Moral without God?
I know that I said that my next blog would be about my trip to Massachusetts but I feel that I must postpone that for now and write about something with much more immediate impact. This blog will answer a question that I have been pondering these last couple of days. Can a person be moral without God? The way I am answering this question may confuse some people but I am prepared to explain and defend my answer. I believe that a person can be moral without being a Christian but I believe it is impossible to be moral without God. To some this might seem like a contradiction but it is not. When you consider the use of bibles in courtrooms or the "golden rule" that we quote to our children all of the time we see that many of the teachings in scriptures play a role in our society. If we consider our constitution and the founding fathers who penned it, we know from history that not all of these men were Christians but they still believed in upholding the teachings of scripture because they knew that it was the best foundation for a moral nation. John Adams said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
There are some people who feel that preachers should not deliver sermons about sin and repentance. The argument they use is that everyone knows what is right and wrong and we don't need God. I disagree with this position. If God is the root of our understanding of morality, it's like citing a source in a research paper and not giving the one who wrote it credit. We have to have an anchor for our moral stance. If morality is relative which some people believe, then we will have a chaotic society. What if our government decided that we should throw out the constitution and apply Sharia Law instead? What if we applied the Maori or Native American understanding of moral justice? What if we had forced abortions like China? Our nation decided to have it's foundation on the bible and the truths in it. We gained our independence from Britain but we prayed every step of the way. We put God in front of what we did and we succeeded. The French wanted to follow our example but they decided to get rid of God from their society. They crushed the reformation and they decided to rely on Reason instead of God. The French Revolution was "godless" and "bloody." They lost their grounding for morality. The Russians did the same when they embraced atheism as the state religion. America has stood because of it's biblical foundation but as we see the government constantly trying to suppress biblical values, we see our society deteriorating before our eyes. Former President Ronald Reagan said, " if we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
Let's close out with a few scriptures. "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." This scripture is from Isaiah 64:6. This scripture says to me that even our best understanding of right and wrong is not enough and we must rely on what the word of God says. Another scripture says "When there is moral rot within a nation, its government topples easily. But wise and knowledgeable leaders bring stability." This scripture is from Proverbs 28:2 and I think it shows what is going on in our nation today, we are becoming like France did during the Revolution and our government will be toppled if we do not follow the truth that we built our nation on. But the promise is if our leaders follow God, we will be blessed. This is the answer. A person can be moral without being a Christian but they can not be moral without God. If we reject God from our society, our nation will go the way that France did and maybe even worse. You can have all the morals in the world... but what's your anchor?
