Where do we get our sense of right and wrong? How do we come to have a conscience that pricks us when we violate what we believe is moral?Is right and wrong determined by some higher authority? And if it is, how did they determine what was right and wrong ...did they just make it up arbitrarily?
Christians believe in a highest authority -God- and that morality is determined through him. But not determined by some process of random selection, but rather by the very standard of His character, His nature. God's character determining God's will. God’s holy and loving essence governing what He commands from His creation.
Thus the values of morality are not based primarily upon what God has said, but upon who He is.
As humans created in this God's image, morality is part of our heritage. We have been purposely ingrained with a sensibility toward right and wrong; a conscience that finds its innate objectivity in Gods architecture of us. It is part of us. We are morally aware due to design; not evolution, not biological advantage; not even religion. Design.
However, as the bible says, we are also sinners. Such that, though we are morally sensitive and aware, we also make wrong choices that fall well outside the image of the God we were designed to reflect. The further we remove ourselves from God, the more awry our innate moral choices become, resembling less and less His perfect nature and will.
Like God, we exist and operate in the freedom of our own choices (free will). However, unlike God who alone is self-defining, we find our definition only in God's design of us. We were not designed to determine our own nature, but to reflect His; his image bearers. Therefore our freewill works to Gods purpose and our best interest only within the context of our design. Choices made outside that context violate God's purpose and our best interest.
Freewill, then, becomes the catalyst for evil. Not by its use, but its misuse. If evil is that which is opposed to Gods will (as determined by his nature), and Gods will is that we fulfil our design by reflecting His nature, then when we chose to not reflect that nature, we choose instead an evil nature (our will out of harmony with His).
The bible teaches that men have a conscience that either accuses or defends within them, call this a moral compass if you will. However it also speaks of mankind being dualistic in his moral nature (spiritual and carnal), desiring to do both right and wrong; God's will as well as our own. Further, it speaks of the danger of the carnal nature, for it has the ability to sear the conscience, as a hot iron sears flesh; until consciences ability to adequately influence us is lost, like seared nerves that no longer register pain.
In the lives of those with such a damaged moral compass, the bible speaks of situations where "good will be called evil, and evil good". In societies where such thinking has become predominant, anarchy is a reality. Not in the sense that there is no government, but moral anarchy, where each looks to their own damaged conscience for guidance, with no respect for a higher authority.
Such is mankind's tendency to do this -and history proves it so- that the bible instructs men and woman to heed moral absolutes as presented in scripture, and to resist the carnal temptation to elevate our own will above Gods.
John 3:17
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
1 Peter 2:12
People who do not believe are living all around you and might say that you are doing wrong. Live such good lives that they will see the good things you do and will give glory to God on the day when Christ comes again.
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