In the conservative church circles where I have spent my adult life, it is common for people to think of themselves as morally upright. As insiders, we have been granted, in the example and teaching of Jesus Christ and through the writings of the prophets and apostles, divine revelation regarding what is right for human beings and what is wrong.

It is also common for us within the circle to think of those outside the circle as morally challenged. Because they do not know or submit to the moral teachings of Jesus and the Bible, we tend to regard them as immoral. Such an attitude, ironically, leads to a sense of moral superiority which both Jesus and the Bible condemn.

It is a mistake to assume that anyone who disagrees with our moral judgments is immoral. Immorality is not a lack of moral principles but a failure to live by the moral principles one espouses, a problem the Bible indicates is universal. Nearly everyone is guided by moral principles, however basic.

God gave humanity a moral compass. This was clear to me as I sat in jail with a man accused of rape and later with a woman accused of murder. Both understood that rape and murder are immoral. However, each wanted to believe their actions were caused or at least influenced by something outside themselves so that their culpability was limited.

That man and woman violated their own moral principles. It is a different matter when people violate mine. Even if they are acting immorally in the light of my beliefs, I cannot say they are acting immorally in the light of their own. This raises the question of whose moral compass is most accurate. Or asked another way, whose moral code best represents the good life for humanity?

In Moral Foundations Theory, first proposed by psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, there are six foundations for moral behavior. According to this theory, our sense of right and wrong originates in the following values, each of which can be stated positively or negatively: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression.

When groups disagree on which value to rank first, their moral judgments will differ. This does not mean that one group is moral and the other immoral. They might both be acting in a morally responsible manner according to their understanding of what constitutes moral behavior.

Western cultures are undergoing a shift in moral priorities. In the past, sanctity/degradation exercised more influence on American moral codes, and care/harm exercised less. That has now reversed. The resulting moral earthquake has fractured the social landscape and left us standing on disparate tracks of moral ground.

One way to think about this is to consider an act that was once regarded as immoral by nearly everyone: having an affair. It violated key values like loyalty and sanctity. But with the ascension of the care/harm value and the decline of sanctity and loyalty, having an affair need not be considered immoral as long as “no one gets hurt.”

The legalization of marijuana in many states was made possible by the idea that no one gets hurt. The same is true of the rollback on sodomy laws. Changes in American’s views on abortion can also be traced to the ascendency of this value. A woman who must forego college or career because of an unwanted pregnancy would be hurt. Of course, if one grants that the fetus is also a person, its hurt also needs to be considered.

When we realize that people who differ from us on important moral issues are operating from a different moral code, we can finally get off our sanctimonious high horses. But then the real work begins: determining which moral theory or combination of theories functions best in real life. I would argue that Christian morality, often misstated and misunderstood, and rarely seen lived out, best serves humanity. It builds on all six of the foundations described by Moral Foundations Theory and, Christians assert, was formulated by humanity’s creator with our best interests at heart.