Recently when I was having a moment of doubt, wondering if this Christian stuff really is true, I was reminded of the argument that people like Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome project, put forward for their faith. Collins and others such as C.S. Lewis have talked about the moral law, or the sense of right and wrong which we all inherently share. As far as I know, we are the only creatures that are able to transcend our feelings, our basic instincts. Every human being who has ever lived has had a moral sense about them.
We are so trained in our world to see life only in terms of the physical or
material. If we can’t see it, touch it or taste it, it doesn’t exist. But the discovery we make when we don’t subscribe to that worldview, but live as if there really is a moral law, is that we develop an increasingly acute sense of right and wrong.
Now, many people would say at this point ‘well of course you would think that. When we convince ourselves of something, of course our minds will tell us that as we see follow this way of living we will justify it more in our own minds.’ But the test of this lies in the impact such a way of living has on our lives. When I live my life based on the moral law I find that I gradually develop more of a sense of love, serenity, and more of an ability to live life on life’s terms. And it doesn’t work the other way around. If I choose to live as if there is no moral law, by the ‘if it feels good, do it’ mantra, my relationships suffer, starting with my most significant realationships. I also end up hurting people, my sense of emotional control decreases, and my sense of shame increases.
I need to add here that when I talk about a sense of right and wrong, I do not mean ‘black and white.’ Not many things in this world are black and white. Ultimately, morality is about love. When we live by the moral law that dwells within each of us, we are living by love.
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