"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..." (Isaiah 5:20, NIV).
"O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end" (Deut. 32:29, KJV).
"There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 16:18, KJV).
"In those days there was no king [standards] in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25, ESV).
In other words: Without God, all values are up for grabs! Everyone believes they are sincere and that sincerity is what matters; it is part of the equation, but not the whole solution, because you can be sincerely wrong--we need more than sincerity, we need to be absolutely right because there is an absolute standard and Judge that we are accountable to. Man claims his goals or ends are justified, but the means to them must also be just in God's eyes! The logical conclusion of academia indoctrinating students that we are evolved animals is that we tend to act like animals! As atheist Albert Camus said: "The absurd is sin without God." Consequently, there is no basis for a moral compass!
It is commonly assumed in academia that there is no absolute truth, and this proposition is widely accepted by students--but they confuse truth with belief: There is no absolute belief, but there is, nevertheless, absolute truth, that is objective and remains true whether believed or not, and doesn't matter who believes it or who doesn't. You just can't rule God out of the equation, like in eliminating variables in science or voting for some unobjectionable choice.
Since Socrates claimed that "the unexamined life is not worth living," we must search our own hearts and find ourselves, as it were, to know what we actually do believe in and in what we base our faith, because everyone believes in something and everyone worships something, even if they don't believe in God. Is there anything you will die for or stand up for and defend to the death, because of conviction and commitment?
Note that an opinion is something you hold, while convictions hold you and something you are willing to die for. If you don't stand up for right and wrong, do you think you'll stand up for Jesus? Edmund Burke, a philosopher, said that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. There is something everyone can do to neutralize evil in the world, even if it's being a prayer warrior!
Rome fell due to a collapse in morality, as perversion became the norm, and it has been wisely put that when a nation loses its gods it cannot survive--no matter the religion, religion is necessary for morality, for there is no need for it otherwise, when each man does what is right in his own eyes. All truth is God's truth and meets at the top (Augustine and Aquinas), and all religion does have an element of truth, and even false religion is but a distortion of the truth and not the opposite of it; however, "no lie is of the truth" (cf. 1 John 2:21)!
When we take God out of the reckoning man loses his moorings and anchor to weigh in on society and to set standards to live by--ethics and values only become what society approves of, and are a matter of consensus and public opinion; however, often the voice of the people is the voice of the devil (Vox Popoli, Vox Diaboli)!
Today we see an absence of faith in absolute moral principles, and this is called moral relativism. No truth equals no virtue, according to Socrates, and Postmodernism has made truth a short-term contract and posits that there is no Truth with a capital T. There is a reason why nihilism is the biggest fad or direction of today's young people, they really don't believe in anything! This is dangerous territory according to Dostoyevsky: "If there is no God, all things are permissible." They will tell you that something just doesn't work for them and this is the ultimate test, not whether it's true (classic pragmatism).
William James was the founder of pragmatism, which was further delineated by John Dewey, said that you cannot test the truth of an idea, but only its usefulness--what matters is whether it works. We have no basis of truth and principle without God and everything is up for grabs, as one says, that may be true for you, but not for me. Caveat: "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3, ESV).
The ideas of skepticism, cynicism (the most prized modern virtue), and humanism, ( or homo mensura, i.e., man being the measure of all things, originated by the Greeks of antiquity) are not new--there is nothing new under the sun because the devil isn't creative, but only keeps recycling old lies, as the father of lies. When you don't have some standard and put yourself as the standard, it is tantamount to making yourself God and becoming His judge by your personal standards, which are subjective and variable over time.
he very concept of justice and mercy must come from somewhere, and we all appeal to some standard to judge them by, just like Plato reasoned that God is the ultimate good. since there must exist something to judge goodness by. Beauty remains after the rose fades, and if we have these senses of right and wrong instinctively by nature, there must be a higher sense governing the universal moral order from which it originated:
In other words: Where did good faith, fair play in sports, unselfishness, courage in battle, integrity in personal dealings, altruism, generosity with money, trustworthiness, honesty in relationships, genuine joy and happiness, etc. come from, if not some absolute standard? How did we get these ideas? We are essentially appealing to some divine standard or norm of moral right and wrong (like when someone buds in line and we are offended or upset at the injustice). Appealing to a higher sense sounds a lot like appealing to God, a Higher Being, or Higher Power.
This is highly ontological in that we would have no idea of a God if there was none--where did mankind get the original thought, which is so universal? We see virtue as well as evil in every civilization, and this is collaborated by the biblical record of the war between the two and the ultimate triumph of good over evil--our sense of right and wrong demand there be a hell for wrongdoers, and if you've ever gotten angry at someone you may have wished he go there, even if you doubted God's existence!
Some believe in moral relativism because they conceive of a situation of being forced to decide between raping their daughter and witnessing her torture, but God doesn't hold us culpable for coerced choices but only freewill ones. God is the one that allowed it to happen for His purposes and we must not doubt His long term witness seen in light of eternity.
Denying absolute morality goes nowhere since everyone would agree, that is of sound mind, that rape and incest are always wrong under all circumstances without exception (which lays to rest the theory of situation ethics, whereby someone could justify himself). Hitler justified himself, and we don't want to absolve him of his "evil" in the process, by saying that his sincere belief that Jews were the problem and the "final solution" was the answer was justified.
There is no limit to the evil man is capable of and the only restraint is God's Holy Spirit, who will only stand for so much before judgment is inevitable. (Note: 2 Thess. 2:7 says, "... Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.") "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). The Bible says in Proverbs 14:34 that "sin is a reproach unto any people" and it doesn't matter whether they approve of it or not, God is the final judge and arbiter of how much He lets the man get away with (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah).
Man needs a sense of "ought" and, without God, this is problematic; ethics become nebulous. Man will always try to justify himself and his purposes and set standards he believes he can achieve: He will say that he wants the greatest good for the greatest number (i.e., utilitarianism) and believes the ends justify the means in achieving it; or he can believe that it just doesn't matter whether something is true, for who can determine this?
But what matters isn't whether it works and is practical or not; and this is the crux of the problem: Christianity isn't true because it works, because many untrue things work (e.g., yoga and TM); but it works because it's true--"Taste and see that the LORD is good" (cf. Psalm 34:8); find out for yourself! And where I'm coming from, truth matters and is worth knowing and defending. The New Morality of today is dangerous too, even though it sounds sincere, in saying that all that matters is the motive, such as being with the intention of love or helping someone when its none of their business. People think something is a responsible decision if they can justify it!
What is the answer? The world faced this issue at Nuremberg after WWII, when they were bringing the Nazi war criminals to justice because they claimed to be following orders and only doing what their society had approved of and they asserted sovereignty in determining this standard. The only way they found they could convict them was to appeal to some "natural law" or what may be called "transcendent law" that we all know by nature and are responsible to beware of, regardless of what the government says or tells us to do--would you rape your sister if the government said it was sanctioned in their new morality?
The Bible confirms this principle in Romans 2:15 because it says clearly and dogmatically that God's law is written in the hearts of man, and he has a conscience to convict him by the gift of God--we are not unconscionable animals but in God's image! We cannot act like animals observing the law of the jungle and believing in the survival of the fittest, but that the strong ought to help the weak as the humane thing to do--this is what we are meant to be (noble creatures that are in God's image).
The only solution to man's dilemma is to know the resurrection power of Christ, who is in the business of changing lives from the inside out or transforming them miraculously. What He's done for others, He can do for anyone who seeks Him, repents, and taps into this supernatural power; the trouble is that Secular Humanists deny the supernatural as the foundation of their worldview and won't even go there or give Christ the opportunity in opening the door. The doors of academia are basically closed with secular worldviews in control.
The Bible isn't just inspiring like Shakespeare is but can change lives and we don't need to defend it, no more than a caged lion, which can defend itself. POW's during WWII on the Malay peninsula had resorted to savage-like living, until they found a New Testament and decided to read it, with the result that it civilized them.
An anthropologist on Papua New Guinea asked what a native was reading while stirring his pot: He said he was reading a Bible and the scientist said that modern man has rejected that book and he's wasting his time--the answer was that he'd be in the pot, were it not for that book! When someone asks you to prove that the Bible can change lives, just tell them that they can prove it themselves by only sincerely, with an open mind, willing spirit, and needy heart, to read it for themselves, and the results will speak for themselves.
In summation: Only in Christianity do we see the synthesis of right motives and means unto right end results. Soli Deo Gloria!
