Examined Christian Faith 'Morality' 3.1 What is Christainity

When I was a young boy, I remember our pastor calling all of the children to the front of the church to ask us what we thought God was like; my younger brother being much more vocal then the rest of us quickly replied that God must be the sort of person who is always snooping around to see if anyone is having fun and then He tries to stop it.   Sadly that is exactly the idea that the word 'Morality' brings to mind in the vast majority of adults; morality is something that stops you from having a good time.   In reality moral rules are the directions for running the human body. 

If you were like me and when you were first learning to drive a car, the instructor  kept saying, “No, don’t do it like that, do it like this”; because there were all sorts of things that looked all right and seemed to me the natural way of driving the car, but do not really work.  That same idea applies to the moral rules; every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain in running the human body.  That is why these rules at first glance seem to be constantly interfering with our natural desires.  

Morals are not an ‘idea’, and certainly not an ‘idealism’ that we should aspire to, no more then rules about driving a car are.  If while driving a car, I elect to ignore the rules, and drive without my lights on at night, eventually there are going to be consequences, in the same manner every moral failure is going to cause trouble, probably to others and certainly to yourself (even if you do not realize it for a very long time).  By talking about rules and obedience instead of ‘ideas’ and ‘idealism’ we help to remind ourselves of these facts. 

There are two ways that a human can go wrong, one is when the human individuals drift apart from one another, or collide with one another and do one another damage.  The other is when things go wrong inside the individual – when the different parts of the individual (his or her different desires, wants, etc. either drift apart or interfere with one another.   To give you an idea of how this works, if you were like me, as I was growing up, I learned how to play an instrument (the French horn); so think of all of humanity as a large band playing a song.  To get a good result two things are needed.  Each member of the band individual instrument must be in tune and each must also come in at precisely the right moment so as to combine with all the others.

But there is still one thing that we have not yet taken into account, all of the instruments might be in tune, and they might all come in at the right moment, however if the band was suppose to play the Christian hit song “I Can Only Imagine” by Mercy Me, but instead played George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone”; regardless of how well they played, it would be a disaster. 

Morality then is concerned with 3 things, first – with fair play, and harmony between individuals. Second – with cleaning up (keeping things in harmony inside each individual) and lastly, the general purpose of human life as a whole; what man was made for: or in other words, what tune the conductor (God) of the band wants it to play.

If you look about you, you will notice that everyone is nearly always thinking about the first thing and forgetting the other two.   Even when Christians talk about striving for moral standards, they usually mean that they are pursuing kindness and fair play between individuals, classes of people, and nations; all of which is concerned only with the first part of morality.   Not that it is entirely bad, as it is quite natural when we think of morality to begin with the first thing.  For one thing, the results of bad morality in that area are so obvious and press down on us everyday; lies, poverty, war, graft, adultery, and thievery.  There is very little disagreement about morality as long as you stick to the first thing. Almost everyone agrees (in theory anyway) that everyone should be honest, kind and helpful to one another.  However if we stop there, we might have not have any thought at all.  Unless we move on to the second thing – the cleaning up inside each individual- we are only deceiving ourselves. 

What good is it if all of the members of the band are coming in at the right moment, if they are each horribly out of tune?  What is the good of drawing up on paper, rules for behavior, if we know that in fact, our selfishness, greed,  anger, and cowardice are going to prevent us from keeping them?   What I mean is that all the thinking means nothing, unless we realize that noting but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make society work properly.  You cannot make me good by law; and without good men you cannot have a good society (including the society within the church).  That is why we must move on to the second thing; the morality of the individual. 

We could stop here, but if we did, while there would not be much disagreement, we still very well could be playing the wrong song.  This is the hard part, for religion involves a series of statements about facts, which are either true or false.  If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right song, if they are false quite a different conclusion will follow.   For example, if a person says that a thing can not be wrong unless it hurts some other being, he understands that he must not play his instrument when he should not, but he honestly thinks that if he keeps his own instrument in tune or not is his own business.  But does it make a difference if his instrument is his own property or not?  Does it matter if I am the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord?  If somebody else made me, for His own purposes, then I have a lot of duties that I would not have if I simply belong to myself.

If I only live for 80 to 100 years, then a city, a state, or nation that may last for a thousand years is more important then I am.  However, if Christianity is true, and all human being are going to live forever (either in Heaven or Hell) then the individual is not only more important, but incomparably more important, for he or she is everlasting, and the life of the state or civilization for that matter , compared to his is only for a moment.  

We must then think about all three areas when we think about morality; relations between man and man, things inside each man, and relations between man and the power that made him.  We can all cooperate (at least in theory) in the first one.  Disagreement’s always begin with the second and become very serious with the third.  It is the third that the primary differences in regards to morality, come out between Christians and non-Christians.  For the rest of this series I am going to look at the entire picture as it is seen from Christian point of view, as it will be if I am correct and Christianity is true. 

Examined Christian Faith 'The Final Frontier' Part 1.4 - What is Christianity

Just to set the record straight, I am a fan of science.  I am frequently amazed at some of what science 'discovers', and thankful for some of the benefits of science to humankind.  The field of science is made of some of  the most intelligent and observant people on earth, because that is what science is 'observation'.  Which takes us to considering the universe.  Ever since men have been able to think for themselves, we have been wondering about this universe and how it came to be.  Before I delve into the two different camps, do not fool yourself into thinking that one viewpoint was held long ago, and the other has gradually over a period of recent time taken its position.  No, men have always held two viewpoints on this.  Everyone who has ever thought about it has fallen into one of two camps.  

There are those of the materialist viewpoint or more precisely those who think that it all just happens to exist, that it has always existed.  No one really knows why, it just happened.  Moreover, that this matter, by one in a million chance happened to collide to form our galaxy, and then another something happened to form our sun, and still another to form the planets.  Yet by another fluke, our planet just happened to have the right temperature, and chemical makeup to support life, and then some of this matter on earth that had been floating around forever, just happened to come alive.  Then by another incredibly long chain of events leaving creatures developed into creatures like us, who could think and reason, and have emotions, creatures that also just happened to have an inner voice telling directing each of them to believe in the same concept of right verses wrong. 

Then there is the religious view.  According to those who hold this viewpoint, what is behind the universe, what created the universe is more like a mind then anything else we can describe it as.  It has a purpose and prefers one thing over another.  In addition, it was with this view that it made the universe, for reasons we do not know, but one of the reasons was to create beings like us, who like itself have minds. 

You will also notice that science cannot answer the question, because all science works by experiments, no matter how complicated it is, in the end science is simply a matter of observing what happens when x and y interact.  It does not explain the why it happens to, just that it does.  If like in the “Wizard of Oz” there is, anything behind the curtain is a different question, one that science can never answer.  If you suppose as some do, that some day we will know everything in the universe (I personally do not adhere to that), but I would argue that the questions that we have always asked would still be left unanswered “Why is there a universe?”  “Why does it go on and on as it does?”  “What is the meaning of this?”

However, to understand the answers to that, perhaps we should examine the one thing in the entire universe that we know more about than we can learn by science (the art external observations).  This is my point, anyone who was studying humans from the outside as we do the stars, animals, plants, rocks, etc...  would never guess that we have this law of human nature, this moral law.  He would be observing what we do, so his observations would merely be a reflection of what we did, and the law of human nature is about what we should do. 

The point of this is that in our quest to know if there is a power behind the universe, it would not be one of the things we could observe.  There is only one instant in the entire universe, which we can know weather there is anything more than what can be observed.  Namely our own case, or specifically as it pertains to me, in my case.  As C.S. Lewis said “If there is a controlling power outside of the universe, it would not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase in that house.”    

The only way in which we should expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way.  As troublesome as it is, that is precisely what we do find inside ourselves, we find that moral law.  In the only case where we can get an answer, the answer turns out to be yes.  

Therefore, in the only instant where I can peek behind the curtain, I find that I do not exist on my own, as any external observation would deduce, but rather that I am under a law, that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain manner.  Therefore, I can logically reason that as I am under an unseen law, all other matter in the universe is under unseen laws as well (as we can observe) but more importantly I should expect to find that there is a power behind those facts, those laws as well.

So the origin of the universe is either matter or something with a mind.  I personally have a difficult time trying to envision a clump of matter giving instructions, or laws.  You know where I am headed with this, but do not jump ahead of me, I am not talking about the God of Christian theology.  All we have been able to conclude so far, by observing the universe and examining what is unseen within each of us, is that there is in fact a ‘Something’ which is directing the universe, and which it shows itself in me, by giving me a law urging me to do the right thing, and making me feel uncomfortable and responsible when I fail to do so.  

Do not deceive yourself into believing that I am going to propose that the ‘Something’ is cuddly like the puppy dog modern American Christian churches are purporting, Quite the opposite, that ‘Something’ should be feared, as the universe while beautiful is not especially a hospitable place for humans, and the moral law that has been placed inside each of us is as hard as nails.  But I get ahead of myself.  It is time for you to decide which view you hold of the universe, but to me, to propose that all of this is just a matter of chance, a one in a billion long-shot, on top another one in a billion long shot, on top of another one and then to suppose that a clump of matter would instill in me a moral code is simply delusional, and denying what your own moral code tells you.  

If you have never read   THE SHACK  is a great place to begin to realize that not everything can be seen.  Desiring to truly understand 'What is Christianity' is not always easy. .