1. Morality - Why Are We Good?
I'm starting the article with
this "The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?"
It is hard to imagine how, without
religion, one can be good, or would even want to be good? But the doubts go
further, and drive some religious people to outburst of hatred against
those who don't share their faith.
It's natural and natural selection
can easily explain hunger, fear and sexual lust, all of which straightforwardly
contribute to our survival or the preservation of our genes. But what about the
wrenching compassion we feel when we see an orphaned child weeping, an
old widow in despair from loneliness, or an animal whimpering in pain? What
gives us the powerful urge to send an anonymous gift of money or clothes to
tsunami victims on the other side of the world whom we shall never meet, and
who are highly unlikely to return the favor?
First, there is the special case
of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the repayment of favors
given, and the giving of favors in 'anticipation' of payback. Following is
third, the benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness.
Let's look at how moral
philosophers think (reference from the Harvard biologist Marc Hauser, in his
book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong).
A hypo-experience in answering it tells us something about our sense of right
and wrong.
The moral dilemmas:
Imagines
a person, Peter, standing by a set of points and in a position to divert the
trolley onto a siding, thereby saving the lives of five people trapped on the
main line ahead. Unfortunately there is a man trapped on the siding. But since
he is only one, outnumbered by the five people trapped on the main track, most
people agree that it is morally permissible, if not obligatory, for Peter to
throw the switch and save the five by killing one man on the siding might be
Beethoven, or a close friend or family.
What
if the trolley can be stopped by dropping a large weight in its path from a
bridge overhead? That's easy: obviously we must drop the weight. But what if
the only large weight available is a very fat man sitting on the bridge,
admiring the sunset? Almost everybody agrees that it is immoral to push the fat
man off the bridge, even though, from one point of view, the dilemma might seem
parallel to Peter's, where throwing the switch kills one to save five.
What about this dilemma:
Five
patients in a hospital are dying, each with a different organ failing. Each
would be saved if a donor could be found for their particular faulty organ, but
non is available. Then the surgeon notices that there is a healthy man in the
waiting-room, all five of whose organs are in good working order and suitable
for transplanting. In this case, almost nobody can be found who is prepared to
say that the moral act is to kill the one to save the five. What about
you?
Marc Hauser and his team adapted
their moral experiments to the Kuna, a small Central American tribe with little
contact with Westerners and no formal religion. The researchers changed the
'trolley on a line' though experiment to locally suitable equivalents, such as
crocodiles swimming towards canoes. With corresponding minor differences, the
Kuna show the same moral judgments as the rest of us.
Surely, if we get our morality
from religion, they should differ. But it seems that they don't.
Do note that when I say religion
here and in the following passages, I meant all forms of religion, be it
Christianity, Islamic, Buddhism, etc.
Marc Hauser, working with the
moral philosopher Peter Singer, focused on three hypothetical dilemmas and
compared the verdicts of non-religious people and religious people. In each
case, the subjects were asked to choose whether a hypothetical action is
morally 'obligatory', 'permissible' or 'forbidden'. The three dilemmas were:
1. 90% of people said it was
permissible to divert the trolley, killing the one to save the five.
2. You see a child drowning in a
pond and there is no other help in sight. You can save the child, but your trousers
will be ruined in the process. 97% agreed that you should save the child
(amazingly, 3% apparently would prefer to save their trousers).
3. The organ transplant dilemma
described above. 97% of subjects agreed that it is morally forbidden to seize
the healthy person in the waiting-room and kill him for his organs, thereby
saving five other people.
The main conclusion of this study
was that there is no statistically significant difference between
non-religious people and religious believers in making these judgments.
Do we still need to discuss about Moral Laws?
Which we open up these taboo
questions:
"Do
we need God in order to be good - or evil?"
"Do
you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his
disapproval and punishment?"
What about love? Or should we be
good because of love and spread our love to others because our perfect Christ
Jesus gave and continue to give us His abundant of love. So much that it is
overflowing that we want to spread the more-than-sufficient love He gave us to
others who has yet to know Him?
Morality. Is it always wrong to
put a terminally ill patient out of her misery at her own request? Is it always
wrong to kill an embryo? Is abortion always wrong? Attitudes to homosexuality
reveal much about the sort of morality that is inspired by religious faith. An
equally instructive example is abortion and the sanctity of human life. Morals
do not have to be absolute.
With or without religion, you'd
have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But
for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. Individual
non-religious people may do evil things, but they don't do evil things in the
name of being non-religious.
Shouldn't our core belief be love?
"Just keep loving them.
And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love,
you see. It is redemptive and this is why Jesus says love. There's something
about love that build up and is creative. There is something about that that
tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies." Dr Martin
Luther King Jr., delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama
on November 17, 1957.
2. The Bible And Homosexuality
I urge you to watch the following
video. It's all scripture based:
http://www.matthewvines.com/transcript
(alternative link: http://youtu.be/ezQjNJUSraY).
In the above video,
the speech was delivered by Matthew Vines in March 2012 at a church in his
hometown about the Bible and homosexuality.
What I would like
to highlight from his speech:
"Gay people, male and
female, are just as much children of God and just as much a part of His
creation as everyone else. And there’s something terribly unseemly about
straight insisting that gay are somehow inferior to them, or broken, or
that gay people only exist because of the fall, and that God really intended to
make everyone straight like them."
"And how aware are you of
the ways in which you may be contributing to suffering and hurt in gay people’s
lives? It’s still commonplace for straight Christians to say, “Yes, I
believe that homosexuality is a sin, but don’t blame me – I’m just reading the
Bible. That’s just what it says.” Well, first of all, no, you are not just
reading the Bible. You are taking a few verses out of context and extracting
from them an absolute condemnation that was never intended. But you are also
striking to the very core of another human being and gutting them of their
sense of dignity and of self-worth."
"Being different is no crime.
Being gay is not a sin. And for a gay person to desire and pursue love and
marriage and family is no more selfish or sinful than when a straight person
desires and pursues the very same things. The Song of Songs tells us that King
Solomon’s wedding day was “the day his heart rejoiced.” To deny to a small
minority of people, not just a wedding day, but a lifetime of love and commitment
and family is to inflict on them a devastating level of hurt and anguish. There
is nothing in the Bible that indicates that Christians are called to perpetuate
that kind of pain in other people’s lives rather than work to alleviate it,
especially when the problem is so easy to fix. All it takes is acceptance."
"...the truly Christian
response to them is acceptance, support, and love."
More articles:
By Rev. Elder Don Eastman:
By 19 theologians of differing
backgrounds ranging from Baptist to Reformed Judaism and Roman Catholic to
Methodist, etc:
Even if you believe the above are
all "false teachings", and you are a believer of the Word as what you read verse
by verse literally, then let's look at what is sin?
3. Sins, Grace And Our Perfect
Lamb
What is sin? The meaning of sin in
Greek ( ἁμαρτία, ας, ἡ, or hamartia) means "missing the mark" as in when throwing a
spear at a target.
"When Adam sinned, sin
entered the world. Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone."
Roman 5:12. When Adam sinned, he 'missed the mark' of God's standard as what
God initially created Adam to be. "For everyone has sinned; we all fall
short of God's glorious standard." Romans 3:23
But thank God for Jesus, taking
the Bible literally, isn't it clear enough that Christ Jesus died for us and
overcame all sins?
- "God made him who had no sin to be sin for
us, so that we might become the righteousness of God." 2
Corinthians 5:21
- "So we are made right with God through
faith and not by obeying the law." Romans 3:28
- "And we have received God's Spirit (not the
world's spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given
us." 1 Corinthians 2:12
- "I tell you, her sins - and they are many -
have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven
little shows only little love." Luke 7:47
- "Because God's children are human beings -
made of flesh and blood - the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as
a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of
the devil, who had the power of death. ... Then he could offer a sacrifice
that would take away the sins of the people." Hebrews 2:14, 17
- "God sent him to buy freedom for us, so
that he could adopt us as his very own children... I plead with you to
live as I do in freedom from these things, for I have become like you
Gentiles - free from these laws." Galatians 4:5, 12
- I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if
righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."
Galatians 2:21
- "When
you were dead in your sins and
in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all
our sins," Colossians 2:13
- "Once for
all when He offered up Himself." Hebrews 7:27
- "In him we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance
with the riches of God's grace." Ephesians 1:7
Jesus
Christ paid the full price for all our sins that we will commit in our
lifetime. Christ does not need to be crucified again for our future sins. In
fact, all our sins were in the future when He died on the cross. So when we
received Jesus into our heart, ALL our sins, past, current and future, were
completely forgiven!
God is not looking at your
nobility, sacrifices, or good works to justify you. He is only interested in
Jesus' humility at the cross. He looks at His Son's perfect sacrifice at
Calvary to justify you and make you righteous!
Attempting to be justified by your
good works and trying your best to keep the Ten Commandments to become
righteous is to negate the cross of Jesus Christ and it's saying "the
cross is not enough to justify me, I need to depend on my good works to make
myself clean and righteous before God!" - No! That is not right!
- "For it is by grace you have been saved...
not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9
- And if by grace, then it is no longer of works,
otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer
grace; otherwise work is no longer work." Romans 11:6
There is no middle road. You are
either righteous by God's grace or you are trying to merit righteousness with
your own words or actions. You are either depending on Jesus or on yourself.
There is no in between!
- "And no one puts new wine into old
wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the
skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." Mark
2:22 / Matthew 9:17 / Luke 5:37
Why do we have to keep listening
to the gospel of grace, over and over again? Because it is so easy to fall from
grace and back to the law.
- "The law was brought in so that the
trespass might increase. But where sins increased, grace increased all the
more." Roman 5:20
We need to put our focus on
Christ, place forth love as our core belief as that is the core of our Lord
Christ Jesus' character. When Jesus came to earth, He placed a particular focus on those others overlooked, on those who were
outcast, on mistreated and marginalized minorities. And if we are working to
emulate the life of Christ, then that’s where our focus needs to be, too.
- "The grace of our Lord was poured out on me
abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus."
1 Timothy 1:14
Jesus told
the religious scholars: "There's nothing done or said that can't be
forgiven." Mark 3:28
We are a reflection of our faith and belief to the unbelievers,
let us display the true character of our Lord and Savior, and not act on our
own self-righteousness.
“It is not
our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and
celebrate those differences.” Audre Lorde
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