paul identifies self-control as a fruit of the Spirit and teaches that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Notice the distinction. We are not commanded to eliminate our passions. We are commanded to govern them. Christianity teaches that freedom is not the absence of restraint. True freedom includes the ability to exercise restraint.
A person who cannot say no to his own appetites is not necessarily free simply because society has given him permission to indulge them. He may have become a prisoner of desires he no longer possesses the discipline to control.
This is one of the great paradoxes of Christian discipleship. We surrender certain immediate pleasures not because we despise happiness, but because we believe there is a greater happiness that can only be attained through obedience, sacrifice, discipline, and spiritual transformation.
The progressive moral framework increasingly challenges the legitimacy of those restraints, particularly when they are grounded in religious convictions.
Where Christianity asks, “What does God require of me?” the more radically autonomous worldview asks, “What right does anyone have to tell me what I may desire or become?” Those are fundamentally different questions, and they produce fundamentally different societies.
When Consent Becomes the Measure of Morality
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary secular morality is the emphasis placed on consent, individual autonomy, and the prevention of harm. These are not inherently bad principles. Christianity itself recognizes the importance of agency, dignity, and protecting others from harm. The disagreement arises when these principles are treated as sufficient to determine whether an action is morally good.
Consider the argument frequently employed in discussions of sexual relationships: If consenting adults are involved and no one is being harmed, why should anyone object? At first glance, the question appears reasonable. But notice what has happened.
The question of whether an action is morally right has been replaced by the question of whether the participants have agreed to it. Consent may establish whether an individual has willingly participated in an action. It does not, by itself, establish the moral goodness of that action.
Two people can consent to something that is destructive to their character. Several people can agree to an arrangement that undermines obligations they previously accepted. An individual can willingly pursue something that ultimately diminishes rather than enriches his life.
Indeed, much of human wisdom consists of recognizing that something can be permissible, pleasurable, and voluntarily chosen while still being unwise or morally wrong. Christianity recognizes duties that exist independently of our preferences.
A husband does not become free of his obligation to fidelity simply because he encounters someone he finds more attractive. A parent does not become free of responsibility because raising children interferes with personal fulfillment. A person does not become morally justified in pursuing every appetite simply because the opportunity presents itself.
Our obligations are not always convenient, and their inconvenience does not invalidate them. The deeper question is whether morality exists to govern our desires or whether our desires are increasingly being used to redefine morality.
What Happens When Eternity Disappears?
This brings me to what I consider one of the most consequential differences between the Christian and secular progressive worldviews. What happens to our understanding of life’s purpose when we remove eternity from the equation? If our existence begins at birth and permanently ends at death, the entire framework through which we evaluate life’s opportunities necessarily changes.
There is no eternal progression to prepare for. No divine judgment awaiting us. No eternal covenant whose obligations extend beyond mortality. That does not mean an atheist must become selfish or hedonistic. Many nonbelievers live remarkably disciplined, generous, and sacrificial lives. Their moral seriousness deserves acknowledgment.
But without an eternal perspective, the justification for sacrifice must be located entirely within this life or within the welfare of those who follow us. For a philosophy that makes personal autonomy and subjective fulfillment its highest goods, this creates a powerful temptation.
Why should I deny myself something that brings me happiness if I believe this life is all that exists? Why should ancient religious commandments govern my sexuality? Why should marriage be restricted by a divine design I do not believe exists? Why should the body be understood as possessing a God-given meaning that limits my authority to define myself? And why should I accept suffering or sacrifice for the sake of eternal promises I consider imaginary?
From within that framework, traditional Christian restraint can begin to look less like wisdom and more like an unnecessary restriction on human flourishing. But from the Christian perspective, the logic is inverted. We believe mortality is not the entirety of our existence. It is a temporary but consequential stage in an eternal journey.
We are here not merely to experience life, but to be transformed by it. And transformation frequently requires resisting the very desires that promise us immediate satisfaction.
The Ancient Temptation to Become Like God Without God
There is something strikingly familiar about the philosophical claim that human beings should possess ultimate authority over moral truth. It echoes the temptation presented in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:5, the serpent tempts Eve with the promise that she and Adam shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
The temptation was not merely about eating forbidden fruit. It involved the question of whether human beings would trust God’s instruction or assert their own judgment against it. Christianity teaches that humanity can ultimately become more like God through a process of obedience, grace, and spiritual transformation.
The competing temptation is to claim the privileges of divine authority without accepting divine accountability. I see an expression of that temptation in some of the central arguments of modern secular progressivism. When human desire becomes the authority by which institutions are judged, marriage can be redefined according to prevailing preferences.
When subjective identity is treated as authoritative over the biological realities of the body, personal self-definition can be elevated above aspects of our created nature. When bodily autonomy is treated as the overriding consideration in abortion, the moral claims of developing human life can become subordinate to individual choice.
These debates involve real people, complex circumstances, and competing claims about rights and obligations. They deserve serious engagement, not caricature. But beneath those complexities lies a question Christians cannot afford to ignore. Does humanity discover moral truth, or does humanity manufacture it?
If moral truth is discovered, then it can confront our desires, challenge our preferences, and demand obedience even when obedience is difficult. If moral truth is merely manufactured through individual preference and social agreement, then its content can change whenever the prevailing consensus changes. That is not a trivial distinction. It is the difference between a moral compass and a moral negotiation.
The Problem With Making Pleasure the Destination
The pursuit of happiness is a noble aspiration. It is also deeply embedded in the American founding tradition. But the pursuit of happiness was never intended to mean that every individual desire must be recognized as morally good or socially beneficial. A society cannot survive on appetite alone.
Civilization depends upon people routinely choosing duty over convenience, fidelity over temptation, responsibility over gratification, and sacrifice over immediate self-interest. Families require sacrifice. Marriage requires sacrifice. Raising children requires sacrifice. Building communities requires sacrifice. Even liberty requires citizens capable of self-government. And self-government begins with the government of oneself.
This is precisely why I believe the progressive tendency to elevate individual self-expression above inherited moral obligations deserves serious scrutiny. A culture that increasingly regards restraint as oppression will eventually struggle to explain why restraint is necessary.
A culture that regards personal desire as a central source of moral authority will find it increasingly difficult to establish moral boundaries that are not subject to continual renegotiation.
And a culture that treats disagreement with another person’s choices as an attack on that person’s identity risks losing the ability to distinguish between loving people and affirming everything they choose to do.
Christianity insists that these are not the same thing. We can love someone while believing that a particular action is morally wrong. We can defend someone’s dignity without affirming every claim that person makes about human nature.
We can recognize someone’s freedom to make a choice without surrendering our freedom to evaluate that choice against our own moral convictions. Indeed, love sometimes requires the courage to tell someone that the thing they desire may not be the thing that ultimately brings them happiness.
The Christian Conservative Alternative
The conservative Christian answer is not that government should monitor every private appetite or that every sin should become a crime. That would confuse the responsibilities of civil government with the responsibilities of individual conscience, family, church, and community.
Human beings possess moral agency, and meaningful agency necessarily includes the possibility of making choices that others consider wrong. But respecting that agency does not require society to declare all choices equally virtuous. Nor does political liberty require the abandonment of moral truth.
A Christian conservative can defend constitutional religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and equal protection under the law while continuing to argue that certain moral principles are true regardless of their popularity. Christianity offers a vision of human dignity that does not depend upon whether a person’s desires are affirmed by the surrounding culture. Our worth comes from being children of God.
Our bodies are not meaningless containers for an independently invented identity. Our relationships are not merely instruments for obtaining pleasure. Our lives are not random opportunities to maximize gratification before we disappear into oblivion. We have a purpose.
And that purpose imposes responsibilities upon us. The Christian understanding of happiness is therefore inseparable from the Christian understanding of truth. We do not get to redefine goodness simply because goodness demands something difficult of us. We do not get to abandon fidelity simply because temptation is attractive.
We do not get to dismiss divine commandments simply because the culture has decided they are inconvenient. And we do not get to elevate our appetites above our Creator simply because we possess the agency to do so.
The Question Beneath Every Cultural Battle
Ultimately, I believe the conflict between Christianity and the more radical expressions of secular progressivism is not primarily about sex, gender, abortion, or marriage.
Those are manifestations of a deeper disagreement. It is about whether human beings are accountable to a moral authority greater than themselves. It is about whether freedom means the ability to do whatever we desire or the capacity to choose what is good even when our desires pull us elsewhere.
It is about whether happiness is something we manufacture by satisfying our appetites or something we discover by aligning our lives with eternal truth. And it is about whether the purpose of mortality is to indulge the natural man or to overcome him.
Jesus Christ taught in Matthew 16:25 that whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it, while whoever loses his life for His sake shall find it. That teaching stands in direct opposition to any philosophy that makes self-gratification the highest purpose of existence.
The world tells us to find ourselves by following our desires. Christ teaches us to find ourselves by surrendering to something greater. The world increasingly asks us to affirm whatever the individual chooses to become. Christ calls us to become what God knows we are capable of being.
That is the great spiritual contest of our time. Not simply whether we believe in God, but whether we are willing to let God be God. Because the moment we decide that divine truth must yield to human appetite, we have not liberated humanity from the authority of God. We have merely attempted to place ourselves upon His throne.