“You shall not … You shall not … You shall not …” Ex 20:1-17
Lord, we praise you. You care for what is right because you are good.
Here in America, right now, many people are protesting the actions of Donald Trump. We’ve seen marches on Washington, protests in many cities, placards, a refusal to cooperate in Congress, even a riot at Cal Berkeley. Now I mention these actions not to argue for or against Trump but to illustrate a point. You see, all of these protests, in whatever form they take, occur because the protester believes something is wrong.
Yes, it’s true. Everybody believes in right and wrong. Republicans believe Democrats are wrong, and Democrats believe Republicans are wrong. We believe racists are wrong and that Hitler was wrong. You believe it is wrong for someone to cheat you or lie to you.
We are a moral people. I do not mean we are all good. I mean that we all have a sense of what good is like and we all know that we ought to be good. This sense is universal, for you will find it in communist China, Muslim Yemen, and Latin American Peru. You will find it in ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, and 20th century Africa. You do not have to believe in God to believe in an absolute right and wrong. The fact that there are laws and rules everywhere you go indicates that you are around people who think something is right and something wrong. Such laws may differ from place to place, but the differences tend to be more on the periphery than the essence of morality.
If you disagree, I challenge you to spin the globe and randomly pick a country. Then go there and steal something from someone’s home. See what the reaction would be. Repeat in a hundred cultures and observe the pattern. Or try taking a man’s wife for a week. Do her no harm. Merely keep her for a week so that her husband does not know where she is. Then return her and observe the reaction. Repeat in a hundred cultures and note the pattern. You will find that punishments will vary from place to place, that certain values will be emphasized more in one region and less in another, and that some cultures will be more amenable to special circumstances. But despite all these differences, you will find a universal condemnation of stealing and kidnapping. No one will tell you what a wonderful soul you must be for taking Abu’s only goat.
Even the atheist who touts the problem of evil as evidence that God does not exist must appeal to a sense of right and wrong which he understands and which he expects you to understand too. The problem of evil is not a problem if evil does not exist. Nor is it a problem to us if we have no moral sense.
We are moral creatures, and our sense of right and wrong contributes to our understanding of the world. It also helps us know what the Bible means when it says “God is good,” and it gives us a framework with which to understand some of the specific ethical commands of Scripture. We approach Scripture with an inherent ability to comprehend moral right and wrong. We are wired with a moral sense, and we can’t escape it. Have you ever thought why?
