by Tommy Karlas
In my early twenties I went through a period of time I did not believe in God. I was raised Christian and always believed up until then, but suddenly found myself doubting everything I had ever taken for granted. As I felt then, so I think many feel today that it is no longer sufficient to blindly inherit the faith passed down, but to honestly look at our doubts and weigh the evidence for ourselves. Before I could even consider Christianity, I had to honestly ask myself if there was even a God at all. Part of that was looking at science and what could be empirically proven (which is in my post Science & God below). But the other part of the argument, which C.S. Lewis forced me to look at, was if there really is such a thing as universal right and wrong, or objective good and evil.
Because if all of existence is just an accident…a result of time + matter + chance…then there is no such thing as objective right and wrong. There may be things we personally, or culturally, think are good or bad, but that is only subjective or an opinion, if there is no purpose to life. And yet, we all have this strong sense of right and wrong. We all have this standard for the way things ought to be which we judge the world, and ourselves, by every single day of our lives. We all have moral feelings and a conscience; the voice inside our heads that’s always imposing on us what we should or shouldn’t do. The question is do these moral feelings have an objective bases in reality, apart from personal preference?
Because if there is such a thing as absolute right and wrong or good and bad, then the very thing that would make them absolute would have to be outside, or above, humans themselves. The very thing that makes right and wrong objective would have to be a reference point outside of our own personal feelings or opinions. In other words, if there is a universal, objective moral law, there must be a moral law giver.
Now someone at this point might say it is the culture, or society, which decides right and wrong. But if that’s the case, then 51% of a culture could decide infanticide is fine (i.e..China & India). Or they could decide that female genital mutilation is acceptable (just as there are over 30 countries today practicing this deplorable act). No! Everyone reading this knows that it is wrong, and that it is absolutely wrong. But if no set of moral ideas were better or truer than others, we could not say it's wrong. And yet we do because we believe that some moralities are better than others. And the moment we say one is “better” than another, we are measuring both by an absolute standard, admitting there is a real Right, independent of what people think or feel, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.
So if by seeing there is an absolute moral law, there must be a moral law giver, God…then which view of God does this lead us to? There are basically two equal and opposite popular views of God, according to the Bible, that miss the mark. One is the moralist, the other is a relativist. A moralist is someone who believes they are moral and good, and therefore they look down on all those immoral folks who don’t live up to their standards. This is a trap religious people can fall into. The relativist, however, believes that God is whatever you make Him to be and puts personal happiness/fulfillment above all else. The moralist thinks he saves himself by following God’s law, while the relativist flat-out rejects the law and becomes his own god. (The older and younger brothers in Christ’s parable of the prodigal son are the two sides of this same coin)
The truth is we all have these two opposing forces battling inside of us. We all have God’s moral law, or the Golden Rule, written on our hearts, and yet we all naturally want to make ourselves our own god. And we all hold everyone up to a standard that even we, ourselves, do not live up to. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says “First, human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.”
In fact, you could sum up the Bible by saying the Old Testament articulates the law and shows us how through free will human nature is fallen and unable to live up to it, while the New Testament shows us God’s answer and plan all along through Jesus Christ. And it shows us who God is in as much as our human minds can understand; God is perfect, just, and holy. And the only way he could allow us to be with Him ultimately without compromising His justness and holiness is to become a man, live a perfect life, and raise us up Himself through the cross. And if we allow that to really penetrate our hearts, it will keep us from thinking we can save ourselves, while still desiring to be good and have a healthy fear of the Lord. And if we let Him, Christ will slowly, though not quite in this lifetime, make us into something as beautiful and perfect as He is.
