Evidence for God in Morality Archives

February 2, 2020January 29, 2020

Message of the Superbowl

Let me ask you to consider the message of the Superbowl to the world. Did you ever add up how much money is, directly and indirectly, involved in the Superbowl? Add the salaries of the players, the cost of security, and the physical construction of the stadium improvements made just for the Superbowl. There is also the cost of television, the travel expenses, the cost of commercials, and the list goes on. Those who have done the math tell us that the cost of the Superbowl is in the billions of dollars.

I have an African friend who has been working with drilling freshwater wells in Africa and finding relief for the starving families there. He tells me the message of the Superbowl is the fact that if the money spent could be redirected to providing aid in Africa, we could stop all of the suffering. We watch presidential candidates who must raise millions of dollars to get on the ballot. We can make similar comments about the entertainment industry and the salaries of movie stars and entertainment celebrities. How can we justify an entertainment figure making 50 million dollars a year while a policeman or teacher is making 50 thousand?

The answer to that question is that we can’t. Our society has drifted far from God. It’s only when something happens like the recent tragedy of Kobe Bryant’s death that we remember how fragile and tentative life can be. Tragedies like that jolt us to the fact that millions of dollars doesn’t matter when you die. But then the message of the Superbowl takes our mind off that fact.

Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author.” Columnist Georgie Ann Geyer has written, “I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to have a moral community or nation without faith in God, because without it everything comes down to ‘me’ and ‘me’ alone is meaningless.” The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” That was written 170 years ago, but can it be said about America today?

Here is a passage we should apply today: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Data and quotes from Beyond Today, Special Edition, January 2020.

January 31, 2020January 27, 2020

Power to Forgive Like Jesus

There are many things about Christianity that are unique. One of the most important of these is the Christian concept of forgiveness. No other religious or philosophical system emphasizes the power to forgive that we see in Jesus.

As an atheist living in an atheist home, I saw the emphasis on survival and “getting even.” One of our favorite sayings was, “Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me.” In opposition to that view, Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive someone who sins against us. Thinking he was being generous, Peter asked, “Up to 7 times?” Jesus responded with, “…seventy times seven.” In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:12-15, Jesus taught that our forgiveness by God was dependent on our forgiving of others. The various forms of the word “forgive” occur 143 times in the Bible.

All of us have known people who carry a grudge for years and years. Long ago, I was working with two older men on a project in a basement. I had been told that these two men had not spoken to each other for 30 years because of a conflict they had with each other. One of them fell off a ladder and was hanging from a pipe. The other man was standing there looking at him when I got there and helped him down. The guy hanging wasn’t going to ask for help, and the other guy wasn’t going to help unless asked. When I asked them what had caused the problem neither of them could tell me. They hadn’t spoken to each other for 30 years, but neither of them knew why.

Grudges, bad memories, conflict, and unkind words and thoughts can eat you alive. Mental illness is sometimes rooted in problems with forgiveness. Sometimes it’s because we are unable to forgive ourselves. We need to understand that Christ died to give us the power to forgive. Even if we struggle to forgive ourselves, we need to realize that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work in us..” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

We sometimes read of a Christian forgiving a person who killed their loved one, and we think, “How could they do that?” Don’t underestimate what Jesus can do. Unlike other religious leaders, Jesus demonstrated the power to forgive, and He expects to do the same. Remember that as Jesus was being crucified, he cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

January 27, 2020March 19, 2020

Seeking Peace in THC, Alcohol, and other Drugs

As our culture drifts farther from God, drugs become a substitute for spirituality. The drug receiving the most attention at the start of 2020 is marijuana. The compound in marijuana that causes users to get high is THC. Seeking peace in THC, alcohol, and other drugs does not fill the spiritual void.

The United States farm bill passed in 2018 mandated that plants containing less than .3% THC would be considered hemp. Those plants containing more than .3% would be regarded as marijuana, which remains, for the moment, an illegal, controlled substance. People now use cannabidiol (CBD) in a wide range of products, including pain medications, stress relievers, and sleep enhancers. THC is also found inadvertently in some products, and there is no way to tell the difference between THC in CBD oil and in recreational marijuana.

In random drug testing, THC may show up even if the subject only used a CBD oil. If the employer has a policy of firing anyone who tests positive for THC, that person would be dismissed. USA Today (January 21, 2020, Section B 1) carried a story about a school bus driver in Salt Lake City who was fired because she tested positive for THC. She had used CBD to help her sleep and to relieve stress.

Research may lead to some beneficial applications of THC, when used carefully and in a controlled way. The massive demand for cannabidiol products and the pressure to make recreational marijuana legal is an indication of the unhappiness and misery that people in our culture are experiencing. When we were traveling in Ireland several years ago, our guide commented on how unhappy people are there as alcohol has replaced faith in God. The same thing is happening in America today. Seeking peace in THC, alcohol, and other drugs is no substitute for God, but massive numbers of people have turned to these faith substitutes. A brief “high” is no substitute for lasting, faithful joyfulness.

The Bible is full of references to the desire God has for us to experience joy and happiness. The Psalms encouraged followers of God to be joyful. (See Psalms 5:11, 63:5, and 149:5-6.) In Luke 10:17, when the disciples found they had the power to help people, they “returned with joy.” In John 16:20-24, Jesus talks about finding “joy that no man can take from you.” In Romans 15:13, Paul says, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Galatians 5:22 tells us that joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit.

People look for peace, joy, happiness, and satisfaction in all the wrong places. Seeking peace in THC, alcohol, and other drugs is not a long-term solution. The fact that I can be content, at peace, and able to find joy and beauty in spite of the massive problems I have experienced, builds my faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. No drug high of any kind gives the lasting contentment that I find in my relationship with Christ. I have looked in both places, and the evidence is clear.

January 26, 2020January 24, 2020

Special Olympics and the Race of Life

As the parent of a special needs child, I have been a part of the Special Olympics for many years. Even though my child is too disabled to participate anymore, I sometimes attend just to watch the events. I especially like the races, and two of them stick out in my memory. They remind me of the race of life.

The first was a hurdles competition. Five runners had 100 yards of hurdles to navigate. The gun went off, and the racers all cleared the first four hurdles. They were pretty close together when one of them caught his foot on a hurdle and went down. He hit pretty hard, and immediately the other four racers stopped and ran back to him. They helped him up, hugged him, and then they all continued the race.

My other memory was a long-distance run with six runners who had quite varied abilities. One of the boys was much slower than the others, and they all lapped him. When they got to the finish line, they all “high-fived” one another. While they were doing that, the slow runner went by for his last lap. The other five runners moved toward the finish line, and as the slow boy came around the final curve, they began cheering. The crowd went nuts as he crossed the finish line.

The message in these two stories is so “Christian” in nature. Paul talked about “the race”` many times. In Hebrews 12:1, he said, “..let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, he uses the race as a picture of life. In 2 Timothy 4:7, he says, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race…”

Paul doesn’t say he won the race. He says he finished it. When I fall going over a hurdle of life, I need my brothers and sisters in the faith to help me get back on my feet so we can all finish the race. I do need to finish the race, and while I am not the strongest or the fastest, God has given me the ability to finish the race of life. In 2 Timothy 4:8, Paul wrote, “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day: and not to me only but to all those who love his appearing.”

My special needs child and his friends in the Special Olympics have a better understanding of this than many of our theologians.

You can learn more about Special Olympics HERE.

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020

Salt and Water Chemical Bonds and Life

We see a correlation between salt and water chemical bonds and life. One of the first things students learn in chemistry class is that elements bond to form compounds in two different ways. One is called “covalent,” and the other is called “ionic.”

In an ionic bond, two elements transfer an electron. An excellent example of ionic bonding is sodium chloride, common table salt. The sodium in salt has a loosely-held electron in its last orbital. Chlorine, on the other hand, needs an electron, because its last orbital is one electron short of the most stable configuration. When sodium and chlorine combine, the sodium gives up its last electron, and the chlorine absorbs it.

A classic example of a covalent bond is water. Hydrogen needs an electron to produce the most stable possible form of the hydrogen atom. Oxygen needs two electrons to give it the most stable arrangement. Oxygen can share two of its electrons with two hydrogen atoms. The result is that two hydrogen atoms are attached to the one oxygen atom, producing water.

Water and salt are very different kinds of compounds. Water is tough to break apart into its component atoms. Salt is very easy to break apart. Just dumping salt into water will tear the salt molecule apart into sodium and chlorine. The design of these atoms is amazing. The salt molecule is polar because only two atoms are involved. The water molecule is also polar because of the location of the two electrons that are shared with the hydrogen. An electron by itself is not stable. The spin of the electrons and their magnetic properties require pairing to be stable, and that pairing forms compounds such as water and salt.

In teaching high school chemistry, I would use boy-girl relationships to help kids understand chemical bonding. The Bible tells us in Genesis 2:18 that God said, “It is not good that man should be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.” Verse 24 says, “A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” All of life reaches stability in a shared relationship. Just as water is more stable than salt, so too humans who are in a committed relationship of oneness and sharing are more stable than when isolated and alone. The same Designer of salt and water chemical bonds gave us each other for the best of life.

January 22, 2020January 21, 2020

Alternatives to Abortion

As we enter an election year, the issue of abortion once again rises to the attention of politicians, women’s rights activists, Christians, religious fundamentalists, and the medical establishment. The issue is complicated, but we must not overlook the alternatives to abortion.

We can understand the rhetoric that a woman should have control of her own body. But from a scientific standpoint, there is no question–a baby is NOT just an extension of the mother’s body. Morning sickness is the body’s reaction to an invasive foreign object that has entered the woman’s body. When the sperm meets the egg, a unique individual is produced. It is not a dog or a cat or something unknown–it is a human. Mountains of evidence exist that show the baby does human things long before birth. The preborn child hears, feels, reacts, and responds to outside influences on its environment.

Do we, as a culture, wish to sanction infanticide? Is a baby better off dead than born to a mother who doesn’t want it? Is infanticide a slippery slope to horrible misuse–harvesting organs or paying for organs from a baby not yet conceived? These questions are complicated, and in an election year, inflammatory literature abounds on all sides. Working together to provide alternatives to abortion can help to settle this issue. Here are three points to consider:

*Easy abortion as a method for birth control is foolish. Abortion does physiological and psychological damage to most women. Repeated abortions can lead to serious health problems even when the abortion is done in an ideal environment by competent doctors.

*Reproductive healthcare is needed for all women, and abortion is not the sum total of that care. This healthcare can and should include modern contraception methods, moral teaching about sexual relationships, prenatal care, family planning, and options about alternatives to abortion. Adoption is an option that is used far too infrequently. Abortion should not be the first or only choice given to women.

*World population growth is also an issue. Every day the world population grows by 225,000, adding up to 82 million per year. God has told us to “take care of the garden, dress it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). He also gave us the family as the proper vehicle to populate the Earth. Dumping unwanted children into the world without family, love, care, or the physical things they need to survive violates God’s commands (James 1:27). However, abortion (infanticide) is a poor alternative to education and moral teaching.

We need to join hands and work for alternatives to abortion and solutions to this issue on this 47th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by the US Supreme Court.

A footnote from Roland Earnst: An organization that is doing a great job in providing abortion alternatives and helping families is LifePlan of Niles, Michigan. You can visit their website HERE.

January 21, 2020January 17, 2020

What Is Wrong With…?

We get a lot of questions that contain the phrase, “what is wrong with?” The idea seems to be that there is a religious issue involved in the social practices of today, but many people don’t understand what it is. Parents have asked me to tell them how to explain to their child that tattoos are biblically wrong. Others have written that being overweight is a sin and that eating foods that are not healthy is biblically wrong. Another question involves whether the Bible condemns vaping. The use of alcohol has been an issue for a very long time.

The current mantra of our culture is, “What I do with my body is up to me. What is wrong with…?” The Apostle Paul wrote something about that:

“Do you not know that you are God’s sanctuary, and that God’s Spirit has his home in you? If anyone desecrates the temple of God, God will bring him to ruin. For the temple of God is sacred, and that is what you are.” 1 Corinthians 3:16-17.

When we use the Bible to decide a moral or religious issue, it is essential to look at the context of the passage. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 3 to a congregation of people whom he says are carnal, not spiritual (Verses 1-3). Verse 9 finds Paul telling these carnal people that as Christians, they should be fellow-workers with God and that Christ must be their foundation (verse 11). What is wrong with the way they were acting? Paul’s chief complaint with the Christians in Corinth is that their carnal nature has produced a power struggle (verses 3-8).

The message here is spiritual, not physical. Paul is not saying that if you vape, God will send cancer to destroy you. God’s message and outreach to a lost world come through His workers here on Earth. In Acts 2:38, Peter promised God’s Spirit to Christians. Engaging in things that defeat God’s outreach to others can cause them to be lost. We need to take care of our bodies and do so in a way that enables us to be God’s workers to reach others.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 8 that we sin against others when we do something or eat something that causes them to be lost. I can’t be the influence that God calls me to be if I am immersed in the excesses of the culture in which I live. How I dress, what I eat or drink, and what I do is essential to my witness. I implore Christians to avoid vaping or drinking alcohol or eating unwisely for that reason.

January 19, 2020January 15, 2020

Where Are the Christians?

We sometimes hear people say that America is a “Christian Nation.” That statement today is wrong in several ways. The facts show that only 9% of all people in the world who call themselves “Christians” live in North America (the U.S. and Canada). So, where are the Christians?

The home of 51% of the world’s Christians is in Africa and Latin America. Africa alone has 26%. The report shows that 23% live in Europe, 16% in Asia, and 1% in Oceania. Realize that these numbers only tell us people who claim the religious identity of “Christian.” That doesn’t mean a person attends any worship services.

When we correspond with our friends in Africa and South America, we find them talking about the stabilizing influence of Christ. They say that things are improving in their nations because of Christianity. As we look around in America, we see increasing violence and instability. Does anyone want to suggest a reason for that? Where are the Christians?

Data from The Center for the Study of Global Christianity reported in Christianity Today, January/February 2020, page 25.

January 17, 2020January 15, 2020

Fires in Australia and God

Not long ago, we were appalled at the horrendous fires in California, and now we hear about terrible fires in Australia. In our August 16, 2018, post we talked about the California fires, and we discussed why they happened. We pointed out that blaming God for the wildfires in California was not logical, scientifically correct, or biblical. (You can read that again by clicking HERE.)

Our primary resource for that discussion was Keith Crummer, whose whole career with the United States Forrest Service revolved around managing the forests in California. His main point was that the cause of the fires was mismanagement by people who thought they were protecting the forests. They were stopping the natural fire-preventing design from operating. Now we see this again with the fires in Australia.

Before we go any further, let us state that our hearts go out to our friends in Australia, who, like the victims in California, have suffered an unimaginable loss. To watch everything you own go up in flames is a heart-wrenching tragedy no matter what the cause. There are two points we want to make:

#1) The fires in Australia are not a retaliatory act of God. Some religious figures are saying the fires are God’s punishment for Australia’s movement away from belief in God and its immersion in secularism. There is no question about the contributing factors to the fires, and none of them include miraculous acts of God. That is also not the way God operates. If God retaliated every time a group of people deliberately defied Him, Washington D.C. would have gone up in flames long ago. Passages like James 1:13 tell us that God is not the source of the bad things that happen to us. The following eight verses identify the cause as human greed and selfishness.

#2) Like the California fires, the fires in Australia are a consequence of human mismanagement of resources. In its natural state, the environment prevents such massive fires. Water storage in the soil, small fires that clean up underbrush so it can’t erupt in huge, hot fires, plants that are resistant to fire and don’t burn well all reduce the fire hazard. Imported plants, inadequate management of water resources, and overuse of the land are the main contributors to massive fires
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Today you can go back to the areas in California that were scorched so severely in 2018 and see that the land is recovering. Hopefully, the bad management practices of the past won’t be repeated, but sometimes humans fail to learn from past mistakes. God doesn’t cause tragedies like this, but He also doesn’t force humans to manage intelligently, and He doesn’t take away the results of mismanagement.

January 15, 2020January 14, 2020

Christian Seminary Students in Same-sex Marriages

Yesterday we reported on the LGBT conflict which is breaking the United Methodist Church apart. The dispute over sexual morality is also affecting one of the oldest and most highly regarded theological seminaries in the United States–Fuller Theological Seminary. The conflict involves Christian seminary students in same-sex marriages.

Fuller has a “Sexual Standards Policy,” which states that the seminary “holds marriage to be a covenant union between one man and one woman.” The policy also says that “homosexual forms of explicit sexual conduct” are “inconsistent with the teaching of Scripture.” Two students, one man and one woman, were expelled because the seminary learned that they were in same-sex marriages. They are both suing the school for one million dollars each.

The problem here is that Fuller and many other Christian colleges and seminaries receive government assistance in scholarships and other educational funding. Title IX government funding rules bar “discrimination based on sex.” The original intent of this rule was that women could not be refused participation in educational programs just because they were women. Now LGBT supporters are mounting legal efforts to expand Title IX protections to gender identity and sexuality.

What happens here will have a profound effect on Christian colleges who participate in any scholarship program where government grants or loans allow students to get an education. This would include those with minority and military scholarships. It will also affect those schools and churches that use government commodities in benevolent programs or minority support programs.

Christian seminary students in same-sex marriages is only one aspect of a growing problem. It seems that the government’s beliefs about morality are dictating what Church programs can teach. The only option is for churches and schools not to use government support in any way, or else they must change their moral teachings.

You can read about this on the Christianity Today website at THIS LINK.