Without having a biblical worldview, how can I know right from wrong, good from evil, or moral from immoral? Universities teach ethics, and businesses provide seminars on the subject. Ethical and moral dilemmas abound in all walks of life. Life confronts us with difficult questions that demand thoughtful answers. How can we properly navigate a course that requires us to make judgments between good and evil, right and wrong, and true and false?
This article deals with the fourth worldview question in my series. Once we have wrestled with the first three worldview questions,
we come to the subject of this article.
If we conclude that we evolved by chance out of nothingness, we may legitimately deduce that there is no basis for making such a distinction, since such concepts are mere human inventions capable of being overturned or changed at will. We will likely adopt Aleister Crowley’s satanist creed, “Do what thou wilt.”
However, if we answer the first question by affirming that we were created by God, all morality must also originate in him. God is our only dependable reference.
Why Do We Even Care?
Most people, even those who deny God’s existence, believe in both good and evil. No one could watch the torture of a loved one and simply shrug his or her shoulders and walk away thinking, “Oh well, what can we expect in an amoral universe?” Injustice rankles even the most atheistic. Why do humans, even godless ones, care so much about justice, if we live in a randomly evolved world in an unsympathetic universe? It makes no sense.
But, if we believe that a just God created us in his image, we must conclude that he planted a love and desire for justice deep in the human heart.
Each of us also has an inner moral guide called the conscience, which tugs at our hearts when we do wrong, unless we are sociopaths or have “seared” it through regularly practicing evil. Is the conscience merely a social-psychological construct, as viewed by Freud, or did our Creator put it inside us?
Those of us who believe the Bible understand that the conscience is part of our being created in God’s image. We have an inborn desire to align with his desires that produces unease when we do not.
Anthropologists recognize that, despite cultural and religious differences, there is a commonality of understanding across the breadth of humanity of what is right and wrong,
All humanity came from the same stock and possess a common basic understanding of right and wrong.
Who Told You That?
In the beginning, God did not want Adam and Eve to know good and evil for themselves in order to protect them from the “Pandora’s Box” of woes associated with possessing such knowledge.
Satan, taking the form of a talking serpent, introduced something new into their pristine minds – doubt. He planted mistrust in Adam’s and Eve’s minds regarding the integrity and goodness of God. He indirectly accused the Creator of being less than forthcoming and withholding something good from them. Falling for the ruse, our first parents judged God to be a liar and chose to disobey his command in order to gain firsthand knowledge of good and evil and be like God in that respect. They embraced a lie, and the effects of sin entered their lives – guilt, shame, and fear.
They introduced sin, death, and destruction into all of God’s creation in the vain attempt to become self-directed moral agents. Satan fooled them into thinking that fulfilling own will is more satisfying than obedience to God.
They did receive a new understanding of evil, but it was not at all good. They began to hide from God instead of enjoying fellowship with him.
God immediately recognized what had happened.
Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” Genesis 3:9-11 (NLT)
Because Adam and Eve rejected God as the Source of truth and life and opened their hearts to knowledge from an evil source, they became aware of things that God, as a good parent, never intended for his children to know. Originally God intended that they simply do what he said, without needing to go beyond that. That way he could save them from the dark abyss of knowing evil firsthand.
Now as a result of Adam’s and Eve’s transgression, knowing right from wrong is a huge challenge for all of us.
How do we properly know things we were never meant to know?
By default we tend to lean to our own resources in the struggle to differentiate good from evil. Satan always is willing to provide his input, too, which invariably leads us away from God and robs us of joy. Is it even possible for us to get back on track?
Plugging into the Right Source Again
The Old Covenant Law clearly defined right and wrong with respect to morals, diet, sanitation, and religious rites. It pointed out how sinful we are without doing anything to help us keep the Law.
By exposing the depth and breadth of our sin problem, it revealed our need for a Savior.
Jesus came to introduce a new way of doing life called the New Covenant by which the Life Giver resides inside the believer, motivating and changing us from the inside out. (You can read more about this amazing new covenant by clicking here.)
All truth is God’s truth. Truth is part of God’s character and does not exist outside of him.
Jesus is the incarnation of truth (John 14:6), and unless we are reconnected to God through faith in him, we will always be confused and misled.
Through the new birth, Jesus, who is truth incarnate, comes to reside in us. Jesus taught us that God’s Word, the written Scriptures, are truth. This not surprising, since Jesus is the living Word of God, the “Word made flesh.” (John 1:14) All Scripture was breathed by God and written down by people. (2 Tim. 3:16) The Holy Spirit, who is also called the Spirit of truth, inspired the authors of the Bible to insure its purity. (John 16:13)
Therefore, we must rely upon Jesus, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, if we are to grow in the knowledge of what is true, right, and good.
The church is also called the pillar and support of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:15) The assembly of those who acknowledge that Christ is Lord and Savior and who have the Holy Spirit living inside them functioning as their guide, teacher, and revealer of truth, have been given the responsibility of guarding, preaching, and applying God’s truth to daily life.
Therefore, we also need to be part of a local church that reveres the Scripture.
Going it alone is a repeat of Adam’s and Eve’s initial mistake. God never meant for us to do life as “loners,” because we are very liable to veer off course into error.
Steps to Getting in Sync with God
Sin began with deception, produces deception, and ends in deception and death. Jesus called Satan the father of lies, in whom there is no truth. (John 8:44) The entire world is under the spell of deception woven by the evil one. (1 John 5:19)
Jesus came into this world as the incarnate Truth to reveal God’s true nature and undo Satan’s lies about God.
- Profess allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (John 14:6) The first step to knowing what is good, true, and right is to recognize who Jesus is and to surrender ourselves completely to him. On a personal level, this effectively undoes the rebellion against God that began in the garden.
- Submit to the Holy Spirit and God’s revealed truth in the Bible. We can trust the Spirit of God to teach us what the Bible means. (John 14:26) Unless we put God’s revealed truth at the top of our list as the most reliable source of truth, we cannot grow in the knowledge of what is true, right, and good. We also must commit ourselves to obeying God’s truth; otherwise, we will likely become religious hypocrites. (James 1:22)
- Connect with a local church that teaches and puts into practice what the Bible teaches. No church or person is perfect, but there must be the desire and commitment to pursue truth. Other believers in such a local church can help us stay on course during our discipleship journey.
If we do the above, we will be able to move forward in our quest for truth. However, no person or church or group is the sole possessor of truth. We must also pursue humility, realizing that we only have a portion of truth, not the whole, and that we need one another. Truth is found in a person named Jesus. Everything else points to him.
