Some of us like to talk and discus and to think carefully. I’d like to invite you to think with me. Not watered down, nothings, but pungent things. Vibrant things about God and human behavior.

I’ll begin in one way and end simplistic. The gospel part will not be interesting to people who don’t see a need for it. And the rest will be fodder for flirtatious bantering if you disagree. So I begin.

Was what Hitler did right or wrong? We should, almost all of us, say that what he did to the Jews was wrong. But where does this sense of right or wrong come from? How many of us really care about what is just or unjust? Better still, where does our natural sense of justice come from?

It is said that the athiest, the evil doer, the criminal has no standard of righteousness. They believe whatever they’ve learned, observed, or experienced. Still, we find fault. But each of us has learned, believed, and experienced different things. So people think differently, act differently, and believe differently. Who can be right? Who can know what is true? If the grounds for what we believe is decided by ourselves, then aren’t we all gods ourselves? Or are we to decide right and wrong by consensus? Look what happened in the book, Lord of the Flies, consensus morphed into evil. Then when do we say evil is unjust? Well, you see, if there are no standards, no absolutes, no God, then life is meaningless. We should then live as we please, for no other purpose than to judge others and get accolades from those who believed likewise.

How fortunate that Americans get to vote differently on subjects we determine to be right. But are not we therefore telling God, it doesn’t matter what you think or want? The liberal will say, “I want to kill my baby, I created it!”Or the extremist Nazi will say, “blond people are of the master race.” What’s the difference? Who is right if the standard is not from God? So there must be a higher law. A “natural law” given us all by God. Thomas Aquinas thought this through many centuries ago. C.S Lewis also talked about it in his book Mere Christianity.

You don’t have to be a Christian to “know” right and wrong. This is true because we all know what is right or wrong. It is the superficiality of our beliefs that confuse us. For example, between cultures, people dress differently, but all cultures have a sense of modesty. Modesty is a natural law of God. Just like killing unborn babies and eugenics are naturally wrong. Get it? It’s shallow to think of only one’s body and not the life of a child. Something compels us to do right, and something compels us to do wrong. But these are not duel realities, something Lewis calls duelism. Satan is not equal to God, and there is this huge battle going on in the heavens to settle the matter. Evil is not its own thing. Evil is more like a perversion of what is good. Goodness means it naturally comports or agrees with some supreme standard of righteousness or truth. We judge evil by the standard of good. Lewis says, “This proves good is more powerful than evil.”

If one’s heart is not hardened by their compulsions, they will know the difference between right and wrong. This conscience, which many refer to, is not an evolved biological, chemical, or sociological reaction. Sam Harris, the renowned atheist writes in his book, The Moral Landscape, that science can determine human values. Implying science can be used to change morals. That’s pretty scary stuff if you ask me.

I believe (I said that for you, Tim), goodness comes from our being created in God’s image. It is the power behind our conscience. Simply put, when we break or rebel against a natural divine truth, our moral conscience, we know it! This is God speaking to the man or woman who has never been to church. The one who has never heard the gospel. It is even the native in a lost tribe that has never been modernized, indoctrinated, or cultured. They know the natural laws of our creator, even when they believe in idols of stone.

When one ultimately realizes where goodness comes from, their hearts are the most open to the Gospel. It is in this truth that they realize and acknowledge,”I have sinned!” This is when they must decide between right and wrong, good and evil. Will they follow the creator of these inner moral laws or reject them and do what is right in their own eyes? If they do not do what is right, they, in effect, break their relationship with the power behind the law itself. This is the time to repent! But how? We, like they, can not always do what is right! True! This is why Jesus came. He came to forgive the sins of all mankind, pay the penalty, restore us to himself, and grant us eternal life if only we have the faith to believe it.

Aslan, the great lion is described in the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe as good and a little frightening. But he is also unquestionably benevolent and kind. He is compassionate, forgiving, and dies for the wayward Edmund. We know this is true not because Lewis wrote it, but because it is true. The allegory works when we the presupposition is true; if an utterance presupposes something is false, the utterance itself can’t be true or false. This is why atheism makes no sense. It’s just a load of weird or nonsensical utterances based on a false premise. That God does not exist.

I’ll end here at the mosh pit of philosophy. I would hate for anyone to get hurt. But read it again if you have time. I believe I had something “good” to say.

Bob