Having 'IT' Both Ways...

“… The bottom line is this: if there is no God, if there is no life after death, then ultimately all of our ethical decisions are absolutely meaningless. That’s a true and inescapable conclusion. If we think about it, it’s the only conclusion we can reach if we have absented God from our thinking. The only alternative to an absolute ethic is a relative ethic. We cannot have an absolute ethic without a personal Creator.

To confess that God is Creator is to confess that we are not cosmic accidents, devoid of ultimate value. We came from somewhere significant and we are headed toward a destination of importance.” *excerpted from a publication by R.C. Sproul – “What We Believe”

We want to have it both ways. We want to not hear about God or hear about church and religion. We want to do our own thing and think/believe our own way – even if we do go to a church from time to time. We say that everyone should be allowed to do their own thing. We don’t want God or church or Bible shoved at us. But, we want good things and blessings. This perspective is not just owned by many youth and young adults – particularly as it relates to parents talking God and church to them, but also by adults of all ages. But… if everyone is allowed and encouraged to do their own thing, then if talking about God and ‘shoving religion’ is someone’s thing, then where is your argument? Why would it be wrong, then, for someone to want to talk to you about God? Why must they be barred from doing their ‘thing’ and you have the sole right to do your ‘thing’? Thus enters the contradiction. The reasoning breaks down quickly. As is referred to in the commentary above, if there is no absolute right or wrong as defined by a Creator God, who then decides what becomes right and what becomes wrong? 400 years of enslavement of African Americans in the U.S. other jurisdictions, along with the enslavement and devaluation of others, ought to teach a person what happens when relativistic perspectives, the ‘everyone is right’ belief are the ‘ethics’ that people adhere to. And yet, we conveniently push aside those realities or relegate them to a separate platform or deem them inapplicable in a conversation about relativity when they become personal.

 

If we deny that humans originate from God, are created in His image, and that they are of ultimate value as a result, then human dignity goes out the window. Again, 400 years of slavery in the U.S., and across the globe devaluation of persons to the point where they are considered property, or germs to be eradicated/exterminated, the recent racial battles become irrelevant if God is not the Creator Who imputes/places the ultimate value on human life – all human life regardless of what we may consider as a ‘viable’ life. If we are only going to assess life on the basis of our emotional feelings about what is right or wrong, which is where relativistic thinking gets germinated, then whose emotions are right?

You and I cannot have it both ways. Either God is God and is the Sovereign over all life, or he is not. Either He and what He says is the absolute truth, or he and his words are not, and we are not accountable based on them. We cannot have it both ways. Rejecting the absolute Sovereignty of God and His absolute truth leaves us in a no-where place of chaos.