I wondered what I could talk about this month when blogging and I have collected some of my thoughts. After the first week of getting acquainted with our new ministry which also included visiting the genocide museum and a memorial, I had to talk about something very specific that I had on my mind even before coming to Rwanda. It is about the question of morals and where do they come from. The big question of “Sez who” is currently heavy on my mind. Most of what I am about to say is influenced by CS Lewis and also Tim Keller in his book Reason for God. I have my own views about this but they are shaped by both of these sources. After looking into the topic of genocide, I could no longer ignore this topic.
In April of 1994 Rwanda became a blood-soaked hell almost overnight. Many unspeakable atrocities were committed for weeks and no one was safe. I have had teachers and Professors who have referenced this event but no one went in depth about the inner workings of the ethnic cleansing and what factors were at play. Well, this time I got to see the inside of it up close and personal when I visited the museum and a memorial. The impact of seeing pictures of real faces of real people who needlessly had their lives snuffed out in violent ways is something that takes time to fully process. It was an overload of information that I never heard before.
As people who follow Jesus, we are acquainted with the negative parts of the nature of man and we know that man is a depraved creature and hopeless outside of faith in Christ. This is Original Sin and its power. Many people love to cling to an optimistic belief that man is inherently good and that we will continue to progress beyond everything negative by our own will. This will eventually leave them disappointed and in a lot of despair when they see the effects of the thing they don’t believe in. It is a heavily mistaken view to have in this world.
You have to wonder what is in man that causes him to hack infants to pieces with machetes. As Christians we know where this comes from but the secular person does not have a clear, concrete answer. This calls for us to take a hard look into today’s culture of subjective morality and truth because this is terrible ground to stand on in matters of right and wrong. If one looks into evolutionary biology and nature, there could be an answer there because of survival of the fittest. There is no place for the weak in nature because they are devoured by the strong. However, not even nature is capable of producing the same cruelty that fallen man can inflict. Even if the problem of evil can be explained by nature this does not explain why something inside us tells us that oppression of the weak is wrong. Nature has no problem with oppression of the weak but somehow we do. Is there something wrong with our conscience? Where did the standard of right and wrong come from?
In Reason for God Timothy Keller examines an essay written by Arthur Leff on morals. This is what Keller says about it. “If there is no God, then there is no way to say any one action is “moral” and another “immoral” but only “I like this.” If that is the case, who gets the right to put their subjective, arbitrary moral feelings into law? You may say “the majority has the right to make the law,” but do you mean that the majority has the right to vote to exterminate a minority? If you say “No, that is wrong,” then you are right back to square one. “who sez” that the majority has a moral obligation not the kill the minority? Why should your views prevail over the will of the majority? The fact is, says Leff, “If there is no God, then all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person’s feelings and values are judged.” At the end of the essay written by Leff he says something rather startling. “As things are now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless: napalming babies is bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each other is depraved . . . There is such a thing as evil. All together now: Sez who? God help us.”
If morality is only relative and good and evil are just a matter of perspective, who then, gets to say that killing infants and sending people to the gas chamber is wrong. But yet there is something inside people (at least in western culture) that says this is wrong. Why do we feel this way? To me, secular people are always tossed around about this issue. As people who don’t believe in a God and absolute morality, they don’t really have an answer for the real nature of humanity. I think that they don’t want to look into man’s nature too deeply because they might find that they too could be on the side of the oppressor and no one is immune. The hard truth is this. Because everyone outside of Christ is a slave to their sin nature, no one is neutral or immune from its effects.
People today have to confront this realization. They cannot just hover around the fence of morality. If they really probe the question of morals it will either lead them to one of two paths. One being that nothing is either wrong of right and our inner conscience is just a contradiction of nature. The other being that there is a God who is the source of what is good and its standard as well. He is light and there is no darkness in him at all. He gets to define morality and anyone who comes to faith in his son has solid ground to be free from the stormy sea of moral conflict.
