It is so common to hear this: "If God is so loving and all-powerful, why do so many bad things happen, even to good people?"
If, as proposed in the previous post, the mysterious and the divine are so conspicuously absent from our culture... right away we have a problem. How do we determine what is "bad" or what is "good"? Will we say that human law will tell us what the bad things or happenings are? And, let's see... oh, yes... we did mention good people didn't we? Doesn't that imply that there are bad people too? Who decides the difference?
Obviously, the "yard stick" is relative in our culture today. "Good" is so often measured by what is produced for, or contributed to, the society or community. "Bad" could then be defined as any hindrance relative to the "good".
Regardless of how we measure good and evil, the problem lies in trying to decide this for ourselves. What cannot be explained away, however, is something called natural law.
Natural law is like gravity. Any attempt to deny its existence results in grave consequences. This law puts a rabbit on alert when a wolf is near... and it tells the human heart the difference between what is right and what is wrong.
Consider this... you are standing at the check-out in the grocery store and as the checker hands you the change, you realize that you were given 20 dollars extra in change. Whether or not you tell the cashier and give the money back, the fact that you must make a decision about it tells you that there is a natural law in operation. Furthermore, you will always know deep down that something is wrong if you keep the money, even if you try to tell yourself it's OK. It's the very reason that, if the behavior is observed by someone else, you will come up with excuses... "This is a big store - they won't miss the money." It's simply an attempt to deny that natural law is telling us that something is wrong.
This natural law is a gift from God. Denying its existence or attempting to ignore it is tantamount to denying the existence of, or ignoring, Almighty God.
2 comments:
Wow this is the fourth time that I've tried to reply to your post. I'm really starting to think that somebody does not want us talking!
I think you're right on. The natural law is a powerful proof of the existence of God. The very fact that we have a conscience begs the question why and how did it get there. It is an interesting example you give. I was in the situation once when I was younger. I would like to say I made the right choice but the fact is I did not, and I can attest to the fact that one's conscience will remind them of it.
I once listened to a friend try to argue the existence of God based on the fact that man universally as a conscience. His opponent tried to assert that this was due simply to social upbringing. I believe the problems with this are twofold.
The first is that if it is simply our upbringing one would think that the sense of conscience would get stronger as we age. After all the older we are the longer we have been exposed to the culture and the more indoctrinated we become. The yet precisely the opposite seems to happen. The older we get the weaker our sense of conscience becomes. It seems society actually has a corrupting effect on it.
The second is that if it is truly due to social upbringing then we would expect cultures to develop different values and therefore, individuals to develop varying consciences. However, we find the same universal values echoed in all cultures around the world. This does not make a lot of sense considering some of those values are actually from an evolutionary standpoint detrimental to the survival of mankind. For example, all cultures, to some extent, care for their diseased and dying. But why, from an evolutionary standpoint does it not make more sense to let the dying die and if the diseased are beyond a certain point to leave them to their dying. This would be the most practical solution. After all it takes energy and resources to take care of them. There is practically no chance of them paying these resources back. So why do all people around the world universally take care of their sick. Other than it is "the right to do". There is something written on our hearts that tells us that it is "the right thing to do".
I agree, except...
I would like to focus on your third paragraph here, which has an interesting twist. What the opponent said about the sense of conscience being socially formed is actually true, but not in the sense he means.
Society is forming conscience all the time, but it is a conscience that must conform to the culture and be formed by the laws imposed by the culture.
For instance, in the current culture one could confidently say that they have a well formed conscience regarding abortion, because he/she is saying and doing all the right things with regard to the issue. He/she is careful to use the politically correct terms "choice" or "woman's right to choose" and will avoid hampering the right of "choice" granted by the culture.
However, if one believes that there is a supreme being somewhere beyond our senses who is the ultimate authority for what is right and wrong, everything changes. A person believing thus can no longer blindly accept what the culture demands without first checking it against the strictures of the supreme law. It is only from this perspective that the individual can clearly see laws and norms imposed by the culture that are, at the least, unfair and, at the worst, immoral and/or deadly.
What I am trying to say is that the conscience can be formed in both ways, but the one formed by natural law is entirely different than the one formed by the culture. This makes it very difficult to persuade based on the conscience argument. Moral relativism rears its ugly head and the discourse becomes a quagmire.
Post a Comment