Absolutely

Greg Koukl is sort of a doyen of the contemporary Christian apologetics crowd. He wouldn't know me from anyone, but I had a brief and interesting interaction with him. A friend of mine and I went to listen to him speak about relativism which is often the straw man for everything Christians of a culturally conservative stripe fear. He and others interested in the current strain of apologetics use an approach wherein, through a series of leading questions and statements, they get people to come to the conclusion that since the 60's we have been in the grip of a misanthropic nihilism they call moral relativism. What does that even mean? Well, they conveniently describe this moral relativism on their terms in ways that do have pretty scary implications: in moral relativism there are no standards beyond individual desires or preferences and no one is qualified to evaluate any action or value. In, at least Koukl's estimation, this has led to every modern evil. No one is in a place to judge anything so nothing is out of bounds. That's why bad things happen. Hopefully someone would reject this premise and then be in the market for a better idea. Hopefully that idea is Christianity. Now if that's not the purpose of the Word becoming flesh, I don't know what is.
But the interaction, that's what I wanted to write about. Okay, so during the Q&A portion of his pitch I ask him about the value of apologetics in general, especially in light of scripture. I wonder if it really is a Biblical value to present Christianity as just another product in the marketplace of ideas. I wonder if that's what life in Christ is all about. Then I ask him what specifically is an absolute Biblical value. That's a tough one. Lying and stealing, those aren't universally condemned in the Bible. Killing, even killing babies, sometimes okay. He doesn't have an answer to that specifically but talks about absolute truth in general. I want to know how we know what to do in a specific situation if it's not in the Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit can be a very subjective way of knowing the truth. Anyway, long story short, I approach Koukl at the end of the evening to tell him I wasn't trying to be a jerk, sometimes it just happens and I really want to know what he thinks of those questions I raised. He is visibly uncomfortable and starts trying to ignore me. I say I think it's important that we not neglect the stuff I raised even if (big if) it's important to present the philosophical competitiveness of Christianity. I say I wanted him to acknowledge that belief in God isn't just an intellectual assent to a particular premise and he says, "Okay, you baited me." What?! I baited him? My questions were just a rhetorical ploy to get him to say something? He thought I was just engaged in some logical nonsense. Maybe if you're immersed in that type of culture that's what you expect, but that's not what I was after. I really want to know what he thinks the praxis of this thinking is. I want to know what he says absolute truth is. I want to know that by truth he means more than a never-changing universal list of do's and dont's accompanied by a convenient way of identifying people by their crimes. He couldn't tell me that.
Whatever.
Some friends of ours were expecting a child and had to choose today between the life of their child and the mother. That's not just a conundrum found in ethics books. That's real life. What's the absolute rule there? What label do we apply to them?