To frame this section on ethics, let me present a picture of a toddler in the kitchen. Imagine that toddler being left to do whatever she wanted: Eat cookies all day long, randomly turn on stove burners, run water and splash it on the floor - whatever she wants. Will that make her a happy person in the long run? No. She does not have enough knowledge to determine what is best for her; she will naturally choose junk food that will make her sick; she will naturally choose to make messes, leading to unsanitary conditions and disease. It is not good to let a child do whatever she wants; God gives parents to children to teach children how to submit to a higher standard outside of themselves.
Following God’s rules instead of making up our own rules is what I want to talk about today. This is a natural progression from the things we talked about earlier:
So far we have come epistemologically to the Bible as the source of truth, then we have opened the Bible to the first book (Genesis) to see ontologically that God is the source of everything that exists, Now we move on into the second chapter of Genesis and into the second book of the Bible (Exodus) to study ethics and see that God is the one who decides what is right and what is wrong.
We also see a parallel to this progression in the Lord’s Prayer:
o What is the ultimate source of truth? Jehovah/Jesus/the name of God, so we first ask for that name and all that is associated with the person of God to be honored.
o Then what should come into being in this world? The kingdom of God. So let that be the focus of what we want to see come into being. “Let Your kingdom come.”
o Then what should be done in this world? The will of God, so we ask for God’s will to be done next. It is God’s prerogative to decide what should and shouldn’t be done. That is one of the functions of deity.
We also see these three issues bundled together in Jesus statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6) – The “way” would be the good and right path, which has to do with ethics.
Ethics is inherently personal. At the root of ethics/morality is a god of some sort who likes certain things and dislikes other things and defines good and evil based on his personal nature. That is why worldviews that claim the universe to be the result of impersonal matter and energy suddenly switch away from that impersonal matter and energy when it comes to defining right and wrong and define it personally in terms of their own preferences or in terms of some sort of group consensus among people. Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, places the prerogative for deciding what is right and what is wrong in the hands of Jesus, the personal God of the Bible. It is a function of deity – the god of any given system gets to decide what is right and what is wrong.
God’s nature defines right and wrong. Whatever God likes is good and therefore right to do, and whatever God doesn’t like is bad and therefore wrong to do. In his textbook on Biblical Ethics, Robertson McQuilken wrote that “moral law [is] God’s expressed will concerning what constitutes likeness to God.” McQuilken says that the basis for ethics is God’s demand “Be holy as I am holy (Lev. 19:2, 1 Pet. 1:16) Law is the expressed will of God that people be like Him morally.[1].
What’s more, God not only has the right to decide what is right and what is wrong, He also has the right to hold every inferior accountable to His standard of ethics. Old King Solomon in his wisdom saw this: Eccl. 12:13-14 “This is the end of the matter; all has been heard: fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, for God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”
So it is the privilege of God to be “both Law-giver and Judge,” as James 4:12 says. By contrast, James asks, “Who are you that judges your neighbor?” If you’re not God, then you can’t judge anybody using your opinions of right and wrong.
In every new beginning of mankind throughout the history of the Bible, Jehovah-God spoke His law-will into the culture of His people.
In the beginning of time, God told Adam what to do and what not to do:
§ “Be fruitful and multiply and take dominion” (Gen. 1:28),
§ “Eat from the trees of the garden (Gen 2:16), but do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17).
Right from the start, Adam had a list of laws to follow.
After God wiped out mankind with a flood, Noah and his family stepped off the ark and God started giving commands: (Gen. 9:3-7)
§ “You may eat the animals now,
§ but don’t kill other humans,
§ Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth!”
What about the Israelite nation as they emerged from Egypt as a new nation? It wasn’t long before God was giving the 10 commandments (Ex. 20) and explaining their application to all of life throughout the rest of the law written by Moses:
§ God cannot tolerate competition – no other gods, no worshipping idols, no careless use of His name. He is uniquely God.
§ Honor the 7th day to keep it holy. God rested on the seventh day, so it is right to do what He did.
§ Honor your parents – Jesus the Son honored His Father, and we should be like Him.
§ Do not murder – don’t even hate others and wish that they would die unjustly.
§ Do not commit adultery – God is faithful, so you should be faithful also.
§ Do not lie – God is truthful, so we should be too.
§ Do not steal, and don’t even wish in your heart to have something which belongs to someone else.
These are the 10 Commandments.
Revivals under Josiah (2 Ki. 22:8ff) and Nehemiah (ch. 8) involved the re-discovery and reading out loud of the law, which was to be read anyway every 7 years to all the people (Deut. 31:10).
Jesus also came, giving authoritative commands:
§ He summarized the greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and… love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:37ff)
§ Then He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)
§ “This is my command”: “Abide in me”, “love one another”, “bear much fruit.” (John 15)
§ And He gave the Great Commission: “…Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you…” (Matt. 28:18ff)
§ He also promised to come back to separate those who are blessed from those who are cursed based on their obedience to His commands (Matt. 25:31ff).
“It is not possible to judge another’s truth.” ~Shirley MacLaine[2]
Many Americans think that ethics is a private matter, something which can be kept to oneself. That’s because they believe that morality comes from deep inside themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people say to me, “Hey, what’s good for you is good for you, but I could never be like that!” This statement begs the question and assumes that each person has the right to be god and decide what is right and wrong for themselves. How did they get that right?
The problem with making morality a private matter is that all these autonomous little “gods” start bumping up against each other and offending each other. For instance, you get terrorists who believe that it is good to bring a gun into a classroom and kill the children in it. Ravi Zacharias, in his book, Light In The Shadow Of Jihad counters the myth that morality is a private matter, saying that “demagogues such as Osama bin Laden believe that morality is a totally public matter, interwoven with religion, and that their followers are doing the world a favor by ridding it of any culture that privatizes religion and morality.[3]”
If you believe that everyone can decide for himself what is right and wrong, you are going to have to regularly put up with these terrorists, because you have no basis to declare them wrong or to put a stop to their murderous behavior. If you believe they shouldn’t do certain things, what gives them the moral authority to decide what other people should or shouldn’t do? Zacharias continued, “The relativist who argues for the absence of absolutes smuggles absolutes into his arguments all the time… Hidden somewhere in the words of everyone who argues for complete relativism is a belief [an intuitive certainty] that there are, indeed, some acts that are wrong… It is true, by the way, that in the past century more people were killed under the banner of irreligion than by religious fanatics.[4]” Zacharias should know; he was born in India where every month, it seems, we hear reports of Hindus killing more Christians.
Morality is not a private matter, even though it starts in the heart, it necessarily flows into outward actions and becomes public. (More on this later.)
What is the result of following your own personal likes and dislikes to define right and wrong? (You get the same result, by the way, if you let another human define what is right and wrong for you.)
I went to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in our town last year to hear a speaker on business ethics. If I recall correctly, he was a Presbyterian pastor, so I was curious to hear what he would say. He said that since nobody is going to agree on a religious text to determine everybody’s morality, we must pick things that everybody agrees on. He argued that people are basically good, and they’ll agree on the basics. What a departure from the original Scottish Presbyterians who believed that man was fallen and unable to arrive at good without God and who penned God’s word to their kings to hold them accountable to God’s law and took up arms to defend themselves against those kings who flagrantly violated God’s law.
Utilitarianism, is another way to arrive at ethics without appealing beyond humans to a supernatural source. John Stuart Mills promoted this concept in the 19th Century: “Whatever does the most good for the most people is therefore good.” Here’s an example of Utilitarianism in action: Say you enter the hospital with a broken bone, but with functioning kidneys and eyes and heart. In that same hospital there are three other patients: One needs a heart transplant in order to live, one needs a kidney transplant in order to live, and one needs a corneal transplant in order to keep from going blind. What does Utilitarianism tell us to do? Don’t waste resources on the broken bone, instead kill you and use your body parts to benefit three other people. That’s what does the most good for the most people. It’s admittedly an extreme example, but I’m not sure I can trust other people to decide for me what does the most good for the most people.
If, however, you accept human sovereignty in deciding what is right and what is wrong, there is no objective standard outside of ourselves to determine right from wrong. The French Marquis DeSade was famous for taking this doctrine of humanism to its logical conclusion. “If nature is the absolute, cruelty equals non-cruelty” There is no moral difference between stopping your car to let an elderly woman cross the road in front of you or running her over in order to get to your destination without having to wait for her[5].
Another way men apart from God have conceived of ethics is through the paradigm of Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” Robert Heinlein, the father of modern science fiction, explained in his book Starship Troopers that morality is the extension of the survival instinct for the whole human race. This is the kind of thinking that leads to intentionally taking the life of sick and elderly people. According to one survey, 9% of the people in the Netherlands who died in 1990, died by euthanasia, and half of them were killed without even gaining their permission.[6] Euthanasia is legal, by the way, in three U.S. states as well. Killing off all but the fittest is a logical outworking of ethics apart from the God of the Bible. In fact, Friedrich von Bernhardi, in his book, Germany and the Next War, went so far as to suggest that killing people off one-by-one isn’t enough. Wars should be manufactured to kill off large segments of undesirable people. He wrote, “War is a biological necessity; it is as necessary as the struggle of the elements of Nature; it gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things.[7]”
Many of the great wars of modern history have been influenced by the philosophy and ethics of Karl Marx. “According to the Marxist dialectic, everything in the universe, including society, is in a state of flux or constant change. This change in society is a move upward toward the elimination of all social and economic class distinctions. The next social advance in history will be the move from capitalism to socialism. This will inevitably result in a change in society’s ideas about morals… Nikita Khrushchev state[d], ‘So as long as classes exist on the earth, there will be no such thing in life as something good in the absolute sense.’ …[Also in Marxist philosophy] the end justifies the means. Regardless of what you do, it is moral if it brings the world closer to eradicating social classes.[8]”
Using man as the measure for ethics will necessarily result in a constantly-changing standard of right and wrong. Notice what one spokesman for Planned Parenthood said about technology making the seventh commandment obsolete: “Historically, a primary reason for the enormous importance given to [marital] faithfulness and unfaithfulness was the lack of reliable birth-control techniques. Now that those techniques, including abortion, are generally available, this importance [of a law against adultery] has more and more diminished.[9]”. Human law will change. This is also evident in the rather nebulous concept of impersonal, evolving Natural Law that John Locke promoted, “The discovery of the natural law is a continuously unfolding enterprise.[10]”
Without God’s absolute standard of truth, there is no reason to tell the truth in a business contract or in a court of justice unless you think it will benefit the people you want to benefit. One secular humanist, Max Hocutt, wrote, “The non-existence of God… means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their need.”[11] What is the logical conclusion of this? Paul Kurtz, editor of the original Humanist Manifesto admitted, “We may end up with [a man] concerned with his own personal lust for pleasure, ambition, and power, and impervious to moral constraints.[12]” Well, Dr. Kurtz, I think we’ve arrived!
Let’s look at two more practical examples of what happens when man is the measure of right and wrong: First let’s look at the legalization of abortion. Christian philosopher Gordon Clark made these remarks at a pro-life demonstration in front of Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, TN, and I think it bears repeating at length:
“If Atheism is to be the law of the land, there can be no laws at all to support morality, for there is no morality apart from the laws of God. I would like to make it clear that sociology, statistics, psychology, or any empirical science can never determine moral norms. Secular science at best can discover what people do, but it cannot discover what people ought to do… [S]ocial consensus cannot determine what is right or wrong. The social consensus of the Spartans in antiquity and of at least some Indian tries in North America condoned theft and even praised it. Before the Belgians took over the Congo a century or so ago, social consensus approved of cannibalism. The fact that various societies have considered theft and cannibalism to be right do not prove that theft and cannibalism are right – nor the murder of babies, either… One can perhaps with relative ease discover what groups of people think is right, but social consensus does not make anything right or wrong. So far as I can see, the only pertinent difference between the abortionists here and the cannibals in the Congo is that the abortionists do not eat the babies… What a waste of good meat in these times of famine. Of course the meat would have to be inspected by the USDA, but I can see no reason why, on abortionist principles – or lack of principles – for prohibiting the eating of human flesh… Of course babies are a little small, like Cornish hens. But if the Supreme court can legalize the murder of infants, it can as easily legalize the murder of adults… The Supreme Court could legalize the murder of all who support the right of life and thus produce a unanimous social consensus. If anyone things that this proposal is extreme, be it noted that Hitler’s National Socialism and Stalin’s international Socialism attempted just that.[13]”
Secular humanist worldviews, as the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer observed, necessarily tend towards the use of coercion to eliminate competing worldviews[14]. The Nazis, acting as their own moral authority, legalized the murder of all Jews, then intimidated, incarcerated, and even murdered every Gentile who disagreed with the Nazi policy. Because they took care of Jews in their home in Amsterdam, Betsy ten Boom was killed and her sister Corrie endured years in a Nazi concentration camp. This kind of thing has happened again and again under governments that abandon God’s instructions about right and wrong.
According to Dr. Randy Guliuzza, it is happening in American medicine now: On March 9, 2009, President Obama ordered that federal tax money be used to promote medical research through harvesting the stem cells of, and thus destroying human embryos. His rationale? To restore “scientific integrity.” That same year, Dr. Guliuzza commented on this in his article, “Consensus Science: The Rise Of A Scientific Elite”[15]. He explained that “‘scientific integrity’ would not mean keeping the scientific process from going awry, but keeping scientific outcomes in line with policy. How? By empowering an atheist scientific elite who will decree – without debate and by consensus opinion only – the scientific validity of all bioethical issues, not just the killing of embryos for research.”
The late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard once said, “Our [scientists’] ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’ with individual scientists as logical and interchangeable robots, is self-serving mythology.[16]” This, of course shows how important it is to start with the right source of truth before you develop your understanding of life and the rules by which life should be governed!
So we’ve looked at some of the results of letting men make the rules without reference to the God of the Bible. What is the result of accepting the God of the Bible as the standard of right and wrong?
1. The rules don’t change. They don’t evolve, and they can’t be explained away. This removes arbitrariness and injustice from ethics:
§ Mal. 3:6 “…I, Jehovah, do not change; therefore you… are not consumed.”
§ Num. 23:19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor is He the son of a man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”
§ James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.”
2. There is Blessing. When we do what our creator likes, we will find ourselves in step with the design of universe rather than fighting it, furthermore we will find ourselves in step with God Himself and enjoying His positive favor.
§ Deut 6:18 “Do what is right and good in the sight of Jehovah that it may be well with you, and that you may go in and possess the good land which Jehovah promised to your fathers.”
§ 1 Pet. 3:12 “For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears unto their supplication: But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
§ Psalm 1:1-3 “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers: But his delight is in the law of Jehovah, and on His law he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that bring forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also doth not wither. And whatever he does will prosper.”
3. It removes the fear of man. That makes over 6 billion people you don’t have to worry about what they think of you. The one true God is all that counts:
§ Matt. 10:28 “…don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
§ Prov. 29:25 “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever puts his trust in Jehovah shall be safe.”
§ 1 Sam. 12:20b “…do not turn aside from following Jehovah, but serve [Him] with all your heart”
4. God’s rules are just and fair. They alone bring true freedom.
§ Micah 6:8 “Man, He has shown you what is good and what Jehovah requires of you: but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”
§ Psalm 19:7-11 “The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul: The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart: The commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Jehovah is clean, enduring for ever: The ordinances of Jehovah are true, and righteous altogether… In keeping them there is great reward.”
§ “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Prov. 14:34)
There is a lot more ground to cover concerning ethics.
But to close for now, let me return to the opening illustration of the toddler in the kitchen. Just like that toddler who would make all kinds of foolish and harmful decisions on its own, so, mankind does not have the capacity to come up with an adequate system of right and wrong without the aid of the all-wise and loving God of the Bible.
§ This calls for trust in that God, whose name is Jesus to do what is right.
§ It also calls for submission to that God so that we willingly bow and call Jesus our Lord and Master.
In the mid 1600’s a man in Germany named Gastorius, become seriously ill. Samuel Rodigast was a Christian teacher in another town, but he loved Gastorius, so he wrote a poem and sent it to his dying friend, encouraging him to trust and submit to Christ. In the providence of God, Gastorius recovered from his illness and wrote music to Rodigast’s poem[17]. Let me close with the words of that hymn:
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er He doth; And follow where He guideth;
He is my God; though dark my road, He holds me that I shall not fall: Wherefore
to Him I leave it all.
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path: I know He will not leave me.
I take, content, what He hath sent; His hand can turn my griefs away, And
patiently I wait His day.
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: His loving thought attends me;
No poison can be in the cup That my Physician sends me.
My God is true; each morn anew I’ll trust His grace unending, My life to Him
commending.
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: He is my Friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm, Though many storms may gather,
Now I may know both joy and woe, Some day I shall see clearly That He hath
loved me dearly.
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart, I take it, all unshrinking.
My God is true; each morn anew Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart, and pain
and sorrow shall depart.
Whate’er
my God ordains is right: Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine, Yet I am not forsaken.
My Father’s care is round me there; He holds me that I shall not fall: And so
to Him I leave it all.
[1] An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p. 32.
[2] Noebel, Understanding the Times, p.109
[3] Zacharias, Light In The Shadow Of Jihad, pp. 18-20
[4] Zacharias, Light In The Shadow Of Jihad, pp. 20, 101.
[5] Schaeffer, How Should W Then Live? Episode 7, The Age of Non-Reason.
[6] http://www.pregnantpause.org/numbers/netheuth.htm
[7] Nobel, Understanding the Times, p.94
[8] Nobel, Understanding the Times, pp. 99, 102-103
[9] ibid., p.96
[10] www.radicalacademy.com/philnaturallaw.htm
[11] Nobel, Understanding the Times, p. 92
[12] ibid p.95
[13] Copied from Gordon H Clark’s article, “The Ethics of Abortion,” as published in The Trinity Foundation’s book, Against the World, p.101.
[14] Schaeffer, How Should W Then Live? Episode 10, The Final Choices.
[15] www.icr.org/article/4590
[16] Gould, S. J. 1994. In the Mind of the Beholder. Natural History. 103 (2): 15
[17] http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/h/a/whateerm.htm