Part Seven: Morality

I was at the gym the other day with a buddy and I noticed this extremely attractive female, so I began carrying on about her and how I would like to hook up with her.  Then my buddy had the nerve to tell me that’s wrong.

So I told him, what’s true for him isn’t necessarily true for me and what’s wrong for him isn’t necessarily wrong for me.  So he says, “The bible says, ‘do not covet your neighbor’s wife.’”  I told him that’s in the Old Testament and the Old Testament also says do not wear clothing woven of two different materials so what about your cotton polyester shirt?  Besides, if you want to bring God into this, God made me this way; I like looking at attractive women, so if you have trouble with me doing that, take it up with God because I was born this way.

He said, okay, well, just because you’re wired a certain way and have certain preferences doesn’t exempt you from obeying God or make your preferences okay to carry out.  Some people are talkers and wired to talk a lot but that doesn’t make it okay for them to slander or gossip.  Besides, if you have a problem with the OT, then we will go to the NT.  In the Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5, Jesus clearly condemns lust and says that if anyone looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Know what I told him?  Know what else Jesus says in the SOM?  Do not judge.

Shut him DOWN!  Can’t really say anything to that, can ya?

Now, that didn’t really happen, but it is certainly representative of the way conversations about morality can go.

As you have probably gathered, we are resuming our series on developing a biblical worldview, but I’m not going to do a lengthy recap, we are going to jump right into morality.

Morality pertains to right conduct, defining and living out what is right and avoiding what is wrong.  It answers the question: what is one’s moral code?

Growing up I didn’t go to church and I didn’t read the Bible so I didn’t have a Biblical worldview on morality, but I did have a moral code.  Whether from my parents, or my teachers, or my coaches, or television, I was taught that there is right and there is wrong.

• I learned from my teachers that cheating on a test is wrong.


• I learned from the TV show COPS that domestic abuse is wrong, that grand theft auto is wrong.


• I learned from my parents that lying is wrong.

Everyone seems to have a moral code and define certain actions as right and wrong.

While many people will agree that the things I mentioned above are wrong there are other things about which they might disagree.  One’s moral code is part of their paradigm or worldview.  Many people’s will view intersect in these basic areas, there are other areas in which they will be inconsistent, where they will differ.

Admittedly, morality isn’t always black and white.

But this morning, we are going to try to bring some consistency to our understanding of morality, and clarify our basis for a moral code.  In short, morality is defined by God.

If there is a God who created all things, he gets to define what is good and evil, what is right and wrong.

God reveals his will through his chosen messengers, whose words are recorded in the Scriptures.

We can’t simply say, “The Bible says such and such.”  It is a little more complicated than that and requires an understanding of proper hermeneutics or interpretive principles.  Nonetheless, The Bible is our source for understanding right and wrong according to the God who created all things.

MORALITY & WORLDVIEW

How does morality intersect with one’s worldview?  Consider, for example, the Naturalist or Materialist worldview (atheism).  Recall our introductory message in this series in which I stated for the materialist, what matters is matter.  According to that worldview, there is no God and we as humans, are not the pinnacle of God’s creation, created in his image to be his image-bearers, given dominion over animals, rather, we are all simply the result of evolution; we are essentially animals.

How do animals operate?  Is it not survival of the fittest?  Take what you want.  How does the mating process work?  Do they first discuss a covenant by which they will vow faithfulness until death do they part?

It is difficult to see how morality fits into the naturalist worldview.  Naturalism has a focus on the material world as defined by science to the exclusion of theology and religion.  There is no God and thus, science provides any explanation for the why and how.

The laws of nature may tell us why something is the way it is or why something will be in a certain state given the proper conditions, but this is different from explaining how things should be.  And moral claims are statements about how things should be.  The laws of nature vs the laws of morality are the difference between is and ought.  Morality answers the question of what one ought to do, what should we do and not do.

It is difficult to understand how naturalists (atheists) would propose that one should do certain things or stop doing others.  Because of their assertion that human beings are comprised of matter alone, the question becomes “can merely material beings have moral characteristics?”  Would anyone claim moral attributes for raw matter?  If a single atom is not a moral entity, how is a collection of atoms to be or become a moral entity, even if that collection of atoms happens to be a human being?  How do beings consisting of nonmoral matter aspire to moral goals?

RICHARD DAWKINS is a brilliant outspoken atheist.

In River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life(P 133), he says, “In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Catch that?  According to the materialistic or naturalistic worldview, there is no evil, no good.  No sense of ought, no right or wrong.   So nothing can be bad, right?

Apparently, Dawkins recently made some waves in the Twitter world, when he tweeted, “X is bad. Y is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of X, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.”

How is something bad based on an atheistic naturalistic worldview (according to his own words)?

He goes on to say: “Mild pedophilia is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think.”

But wait a minute.  Who ultimately says?  Who says that pedophilia is bad in any capacity?  Was it those original primordial atoms that make us what we are today?

Dawkins went on to write:

“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

Gary DeMar wrote an article in which he deals with some of Dawkins’ claims.  DeMar points out the following: But in our long distant past, rape was a way of life. We are the result of “good rapes,” genetically speaking, if evolution is true and scientifically sacrosanct.

If animal behavior is a template for human behavior, then why can’t a case be made for rape by human animals? As hard as it might be to imagine, the connection has been made.

Randy Thornhill, a biologist who teaches at the University of New Mexico, and Craig T. Palmer, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia, attempt to demonstrate in their book A Natural History of Rape[2] that evolutionary principles explain rape as a “genetically developed strategy sustained over generations of human life because it is a kind of sexual selection — a successful reproductive strategy.”

Again, how do animals procreate?  Aren’t we just animals?  Isn’t rape, therefore, okay?

Crowd participation.  Let me ask you: Do you think pedophilia is wrong?  Do you think rape is wrong?  Why?  On what grounds?

Is it because you don’t like it?  If not, why not?  What if the rapist likes rape?  Who are you to tell him what he likes is wrong?

Cody and I were discussing this and he pointed out Ravi Zecharias’ argument on such matters.

You know what’s key to this? Dawkins is just being consistent to HIS worldview. The funny thing about morality is that it belongs exclusively to the Christian worldview. Any secular humanist, moral relativist, atheist, or the like must borrow from the Christian worldview in their attempt to disprove the existence of God – and (like Dawkins) any honest atheist must admit that his worldview does not allow for belief in things such as good or evil.

We hear it all the time. They say, “how could there be a God if there is so much evil in the world?”

Granted, this is one of the hardest questions to answer. How can we account for all the suffering and injustice that appears to go unaccounted for day after day?

But, the ques