It is interesting, what a difference AIDS is making to moral attitudes. Not so long ago, someone like Sheila Hancock, a show business personality in the U.K., was saying openly to the world, "I was brought up to believe that you were a virgin till you were married, but now I think that's quite wrong. I think it's a good thing that girls sleep with their boyfriends before they get married." And magazines like Forum and Playboy and Penthouse have for years been advocating free love with a crusading zeal.
But on April 8, 1982, in the Courier Mail, Ita Buttrose, who at that time chaired the National Advisory Committee on AIDS, announced: "Everyone must now reassess his or her sexual values because of AIDS. Casual sex is out, one night stands are gone, multiple sex partners are downright dangerous ... The sexual revolution is over." In an article in the same paper on April 21, she said, "The evidence is there that perhaps we were not meant to have as many sexual partners as people have enjoyed since the pill."
Was this a higher wisdom than had been purveyed half a generation earlier as the norm? If so, no-one has come forward to take responsibility for the harm done to those who believed what they had been told till then.
By way of laying a philosophical foundation for the studies that follow, the question I want to tackle in this opening chapter is not the incidence of moral delinquency in the world - sin, after all, has been a fact of life since its beginning; there is nothing new or unusual about that. What is disturbing is our growing uncertainty about what morals are. Our society displays an enfeeblement of moral vision; it lacks the ability to say roundly, "This is right" or "That is wrong". And when we do hear positive pronouncements like Ita Buttrose's, what is troubling about them is the reason being offered why we should behave this way or that. The reason offered is not "Because it's right", but "Because it doesn't work." Is that the only basis on which morality should rest?
Our society fits the Bible's description of Israelite society in the days of the Judges: "Every man did what was right in his own eyes" ... in today's jargon, "Everyone did his own thing." The Bible goes on to say bluntly that when those conditions obtain, "men are pure in their own eyes, but are not cleansed of their filth." (Judges 17:6, Proverbs 30:12)
In our society today, we have almost no criterion by which to judge what is filth and what is not. There is no widespread acknowledgment of any moral authority which is felt to be binding; we are in a moral muddle. Even if we could agree on what is good (and we can't) we do not, even so, see why we ought to be good. Where is moral authority to be found? And how are its credentials established?
It is well to recognise that there are two problems to be faced in answering those questions.
1. One is the problem of Authority. There are some things we are supposed to do and others we are supposed not to do; but who says so, and why should they be heeded? Those are questions every generation of young people asks - and rightly! "Why won't young people be told?" the older generation complains. But who is to do the telling and why should they be heeded? In the words of the guilty Jew in the story to Moses, "Who made you a prince and a ruler over us?"
2. The other is the problem of Expediency. People say this or that is wrong, but if I find pleasure in it, and no harm comes of it, why shouldn't I? The only standard by which to decide what is right is that it works.
We tackle the problem of authority first.
There are four claimants to the throne of moral values - traditionally at any rate. They are the State, the Church, Conscience and the Bible.
1. The State
In China today the state claims absolute moral authority over its citizens. What is right is what the state says is right.
But history shows that state-established morality issues in confusion. In Nazi Germany, for example, the state demanded that to be good (a good citizen) you should inform on Jews. But in England this was regarded as bad, and you could be punished for trying.
Where there is such inconsistency in what is said to be good, there is no authority left. Unless the voice of authority speaks clearly and unequivocally, its power to hold us is lost. The philosophy of the Queen (was it?) in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark": "Whatever I say three times is true," wins nobody's consent.
2. The Church
The second claimant to the throne of moral authority is the Church. This is the Roman Catholic answer to the question. We had an example of it in the Pope's pronouncements on In Vitro Fertilisation.
But the Church was responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, which was anything but moral. The Church has been found guilty of the most absurd prejudice - as when it condemned and excommunicated Galileo as a heretic because he claimed that the earth moved round the sun, and not (as was then believed) the sun around the earth. It has been guilty of the most gross forms of materialism, as when it sold "Indulgences" (i.e. a divine pardon for your sins) for money.
And one is bound to ask in any case, "Which Church speaks truly?" For the churches have failed dismally to speak with a united voice on almost any important moral issue - war, crime, punishment, race, divorce and remarriage, contraception, homosexuality ... we could extend the list almost ad infinitum.
Where there is such a confusion of voices, no authority remains.
3. Conscience
Conscience is the third.
But conscience too is a notoriously unreliable guide. The conscience of a child does not speak with the same voice as the conscience of a full-grown man. The conscience of a civilised man does not speak with the same voice as the conscience of a primitive man. The conscience of Western man does not speak with the same voice as the conscience of Eastern man.
What conscience says is conditioned, first of all, by the cultural heritage in which we are raised. In Indian society, for example, using your job status to favour members of your family, regardless of the needs or qualifications of others, is a virtue; here in Australia that is condemned as discrimination. Papua New Guinea natives used to have no compunction about killing people of other tribes - it was your duty.
Conscience is conditioned too by the moral values instilled in us by our parents. I grew up to believe that cinema attendance - for any reason - was a sin, and at age 18 in the foyer of the cinema where I saw the first film I ever paid to see (Shakespeare's "Hamlet" played by Laurence Olivier) I experienced a positive trauma of guilt!
Conscience can become enlightened or it can grow dark. It is too much a victim of circumstances, far too vulnerable to inconsistent change, to be an effective authority.
4. The Bible
The fourth candidate is the Bible.
But the Bible, viewed as mere writ, can be made to say so many things. The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, for example, claimed its authority - quite sincerely and for a long time - for the policy of apartheid. You can if you like find authority in it for killing your enemies - or for forgiving them; for arguing that there is life after death - or that there is not. The Seventh Day Adventists, for example, believe - from the Bible - that when you die you are dead ... until the resurrection; but Fundamentalists believe - from the same Bible - that when you die you are consciously alive with Christ. Both groups ascribe absolute infallibility to the Bible's text, yet Fundamentalists find warrant in the Scriptures for their belief that Christ is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, the Jehovah's Witnesses for their belief that He is not.
Whilst the same Scriptures can be understood so very differently, there is no compelling authority left in the mere text. So long as it means one thing for me and quite another for you, it is obvious that it has become the victim of the prejudice we bring to the reading of it. Its statements take on the colour of the glasses we wear when we read them. As someone has asked, "what infallibility can there be for fallible men?" Our Lord Himself rebuked the Pharisees for thinking to find in the Scriptures themselves the source of all final good: "You search the Scriptures because in them you think you find eternal life. But they are they which testify of Me, and you will not come to Me." (John 5:39) As I hope we shall see, not the Scriptures, but the Christ of the Scriptures is the only living authority over us. However true the Scriptures may be, they are not an effective authority until something else has happened that makes them so - the something which Jesus described as "coming to Me." The written code kills: the Spirit gives life." (II Cor. 3:6)
There is also a second question to be faced - that of expediency.
Faced with all these difficulties with authority, there are those who tell us that the only workable way to establish a binding morality is by way of expediency ... by experiment and discovery, if you like.
We quickly learn that there is a right and a wrong way of doing almost everything. You can mend the hole in your sock just by pulling the two sides of the hole together, or you can do a proper darn. If you do the first, you will walk on lumps, if you do the second you will walk in comfort. So with patterns of behaviour. Some work out well, others don't. If I cheat a customer, for example, I may make a quick profit, but in the end I stand to lose his custom, and so experience teaches me that "honesty is the best policy." If I get my way by telling lies, sooner or later I shall not be believed when I tell the truth, and then my habit of lying may be the ruin of me. On these lines of reasoning, we are told, we can frame the whole of morality in a way that wins everyone's consent. What is good and right is what pays off.
But this won't do either. For how, on that basis, can you arrive at what is universally acknowledged to be the highest moral obligation we can honour - that of laying down our life in a good cause? How does that "pay off" for the man who loses his life? "Ah," you say, "but he does it for the good of society, and society profits from his self sacrifice." But by what criterion am I to believe that the good of society is the highest good to be served? That it serves the best interests of its constituent individuals? But how are the best interests of an individual served by him dying?
And in any case, all human behaviour has long-term results as well as short-term results, some of them extending well beyond a lifetime, over a span of generations. Where shall I find the accumulated wisdom from earlier generations reliably set down? "In the Koran," says the Muslim. "In the Eightfold Way," says the Buddhist. "In the Thoughts of Chairman Mao," says the Chinese Communist. "In the Bible," says the Christian. We are back to the confusion we began with. Where is the elusive authority we need reliably to be found?
Let us be clear what the Christian answer is.
Jesus said plainly, "Only God is good" ... to the rich young ruler, as it happened. Goodness, for the disciple of Jesus at any rate, can only be defined as "that which conforms to the character of God."
If God is indeed the Creator of the World - including the world of personal relationships where morality applies - and if His creation is a true expression of His mind, then goodness is what is in harmony with what He is - not simply with what He demands, but with what He is. If His creation is consistent with His character, then in a world created by Him those moral qualities are right which are His. Behaviour on my part which corresponds to His is right in a world created by Him, because it agrees with the ultimate reality on which all rests, out from which all proceeds, and to which all returns. If I find that God's character and purpose turn out to be what we describe as "good", then it is right to be good - and I can see why.
The only ground of morality is the character of God. The only final authority in matters of morality is the living God Himself. Once the vision of God is lost, the vision of good is lost.
That is precisely the situation our modern society is in. We have forsaken the living God; it is hardly surprising therefore that we flounder in a sea of moral confusion.
This is the faith of the Bible. This is the truth to which it testifies.
I commend to you a study of the Scriptures to see how they present the moral obligations they commend. In the Pentateuch especially, they come in a particular and oft-repeated formula: "You shall do this, you shall not do that ... I AM YAHWEH." Yahweh is the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses - "I am Who I am." So the formula means, "You shall do thus and so, for that agrees with what I am." This or that is defined as being right or wrong because it conforms, or fails to conform, to the character of God as He reveals Himself to men of faith. In the Bible's own language, good or bad behaviour is described as being true or false to "His Name," for in Bible language a god's or a person's name stands for his character.
So the relief of oppression, the impartial administration of justice, the care of children, compassion for the stranger, loyalty as the backbone of love, self-sacrifice, devotion to another's good even at the cost of loss to your own, humility, the willingness to suffer evil rather than do it ... all these and many other moral qualities are grasped clearly and firmly because they are seen to be true of God. (See e.g. ch. 19 of Leviticus.)
But where the vision of God is lost, moral certainty is lost, and the compulsion upon our spirits that goes with it. That is why when religion is thrown out the front door, morality leaves by the back door.
A society that turns away from the living God slides into moral confusion because true morals are the fruit of communion with God - and of nothing else. When conscience speaks truly, that is why. (Incidentally, the New Testament word for conscience, "suneidesis", is a word that means "to see with"; to see with what, or whom? - with God, of course.)
Unless I seek and find God I cannot know with any assurance what is good.
But unless God reveals Himself to me, I cannot know Him at all.
Morality rests, therefore, not on reason, but on revelation - on God's own self-revealing. Reason shows me why that must be so, but only revelation shows me what must be.
It is surely self-evident that the only moral authority that can hold any dependable sway over us is God Himself, making Himself known to us, calling forth our deep consent by the sheer splendour of His love and righteousness. This He does by pouring Himself into the Person of His own Beloved Son. "In Christ all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell." (Col. 1:19) Christ Himself therefore is the Way - the true and living Way, as He Himself claimed. (John 14:6) The only path to moral certainty is fellowship with Christ - the Christ Who died for our sins, and was raised for our "rightwising" to God. (Romans 4:25)
Now ... if I find that the Church aids me in my pursuit of God in Christ, the Church will take on a certain authority for me (she is, as Paul said in I Tim 3:15, "the pillar and bulwark of truth").
If I find that fellowship with Christ awakens and enlightens my conscience, causing it to speak in harmony with His voice, then conscience will assume a certain level of authority for me.
If I find that the Bible is indeed the vehicle of God's self-revelation all through history, then the Bible becomes authoritative for me. Indeed, since the only Christ I know, or can ever know, is the Christ of the Scriptures, then the Scriptures become a higher authority for me than either church or conscience; it is the Christ of the Scriptures alone Who begets life in them.
Equally, of course, the State cannot bind my conscience in any way that is contrary to the speaking voice of God in Scripture.
But all these things - state, church, conscience, scripture (in that ascending order) - are but instruments conveying the self-revelation of God to my soul. Woe betide me if I let the State assume the place of God to my soul. If I do, I corrupt it thereby and it will become a curse to me. Woe betide me if I give to the Church the homage that belongs only to God. If I do, I corrupt it thereby and it will become a curse to me. Woe betide me if I exalt my conscience above God Himself. If I do, I corrupt it thereby and it will become a curse to me. Woe betide me if I make the Scriptures a substitute for personal encounter with the living God Who says, "Listen to my Son." If I do, I corrupt them thereby and they will become a curse to me.
There is no release - none at all - from the necessity for direct, personal encounter with the living God. Neglect that, and we shall stumble in the dark all our days until we tumble into the pit. There is no word our country needs to hear more timely and vital than this.
For all Australia that is fair
Is what our dear Lord planted there;
And all Australia that is ill
Is where we've forced our pagan will;
And all Australia that shall be
Grows fair or false in men like me.
And it grows fair or false according as we set our faces toward Christ or away from Him.
"If you continue in my Word you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:32) Nothing else can make us a true, free, people.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|