The Absolute for Meaning

I sat across a restaurant table from a highly educated former agnostic who had just crossed the border into full belief. Remembering my own conversion, I assumed that, like most of us, this man decided to become a Christian because of the beauty of creation or the promise of heaven or perhaps the threat of judgment. But he insisted that it was none of these things.

“The thing that drew me to God,” he explained, “was the sense of meaning and stability that having a God brings to the universe. It was something I had longed for all my life. I appreciate all the personal advantages that come with belief in God. But I would have believed in spite of the promise of heaven or the threat of hell; I can see that without God, the universe has no possible meaning. Without God I was adrift in a sea of ‘whys’ that could not be answered.”

The Nature of God

Why do you feel a stab of conscience when you lie to your spouse, parent, child or boss? Because deceit and distrust erode relationships, while honesty and truthfulness bond people together with trust. You feel good about telling the truth and uncomfortable about lying, because truth reflects the nature of God, after whose nature the rules for right are patterned. Truthfulness is loving because it protects you from the pain of damaged relationships that results from duplicity and distrust.

Morality defines the properly functioning person and keeps him or her from clashing with neighbors, thus enabling relationships to flourish. God desires that we live not in lonely isolation but in joyful, satisfying relationships. Morality flows to us from God’s own nature as our guide to maintaining and nurturing these relationships.

Morality from God

Why would God burden us with a morality that doesn’t seem to fit us and so rudely intrudes on our wants and urges? The short answer is relationships. Morality keeps us fit for relationships and guides us in interpersonal conduct. The absolutes of right and wrong provide a template to guide you in loving your neighbor and relating to God. Morality is all about how to love effectively.

Why is it right to stop and help stranded motorists but wrong to veer over and run them down? The moral code dictates that it is right to stop, because that code came from God and reflects His nature. His nature is love, and it is right to render help because such an act is the loving thing to do. The loving helpfulness that morality encourages is healthy for society. The objective standard is the ancient but timeless Golden Rule: “Do for others as you would like them to do for you.”

The True Meaning of Morality

All of the unbelievers’ explanations for morality overlook the same essential difficulty: Morality simply does not align well with human nature. If morality were an instinct that evolved with the human race, right behavior would be as natural for us as it is for salmon to swim upstream to spawn and for geese to fly south for the winter. But it is neither natural nor easy for us to do what we call right. We find ourselves in continual conflict with morality, yet it’s like a catchy tune we keep on humming long after we’re sick of hearing it.

The choice comes down to only two real possibilities: Either morality came from God, or it is an inexplicable illusion with no meaning. Of those two options, it is totally rational to accept the idea that God is the absolute for morality and that He wired us with this moral sense in order to keep our natural urges from leading us to disaster.

The Instinct Theory of Morality

Some unbelievers assert that the universal moral code (see blog #22, The Universal Nature of Morality) is instinctual. According to the instinct theory, we humans have a concept of right and wrong because nature gave it to us. The moral urges we all experience are simply nature’s spurring us toward self-preserving behavior.

But we often have conflicting urges. For example, the urge to sacrifice personally for the sake of others runs utterly against the urge of self-preservation, yet it is considered the highest of virtues by unbelievers and believers alike. Then along comes another mysterious urge that we call conscience. It tells us not to do that thing we really want to do, simply because it isn’t right to do it.

If all urges come from nature, the standard that judges between them cannot also be from nature. Morality is not natural. It is too much at odds with our natural desires to share kinship with them. Morality obviously is an intruder from somewhere outside nature.

What is “Right”?

The second flaw of the Social Contract theory of morality (see blogs #31 thru #33) is this: A disintegrating society adrift with no bedrock of morality will be at the mercy of those in power, who, with no true guide to right and wrong, will impose their own will on the rest. Right will be solely what those who wield the power want it to be. When people ignore traditional morality and seize power to serve their own ends, the results can be hideous. Adolph Hitler’s demonic rule over Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s is a sobering example.

We see something similar happening in America today as the concept of an overarching, true morality begins to crumble. In the name of personal freedom, those in power have legislated the right to kill the unborn simply because having a child would inconvenience the lifestyle of the parents.

The strong victimizing the weak is the ultimate result when society thinks it can legislate morality to fit its own whims. But when the power shifts again, today’s benefactor may be tomorrow’s victim.

I Pledge Allegiance to God or Me

The refusal to recognize God as the absolute authority behind right and wrong will eventually cause society to destroy itself. We can see the beginnings of such disintegration in the United States as the recognition of God is increasingly pushed out of public life. The Declaration of Independence explicitly recognized God as the absolute behind law when it proposed separation from England in order to assume “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

With no allegiance to God, people will increasingly chip away at the restriction of law in order to gain more and more personal freedom to follow their wants and urges. The ability of law to restrain these urges will wear down, and individuals will come to have little or no allegiance to society as a whole. All their attention will be focused on themselves—their own rights, wants, and pleasures. Without the pressure of a true and absolute morality, people will lose all motivation to sacrifice personal satisfaction for duty to others.

The Morality of the Minority

The first flaw of the Social Contract theory of morality (see previous blog) is this: If morality is simply what the majority of society legislates and nothing more, why should the minority follow it? We can find no rational basis for asking the minority to accept the social contract—to give up its wants and bend to the will of the majority.

As a member of the minority, I may follow the will of the majority as long as I find it convenient. I may follow it generally because I realize the value of it. I may even sacrifice some of my personal wants to preserve social stability, because I see that I benefit in the long run. But I will follow the law only to the extent that it does benefit me or up to the limits the government can enforce.

People who believe law to be without absolute moral authority will not take obedience seriously. They will obey it only when it is personally advantageous or when the risk of getting caught is too great. (To be continued).

The Social Contract Theory of Morality

Some unbelievers may say: “We agree that life in society would be disastrous without laws. We need laws to put reasonable limits on the potentially intrusive behavior of others so we can get on with the business of doing our own thing. But these laws need not be based on the authority of God or an external absolute. Law works just fine as a social contract among individuals in society. We all mutually agree to give up a little freedom so that all can enjoy a reasonable amount of freedom. We determine our morality not by some overarching absolute standard of right and wrong but by the consensus of society. By common agreement, everyone accepts the morality expressed by the will of the majority.” This theory, the social contract theory, contains two flaws, both deadly. (To be continued).

When Belief in God Dies

If there is no God to give mankind a hope for life after death, you may as well ignore any notions of rightness that self-appointed moralists shove at you and get on with the business of doing only what you want. Let’s be up front and admit it: we all hide within us an impulse to ignore the expectations of the law and do just what we want to do. But it won’t work.

When we remove the restriction of law, we also remove its protection. Without law we can never expect to be treated fairly or safely because society’s capacity to protect life and property evaporates. Families disintegrate. Murder, rape, and theft become rampant. Order decays into anarchy, and life must be lived in the unstable, uncertain environment of the lawless jungle.

When belief in God wanes and dies, society loses its stable underpinnings and spins downward into a maelstrom of fragmented individualism with each person out for his or her own gain and each of us the potential victim of all the others.