The Coldplay Concert Ordeal Made It Clear: Our Culture Can’t Cancel Morality

I can’t recall the last time something went so viral so quickly. 

What began as a strange moment at a Coldplay concert turned into a global phenomenon. Sporting events have changed the classic “Kiss Cam” into “Coldplay Cam.” A programer even coded a game in which the gamer controls a fictional couple to avoid the kiss cam. 

Like all viral moments, there has been a lot of opinions trying to slice the situation from different angles. Some predominantly see this as an adultery issue. Others see this through the lens of organizational dynamics. Others see the problem with social media and the trivialization of a serious matter. 

As a pastor and as someone who tries to see how culture and Scripture intersect, I couldn’t help but notice how indispensable morality is to our our relativistic culture.

Morality Is The Air We Breathe 

For the last few decades, Western secularism has made it easy for the culture to champion the idea that sexuality and sexual expression is an individual’s choice and right. 

“So what if an individual engages in a certain kind of behavior” we were told. “As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, leave people alone.” Concepts like fluidity, consent, and individuality have been elevated to serve as values and guideposts for what was believed to be a new, progressed culture that had long shaken off the shackles of antiquated religion. 

But while we may be post-religion, we are not post ethics and moments like the Coldplay concert exposes our culture’s “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” sensibilities. We cringe when someone speaks definitively on a moral issue, but we also turn into the moral police when our moral instincts are violated. We’re uncomfortable with objective realities, but find situations like this objectionable. Our staunchest and strongest moral quips are often dripping with irony.

The Biblical worldview would explain it simply: We’re moral creatures with a moral conscience made in the image of God. Morality is the air the we breathe, no matter how much we try to hold our breath. We can’t escape our design. No matter how hard our culture tries to cancel objective morality, image-bearers will eventually find the realities of morality irrepressible.

The Gift of God’s Morals

I was reminded very recently of the gift of morality while teaching on the Ten Commandments for my church.

There is a temptation sometimes to see God’s morality expressed in commands as a kind of fence which limits our freedom and joy. But while a fence may limit us to a degree, it’s design actually limits the things that threaten our well-being. Fences eliminate the dangers to our joy far more than our joys itself.

In this way, God’s commands work as a counterintuitive gift to us. They help us to experientially maximize the life we desire through protection and formation. 

We know this intuitively if you’ve ever been at a no-fault car accident. You don’t think, “We need to get rid of traffic laws.” You think “People need to abide by the rules.” God’s morality is a gift. The more we embrace the morals of God expressed through his commands, the greater our joy will be. 

The Coldplay concert moment didn’t create our moral instinct—it simply revealed it. We were made for more than relativism and individualistic confusion. We were made to live with clarity, joy, and freedom under the good boundaries of a God who loves us.

And that’s not just morality—that’s grace.