The Moral Crisis

As a teacher of the Word, I have  been on a campaign of sorts in recent years to point out the Bible teaching that the Christian is to follow the Holy Spirit rather than the law of Moses. I have consequently been quick to point out that the common idea of the “nine commandments” as being the “moral law” of God is an artificial and extrabiblical designation that is only so designated to aid our understanding of the Christian’s relationship to the law of Moses. I have been careful to point out to my students the Apostle Paul’s warning: “I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down.” (Galatians 2:18)

Having said that, even I have to admit that there is in fact a moral law, and that this moral law comes from no one less than God Himself. It is in fact broader than the nine commandments and it includes a general concept of right versus wrong that is beneficial to, though not followed by, all mankind. It is what we have in mind when we say we must “love our neighbor as ourselves” (see Luke 10:25 ff.).

 

I was always pleasantly surprised during my career in Law Enforcement that an overwhelming majority of my fellow officers, including those who had little or no use for church, displayed what seemed to me to be a more highly developed sense of “right and wrong” than did my fellow Christians. I attributed this to the fact that they were dealing constantly with moral issues.

There is indeed a moral law in this universe. It does not necessarily reside in the conscience of everyone, but in fact exists outside of us. I believe it comes from our Heavenly Father Himself.

 

My friend Charles, who is himself an astute observer of the contemporary American scene recently said that if only our nation would accept the moral principles of God as expressed in the Bible they would not necessarily have to adopt a belief in God, or even a belief in the truth of the rest of the Bible, but the world’s moral crisis would be averted.

 

As I have said in the previous posting of about a year ago, (it’s time for me to weigh in, January 2013) much of our moral crisis stems from the fact that we have turned our back on the Judeo-Christian outer morality and turned within ourselves to an inner morality that is dragging our society down further and further as we go along. We have become like Israel in the period of the Judges in that “every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6), which is simply another way of saying “what’s in it for me!”

 

And it is not just that we are simply misguided, or have temporarily lost our way. As I said in a previous post, the moral attitudes that are dragging us down seem entrenched. They seem not just to be a change, but an outright reversal of the previously held Judeo-Christian ethic. If something is a traditional Christian value, it seems that our society automatically shuns it. That seems these days to be our default setting. Yet we seem to be shocked when we see school shootings, and human trafficking, substance abuse, ponzi schemes, and such things in our society! We sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).

I won’t say that the church is just as bad as the society around us, but surveys seem to indicated that we not only lack a biblical world view, but that we seem not to have much better success than the society at large in either understanding or implementing God’s moral values in our own lives.

I think we are sometimes intimidated by the society around us and we want to retreat into our own little cliques and we don’t engage that society around us. We have met with resistance and ridicule and have become discouraged. As Jesus said: “Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:12)”.

Yet we really need to engage our society. First, we need to recognize that we are different from the world around us and accept that we will meet with resistance when we seek to live for Christ. Peter had some advice for us:

 “It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you. For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. Respect everyone, and love your Christian brothers and sisters. Fear God, and respect the king.” 1 Peter 2:15-17 NLT

We desperately need also to get involved in the political process. We have the privilege of living in a country where we elect our leaders. Everyone’s vote counts the same. That is quite remarkable when you think about it! However, not only is there a dearth of Christians running for public office, but many of us don’t even vote!

We are often encouraged to pray for a righteous government, and we should, but a righteous government simply will not happen until the people in it are willing to act righteously. I cannot see this happening any other way than by Christians becoming involved in it.

We have a tendency to diminish the value and the power of prayer. Yet there is probably no more valuable and no more powerful thing that we can do. The society of Jesus’ day, into which the Christian church was born was among the most Godless and immoral that the world has ever known. Yet the New Testament continually admonishes us to pray for the society around us.  The government was not a popularly elected one that had the possibility of participation on all levels of society as ours does, yet we are continually admonished to pray for the government and its leaders.

Our moral crisis is not just a crisis in government, yet we cannot escape the observation that the government is taking a leadership role in the moral direction that our society is going. With a popularly elected leadership, we must also admit that we, the electorate are tolerating the direction that our leadership is taking. To pray and to participate in our society, and to resolve to reclaim it for God’s righteousness and the Holy Spirit’s leadership is the only way that our moral crisis can be averted.

Next time: the environmental crisis.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.