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Right and Wrong

Mark Dunagan
07/23/17 - Sunday Evening

Right and Wrong

Solomon noted long ago that God has “set eternity in their heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This means, among other things, that each individual is created in the image of God (James 3:9), and therefore has a hunger for something deeper than just material things and pleasures, thinks about life and his or her own death, contemplates what might be after death and has a basic sense of right and wrong. Other passages equally point out that mankind naturally acknowledges right and wrong.

• “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children” (Matthew 7:11). 
• “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:46).
• “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:14-15).
• Paul rebuked the Corinthians for fellowshipping a Christian who was currently in an immoral relationship, a relationship that even unbelievers knew was wrong (1 Corinthians 5:1).
• Paul appeals to this common and universal understanding of right and wrong when he says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1).

Obviously, a moral law in the universe does exist. This is demonstrated by the fact that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. Everyone knows certain basic principles. Or as someone called it, there are things that we cannot not know. C.S. Lewis observed, “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.  You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five” (Mere Christianity). To put it another way ,there is no country where murder is viewed as virtue and gratitude viewed as vice.

Right and Wrong and Our Reactions

When people claim there are no absolutes and that right and wrong are only relative, their claim is immediately seen as false, not only by the Bible (John 17:17; Galatians 5:19-21), but also by their own reactions. “Our reactions also indicate that relativism is ultimately unlivable. People may claim they are relativists, but they don’t want their spouses for example, to live like sexual relativists. They don’t want their spouses to be only relatively faithful. Nearly every male relativist expects his wife to live as if adultery were absolutely wrong… So Moral Law is not always apparent from our actions, as evidenced by the terrible things human beings do to one another. But it is brightly revealed by our reactions – what we do when we personally are treated unfairly. The Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us” (I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist, Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, pp. 174-175).

• People demonstrate they are indeed made in the image of God and there is indeed an absolute standard of truth by their reactions. When anyone is the victim of bad behavior he or she has no problem seeing the difference between right and wrong.
• So remember that our reaction to a particular practice reveals what we really think about it. Ronald Reagan once observed, “I’ve noticed all those in favor or abortion are already born”. All pro-abortionists would become pro-life immediately if they suddenly found themselves back in the womb. Their reaction to the possibility of being killed themselves, would remind them that abortion is really horrific.

Right and Wrong and Logic

The claim that there are no absolutes is a contradictory statement. For the statement is itself an absolute assertion. To the person who says, “There is no absolute truth”, we should respond, “Is it an absolute truth that there is no absolute truth?” To the person who asserts, “All is relative”, we can say “Is your claim that all is relative – relative?”

Right and Wrong and Our Excuses

“Did you ever notice that people make excuses for immoral behavior? Making excuses is a tacit admission that Moral Law exists. Why make excuses if no behavior is actually immoral?” (Geisler and Turek, p. 181).

Right and Wrong and Tolerance

We hear a lot about “tolerance” in our modern culture, yet consider the following:

• God calls upon us to do more than merely “tolerate”. We are called to go beyond tolerance and even to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), which includes praying for them and helping them out of their sin (Ephesians 5:11). “Tolerance is too weak. Tolerance says, hold your nose and put up with them. Love says, reach out and help them. Tolerating evil is unloving.” (Geisler and Turek, p. 181).
• “Moreover, the plea to be tolerant is a tacit admission that the behavior to be tolerated is wrong. Why? Because you don’t need to plead with people to tolerate good behavior, only bad” (Geisler and Turek, p. 181).  

Right and Wrong and Moral Dilemmas

“Consider the moral dilemma often used by university professors to get their students to believe in relativism: there are five people trying to survive on a life raft designed for only four. If one person isn’t thrown overboard, then everyone will die. Students labor over the dilemma, come to different conclusions, and then conclude their disagreement proves that morality must be relative. But the dilemma actually proves the opposite, that morality is absolute. How? Because there would be no dilemma if morality were relative. If morality were relative and there were no absolute right to life, you’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter what happens! Throw everyone overboard! Who cares? The very reason we struggle with this dilemma is because we know how valuable life is” (Geisler and Turek, p. 184).

Right, Wrong and Disagreements

Years ago I came across the idea that morality is like art. People may draw the lines in a few different places, but everyone draws the line somewhere. People may misapply morality in complicated situations, but do not get it wrong with the basics. Again, the very fact that people may seriously disagree, debate, and be passionately adamant about the rightness or wrongness of a practice is proof that absolute truth exists, for if truth does not exist and if we were not made in the image of God, then there should be no disagreement. We should just all walk away and say, “Who cares, it doesn’t matter”.

• Take for example, when atheists militantly attack the existence of God, the Bible, the Deity of Jesus or the validity of Christianity. They are revealing by their behavior that they really do believe in absolutes. A true atheist, one who is consistent with his or her belief system, would have to acknowledge that if God doesn’t exist, there are no absolutes, and therefore, there is nothing to argue for or against.
• Remember, every negation implies an affirmation. When unbelievers claim that certain things are “wrong”, they are equally affirming the existence of “right”, and thus an absolute standard of truth. Yet if God does not exist, then it’s all just opinion.
• “So by rebelling against the Moral Law, atheists have, ironically, undermined their grounds for rebelling against anything. In fact, without Moral Law, no one has any objective grounds for being for or against anything” (Geisler and Turek, p. 181).

Right and Wrong and “Rights”

Without God and Moral Law, wrongs do not exist, but neither do rights of anything kind. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”. Jefferson understood that rights can only exist when a Creator exists. All wise men acknowledge the same.

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net