The Myth of Subjective Morality - a parable
by Rod Jackson
There once was a world where the only source of food was from a restaurant. This restaurant fed all the inhabitants of that world. Each day people would come into the restaurant and eat their meals. The owner allowed people to run up their bills, keeping a careful account of how much each person owed him. The owner told all the inhabitants that one day, in the future, he would require them all to pay their debt to him.
Eventually the owner set a date for the payment of debts. Each person started to take a more serious look at what they actually owed the owner of the restaurant. Most were shocked to see that their bill was far above anything they could ever hope to pay. In fact, in the entire world only one person had enough money to pay their bill. This extremely rich person had more than enough money, for his own bill and for the rest of the world's debts as well.
So this rich person sent out an edict informing that anyone who wanted him to pay their debt to the restaurant owner could come visit him. And he would pay their debt for them, freely, no strings attached.
Many people heard this edit and came to the rich man. But many others were too proud and didn't want his help, so they devised ways they could pay their own bills. They started to forge their own money. Those who were artistically inclined drew fancy sheets of money on the best paper they could find. The more technologically minded people built their own presses to press their fake money on. The less intelligent forgot how much they owed and didn't create enough fake money to pay their debts. While others made just enough money to pay their debt. And some even made more than enough forged money to pay their debts and leave a tip. They thought to themselves, 'The restaurant owner will see how generous I am. I'll pay my bill and am still willing to give more to him.'
Finally the day came. All debts were to be paid in full.
Those people who had realised that they didn't have enough money to pay their debts and humbled themselves, asking the rich man to pay their debts for them. They found that the rich man very generously paid each and every bill that those people owed to the restaurant owner.
The people who forged their money, soon found out, that their money was not legal tender. They did not have enough legal tender to pay their debts, even though some of them thought they were more than generous with their fake money. They had deceived themselves but they could not deceive the restaurant owner. No matter how close to authentic the money looked, the owner always spotted a fraud. None of those people could pay their debt to the restaurant owner.
He who has ears to hear, let them hear
The restaurant is the restaurant of life. The restaurant owner is God. The generous rich man is Jesus. The bills/debts are what we owe God. The illegal tender are people's subjective morality, their own attempts to please God by their own efforts. The humble whose debts were paid are the genuine Christians.