A Christian Father's Guide to Biblical Morality (Biblical Worldview Course, Session 3)
Your mission: to lead your family in defending the Christian message. However, you have to be able to explain it before you can defend it. The Biblical Worldview Course is taking you through the seven biggest questions of life, and how the biblical worldview answers each one, and why its answers are superior to those of its competitors.
This is Session Three.
PART 1:
PART 2:
WHOLE SESSION (AUDIO):
Introduction
Before we get started, consider this question. Does God command things because they are good, or are things good because God commands them? How would you answer? This question, “Euthyphro’s Dilemma, was posed by Socrates to Euthyphro in Plato's Euthyphro Dialogue, and it's been discussed ever since. This is called a dilemma, because if God has to appeal to some standard above himself, then he is not really the highest moral authority. However, if things become good because God simply commands them, the. “good” would seem to be arbitrary. As we go, I intend to answer this question from the biblical worldview.
Morality: An Important Question
In this lesson we are talking about goodness; we are going to answer the second of our seven worldview questions. If you recall, those are:
What is real?
What is right?
What can we know for sure?
What does it mean to be human?
What is the meaning of life?
Where is everything headed?
Who is Jesus?
So now we are going to answer the question, "What is right?" from - biblical outlook. Why didn't I title this session, "What is Good?" "Goodness" is a broader subject that "rightness."
When you get into talking about goodness, there are different approaches to how to handle it. You could get into morality and ethics (which deal with thoughts, words and behavior), or aesthetics (dealing with beauty), or axiology (the study of values), or politics and law (what should be allowed).
Or we could go the route of the ancient philosophers Socrates and Plato and discuss "The Good" and tried to figure out what that means.
But I am approaching the issue from a Christian perspective, and I happen to believe that man's most pressing problem is sin, and his most urgent need to is be reconciled to God. We have disobeyed God—not some abstract concept of The Good, and we need to know how to get right with God. The question, "What is right," is more personal than "What is good?" It indicates that goodness comes with obligations, with responsibilities.
Goodness isn't just something we are to study and understand; it's something we must obey. And we haven't obeyed. And that needs to be addressed. So this is why, of all the different approaches we could have gone, in this particular course, we will focus primarily on morality.
Therefore, morality is at the heart of our question, "What is right." We are looking at a biblical worldview, which means the Holy Scriptures, God's written word, is the basis of our worldview. By asking "What is right," then, we are searching for what the Bible teaches about acceptable thought, speech and behavior.
This is a hugely important discussion that we really need to have. And I don't just say that because it seems like our culture is mostly completely lost on how to answer it. The fact is that this is an important question because in any culture, at any time, for every person, goodness matters. Even if we aren't aware of it much of the time, we human beings are moral creatures, and so many of our decisions have a moral quality to them. So, if we misdiagnose what is right, we will wind up wasting much of our lives.
Morality: A Universal Question
Morality is a universal question.
Every society wrestles with questions of right and wrong, and every individual has to grapple with moral choices each day.
If you and I were to stop and think about it, I am sure we could think of at least one important decision we've had to make today, and probably more this week. If we really tried hard, I would bet we could even explain some of the reasoning we used to decide one way vs. another way. If that reasoning process involved thoughts such as, "I ought to do this," or "I shouldn't do that," or "The Bible says not to do that," or "This will make me more the kind of man I want to be," then those decisions were moral ones.
How we handle moral decisions and use moral reasoning is going to be influenced by both internal and external factors, including the societies in which we live.
Every society has its own definition of what is morally acceptable, both for the society as a whole and for its individual members. These moral rules, or mores, are reflected both in formal laws that are written down, as well as in “laws” that are unwritten but which are expected nonetheless.
For example, one culture views children as sacred, while another says children should be neither seen nor heard.
As another example, one culture encourages a young man to personally avenge the murder of his brother, while another punishes such an action with jail time or even death.
The Universality of Morality Tells Us Something About Ourselves
The fact that every society has standards and systems of morality (which again deals with proper thoughts, words and actions) tells us something important about what it means to be human.
Now, skeptics will sometimes point to the differences between different societies' moral systems and argue that, because of this, morality itself must be subjective. After all, if morality were objective, then wouldn't every society eventually adopt nearly-identical systems?
On the face of it, they seem to have a good point, do they not? Consider that this is pretty much what happened with math, which we also believe to be objective (2 + 2 objectively equals 4, regardless of how vehemently woke Twitteristas may protest). So why didn't morality shake itself out the same way as math?
As Christians, we understand that rules about right and wrong—morality—are closer to the human heart than mathematical formulas. Because the heart is affected by sin, things that are closer to the heart are going to get twisted more, because more is at stake.
It makes sense that mores would vary from one society to the next, specifically because mores are bound up with good and evil, with righteousness and sin, and human beings are sinners.
This does not mean that our mathematics is completely unaffected by sin, but it is just a fact that how a man calculates of the area of a triangle will not affect his ability to carry out his heart's desires, in the same way that your moral calculation about stealing from his company will.
So then, every society deals with questions of morality. But this does not mean morality is subjective or fluid.
But it does tell us something about humanity. Instead, we may look at the universality of moral codes and mores, across societies and civilizations, however diverse, and conclude that mankind is a moral species, created with moral intuitions, just like the Bible says, for example in Romans 2:14-16:
So, when Gentiles, who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.
Man is undeniably a moral being, living in a world governed by moral law, and if we're going to understand ourselves and our world better, then we will need to get to the bottom of morality, starting at the beginning, with the standard of goodness.
God is the Standard of What It Means to Be Good
God is the standard of what it means to be good.
Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God."
Because God is the sovereign Lord, his good, pleasing and perfect will is the basis for life’s absolute moral standards.
So then, were Socrates and Plato right? Is morality ultimately arbitrary, rooted in the arbitrary will of God? No, because God's will is bound up with God's nature, and God's nature is good. Recall that Romans 12:2 says God's will is not only pleasing but also good and perfect. God's very nature is the definition and ultimate standard of goodness.
We talked about God's nature last session; I talked about how God's eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20) solves three major philosophical questions. Now, here we see God's divine nature swooping in again to solve Euthyphro's dilemma.
Plato Should Have Known This
What Socrates, Euthyphro, and Plato missed, was that God’s moral commands are not arbitrary, and neither does he need appeal to some standard of goodness beyond himself. Again, God's very nature is the definition of goodness. In fact, Jesus, the very Son of God Himself, said that "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18).
God is so good, that to love God is to love the Good. In fact, did Jesus not say that the greatest command in the Torah was to, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37)? So according to the Son of God, the height of morality, the greatest pursuit of goodness, is to love God. That’s how good God is. To be moral is to love the good, which is to love God.
Plato talked a lot about The Good, but he missed, foolishly, that there is no Good without the true God. Of course, if Plato had understood this, then he never would have written about Euthyphro's Dilemma, which has now been debunked.
Gods' Moral Commands Reflect His Own Goodness
God's will is the basis for morality.
Good is not a mere abstract concept. God is Good. God is magnificent, glorious and eminently praiseworthy. God’s goodness was reflected in his creation as he originally created it (Genesis 1:31). It is apparent to us that the world around us is fallen; we recognize that things are not as they ought to be, which also should direct our attention to God's perfect goodness and plan.
God's perfect goodness and plan are reflected in the commands He gives us. So when God issues commands, he says that his creatures ought to live by his glorious standard. He says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48), and, "You shall be holy, because I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16).
God loves us, and He commands us to love others, with His love as our standard (Matthew 22:39, John 13:34-35).
To summarize this section, then, God's nature is the standard of goodness, and God's will is the basis for morality. And to love God is to love goodness.
The moral life is one that is lived in pursuit of God, in obedience to God's will, motivated by the love of God.
How Can We Test The Morality of Something?
Now, we've defined goodness and morality, but what about where the rubber meets the road in everyday life?
How can we judge whether a thought, word or deed is right or wrong?
We begin by restating that God is the standard of morality and goodness. Then, we can say that moral goodness is a quality that a thought, word or deed has in proportion to how similar it is to God's perfect, morally good nature, commands, and actions.
It would not make sense to talk about how tall a building was, unless you understood that tallness is a measurement of how far the top of something is from the ground (or at least, if you will from its bottom). However, once you understand that, you can say the Sears Tower is 1,454 feet tall, and that statement is meaningful.
In the same way, it does not make sense to talk about how moral an action was, unless you understood that moral goodness is a measurement of how closely a thought, word or deed accords with God's perfect, morally good nature, will, and actions.
We can therefore judge morality by checking it according to the standard of God. And we learn about God's nature, nature, will and actions in the Bible.
So we test the morality of a thought, word or action—whether it is right or wrong—by God's word. What has He commanded in Scripture? What examples has He given us?
N.B. If you're a Christian, then you also have the Holy Spirit of God, who helps you reason through these questions, as you search the Scriptures for answers. He has also given you the church, filled with other believers who can help guide you. It's important to realize, however, that the counsel of the Holy Spirit will never contradict Scripture. In the same way, good and godly counsel from other believers, if it is good and godly, will also never contradict Scripture. God is true, and the truth cannot contradict itself.
Questions of Morality Have Eternal Importance
Let's discuss how morality is directly relevant to eternal life.
It can be tempting to think of philosophical talk of morality and theological talk of atonement as esoteric things with no direct relevance to life. However, this is far from true.
If God is the standard of morality (and He is), and if only God is good (and only He is), then that puts to shame our own human efforts to earn goodness. We do not recognize how clear and distinct the boundary is between good and evil. It is common today to say that things aren't really black and white, but rather various shades of gray. However, the Bible just does not leave us this kind of wiggle room.
This also clarifies for us why even a single sin is enough to earn God's wrath and Hell. There is an infinite difference between a life of perfect moral purity, which is what God has, and what He requires, and a life marred by sin—even a single sin. A single drop of arsenic ruins the glass of water. A single sin ruins the man.
Of course, none of us is guilty of just one sin. Apart from God, man longs for goodness (because we are made in the image of God) but both (a) twists that longing toward false goods, and (b) picks and chooses which good things to pursue while neglecting others, especially God Himself.
Our first father, Adam, hid from God after he sinned (Genesis 3:10), and we his sons do the same thing, suppressing the truth about God in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). We may seek to soothe our burning itch for goodness through religion, or relationships, or through the conscience-deadening influence of substances, but all this only inevitably exacerbates our condition. The life lived in pursuit of goodness via any means other than reconciliation to God through Jesus Christ is futile, a chasing after the wind (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
Now we can begin to realize the magnitude of what Jesus did when He bore all the sins of all His people on the cross. In His death, Jesus brought together both our desire for goodness and our hatred of God. On our behalf he fulfilled God's requirement for moral perfection and paid for our failure to meet it. He was "pierced because of our rebellion" (Isaiah 53:5), in order to reconcile us to God. He won a magnificent victory over sin when He rose from the dead three days later.
This side of eternity, no human being will ever be perfectly moral. Yet the Bible says those who trust in Jesus will have moral perfection credited to their accounts (Romans 4:5). Considering the chasm between God's morality and our immorality, this is not a bad deal. Yes, that is the understatement of a lifetime. Reconciliation to God is man's most pressing need. So the message of how to get that is of the utmost relevance to life!
Only the True God Can Be the Standard of Morality
Only the Triune God, revealed in Scripture, could be the basis for morality.
We won't exhaustively prove this point right now—this is not an apologetics course but a worldview course—but we can look at a couple alternatives to the biblical position.
I have already acknowledged that various cultures have different moral systems, and I have attempted to explain why this does not negate the reality behind those moral systems, which is the perfectly good nature of God.
What About Moral Relativism?
Could it be that, as some argue, there is no objective morality? Perhaps morality is subjective—varying from person to person or from culture to culture? This boils down to there being no morality at all.
If morality were purely cultural, then by definition it would always be wrong to challenge one's culture. MLK, Harriet Tubman, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are now immoral. Further, it would always be immoral to challenge someone else's culture.
John Frame, a theologian, asks this question, “How do you adjudicate between two different moral frameworks that sit before you, that each believe its morality is superior to the other person’s?” If morality were purely culturally defined, then Ronald Reagan (who challenged the USSR) and the brave folks who won WWII against the Axis powers would be, by this definition, immoral!
Does the moral relativist really want to argue that might by definition makes right? Such a view could be refuted by passing a referendum to execute everyone who believes it, and then pronouncing another view to be true. Does this sound absurd? That's because culturally-based moral relativism isn't true, and we all know it.
If, on the other hand, morality were purely individual, then we really would not be able to differentiate morality from personal preference. And if you prefer one thing, and I prefer another, then, in the words of the philosopher, "So what?"
Individually-based moral relativism makes supposed moral rules exactly as binding as a person's favorite flavor of ice cream.
What About Matter… or Another God?
Alright then, Smarty-Pants, I can hear you saying, Why does it have to be your worldview that has the only basis for true morality? Why couldn't materialism, some other God, or even many gods ground morality? I am so glad you asked.
The answer becomes clear when you consider what moral rules are. What are they like? What are their attributes?
Moral laws are not made of matter—they are immaterial. So materialism is out of the question.
So what about another conception of God?
That won't fly either. Moral rules are absolute and universal—murder is wrong, no exceptions, always and everywhere. So the non-absolute, capricious gods of the pagan religions are out.
They are knowable to us. Moral laws are propositions, and yet they seem to be known instinctually. are given to us. For example, no one had to tell you, "It's wrong for someone to steal from you," or "Don't let someone harm your loved one." These are propositions that came "pre-loaded" in your conscience. So any concept of God that cannot speak is out.
Finally, morality is deeply interpersonal. So much of it has to do with how we treat others. So it wouldn't make sense that the God behind morality wouldn't have had experience with interpersonal relationships.
Is there a worldview, the God of which meets all these criteria for grounding morality? Is there a God who is not made of matter, who is absolutely good, always and everywhere, who is knowable to us, speaks to us and reveals His will to us? Now, wait a minute, this all sounds like the God of the Bible, but what about that whole "interpersonal" aspect? Ah, yes, the Trinity. God's very nature is Triune. The three divine Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have been in perfect communion with one another literally forever. Needless to say, they treat one another perfectly morally, with dignity, love, and fairness.
So when Jesus said that the second greatest commandment in the Torah was to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 28:39), He knew what He was talking about. He was saying, "Be like God."
There is no other conception of God in any religion in which God is Triune, as revealed by the Bible.
To summarize the point: when you look at the attributes that moral rules have, and you discern what kind of God or reality could ground them (in other words, you try to match a metaphysics with your morality), you end up coming right back to the doorstep of the biblical worldview. God is inevitable.
Conclusion
The question "What is right?" is an important one that ultimately finds its answer in God. It is directly relevant to life, because of the Gospel, and knowing its answer allows us to test the morality of any thought, word or action.
God is the only one who is good, and while the subject of morality is addressed by every society, only societies that acknowledge the Lord will truly be able to answer it. By God's Spirit, may we be the ones to bring that answer to them.