Caring Enough to Confront - What Ever Happened to Right and Wrong?, Part 1

Whatever happened to right and wrong? What is behind the violence, greed, cheating, and moral erosion that we see in business, sports, and even the Church?

Why are good people making so many bad decisions? That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

Thanks for joining us as we begin winding down our series, Caring Enough to Confront, bringing light, not hate, to the most critical issues of our day. And we've covered a lot of really pressing topics that Christians need to be educated about, including sexuality, abortion, and politics, to name a few. But for these last two broadcasts, we're going to revisit a classic message from Chip on the subject of absolute truth and why, as a society, we've tumbled so far down the moral ladder to where we are today. Well, Chip's got a lot of insight to share, so here's his message, whatever happened to right and wrong? We've got a big problem. We've got a big problem inside the Church and a big problem outside the Church. Now, the symptoms flow out of morality, and morality is just the aughts and shoulds.

Every culture from the Code of Hammurabi to the Ten Commandments to the Persians or ancient Chinese, everyone has had a code of morality. This is what is right and this is what is wrong. We're going to talk about a journey that's happened in about the last 60 to 80 years, beginning with the philosophers all the way down to modern culture, about how truth has changed. I want to read something that is deeply disturbing. It's a bit graphic, but what's happened is you can watch the 10 o'clock news and read an article or hear something and get so desensitized like I am that I read this article and it shook me. And it shook me just not because it's a terrible, insidious thing that occurred, but it shook me because of the response of the people that did it. Let me pick up the story.

It happened in Houston. Two young girls, Elizabeth and Jennifer, had gone to a party in the suburbs. They called their moms and dads at 1130 and said, we're on our way home.

The two girls decided they would take a shortcut through the woods. And as they took the shortcut through the woods, there was a gang. It was called the Black and White Group. There was about six young men, ages 14 to 18. They had just finished an initiation rite where they were fighting and proving their machismo and who was strong. And these young girls were walking by, and as the article says, one of them yelled, let's get them. Those six men descended on those two young girls. Four days later, their naked bodies were found in the woods.

It's too graphic to give the details here, but they were raped multiple times, strangled, killed. Now you say, well, Chip, those things happen all the time. No, no, no, no. Wait a second. Ironically, one of those gang members was caught on television the day before with these words, human life means nothing.

Human life means nothing. All six of those young men, ages 14 to 18, participated in both the rape and the murders. All of them were indicted. And upon hearing that they were going to go on trial for murder, one of these young men's response was, hey, great, we finally made it to the big time. My point of that story is not that murder occurred or rape occurred.

That's happened for centuries. My point is there is no remorse. There's no thought that this is wrong or right. My point is what you're going to see is those exact words, life is meaningless. Human life is meaningless.

It came from about a 70-year journey of the transformation of truth, beginning with German philosophers, then through Europe, across the channel to England, over to America by the early 20th century, into everyday culture, and then when existential thought came into full bloom, we have people who say who's to say what's right, who's to say what's wrong. Truth is completely relative. And so people indiscriminately kill other people for pleasure with no remorse. The symptom is our moral issues, and it's not just isolated. The real issue has to do with ethics and values. You see, life can't work without some values and ethics, but here's the dilemma. Who's ethics? Who's to say what's right and wrong? Who can say this is right and this is wrong when relative truth gets into the core and the fabric of a society where everyone says, well, that's true for you, but that's not true for me? And so as you see here, the question behind what's right and wrong is always, well, what's true? If you can't identify this is true, you cannot make up any right or wrong or code of ethics.

To understand the real problem, you need to really get your arms around what's occurred historically, philosophically, and for this, I'm going to take you on a journey. But before we do, I put a list of four books that will trace this journey. The first is Mere Christianity by C.S.

Lewis. It was published in 1943 when the intellectuals were debating the issues of truth. He talks about the aughts and the shoulds within every soul, and he is that famous person who was an atheist, an Oxford professor who became the greatest apologist of the last century. The next book is The Closing of the American Mind. It was written in 1968. This is a very secular book, written by someone who makes absolutely no claim to Christianity, but Alan Bloom wrote this, became a bestseller. It was very controversial in the day, and he writes in the introduction of his book, there's one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of.

He taught at Yale, Cornell, later Chicago University. Every professor can be absolutely certain that every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. The students' backgrounds are as varied as American can provide. Some are religious, some are atheists, some are to the left, some are to the right. Some intend to be scientists, some humanists.

Others, professionals or business people. Some are poor and some are rich. But they are unified only in their relativism and in their allegiance to equality. And the two are related in a moral intention. The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight to them, but a moral postulate.

Do you hear what he's saying? This is 1968, and he basically claims that the universities are ruining the entire next generation because they're teaching that all truth is relative, and now the students believe that. The next book is by a Berkeley law professor, Philip Johnson. It's called Reason and the Balance, The Case Against Naturalism, and he takes the issue of relative truth, applies it to law and to the sciences. He is a Christian.

He debates all over the world. And finally, Francis Schaeffer, who wrote from the 60s all the way through the 90s, and Schaeffer begins to trace philosophically and in culture and in art, how did we get here? See, the question I titled the sermon, whatever happened to right and wrong? What happened to right and wrong? How do we get to where there is no real right or there is no real wrong, or at least no one can agree on a few basic things? I mean, historically, I'm telling you for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, everyone agreed telling the truth, not stealing, being faithful to your partner, being kind, being respectful, not hurting other people indiscriminately, keeping your word, forgiving people who've done you wrong, not murdering.

These were absolutes. And it produced, people may have disobeyed them, but when they disobeyed them, they thought what they were doing is wrong. They didn't do it with a callous, human life has no meaning. We just killed and raped two little girls and it doesn't matter.

And who's to say it does? See, that's the logical end when there is no absolute truth. I was not a Christian most all my life growing up, totally disillusioned with the organized church, which in my particular case, not to say that others were, but in my particular case was filled with hypocrisy. No one believed God's word and no one lived it, and so I rejected it.

I came to Christ at 18, and after coming to Christ, I began to grow rapidly after about three or four years. And then in grad school, I found myself with a lot of relative truth and a lot of sociology professors and psychology professors and a lot of people challenging my faith. And what I found myself was, I was in this situation where I had this amazing experience, I was experiencing God, my life was changing, but I didn't have good answers for the intellectual questions that were being thrown at me. Anybody ever go through that? And I kind of made this internal decision that I'm not going to throw my brains in the trash to follow Christ.

I'm not going to be sort of led into some way that, you know, maybe it's just my emotions. And so I went on a journey. I went on a journey in terms of philosophy and other religions to dig out what is true and how could we know.

I was playing on a basketball team at the time. There was a pre-med student named Steve Vogel, and Steve was very familiar with Francis Schaeffer. I'd never read anything by Francis Schaeffer. He has three key books. One is, he is there and he's not silent. The other is escape from reason, and then the other I put in your notes here. The God who is there.

In Schaeffer, in those three books, that's the core of his trilogy. We'll trace for you and me the movement from absolute truth of all of history, how it started, how it changed, and then how it moved through the different disciplines to where it gets all the way to the point where someone kills two little girls and says life is meaningless. And what I want you to know, that didn't just happen. There's a clear shift in how people viewed truth that impacted morals, that's created the world. By the way, that you live in and your kids live in, and I just want to tell you, this whole series will not be banging the table about people are doing what's wrong and we need to do what's right and this is right and that's wrong and those are terrible people and the problems of government or the problems of Hollywood or the problems of media.

That's not what this is about. This is about us saying we have a problem, we the church have a problem. We don't believe in what's true.

We don't know how to think anymore. And that's why we can't understand why the average age of a teenager leaving the faith is 16 years old. In a recent Barna research, very, very interesting, they went on a campus after doing all this research, went on a large university campus and went randomly to 20 people and just asked them, do you believe there is an absolute truth that's true of all people of all time that is just absolutely true? And the responses went like this, truth is whatever you believe. There is no absolute truth. If there was such a thing, absolute truth, how could we know what it is? People who believe in absolute truth are dangerous.

19 of 20 of those people, that was their response. The 20th was an evangelical student who said, I believe absolute truth is in the person of Jesus Christ. Most of mankind's history has believed that there is truth that is absolutely true whether I experience it or not. For example, things like if I take a book, I can say I don't believe in gravity, but if I drop the book, whether I believe in gravity or not, the book drops. To get more personal, people can say I don't believe in gravity, but if they get to a three-story building and step off, their belief system may change very quickly, or at least their experience does.

We act on things that we don't see like electricity. When we want to have brain surgery, we're really hoping the person believes in absolutes, like that might be the right tumor to take out instead of that. We believe in absolutes when we pull up to a gas station. We don't say any liquid will do. Who would you say, why don't we just put water in?

It's cheaper. I mean, how narrow and you're tolerant to think the only thing that you can put in a combustion engine is gasoline or diesel. We live on the basis of absolutes in all these areas except in the things like what is life all about, what's right and wrong, is there meaning or purpose, why am I here on the biggest issues of life. And so, for most all of history, it's been there's absolute truth. By contrast, you'll notice that truth is relative as the existential concept of truth. In the 60s and the 70s, as it went from the philosophers down to sort of everyday people, you heard phrases like, just do your thing.

If it feels good, do it. Later, as it moved on, it was, well, truth is different from me than different from you. And then finally, the one we hear all the time, well, who are you to judge? The premise of who are you to judge is pluralism. And pluralism simply states that all opinions, all the time, have equal value. And so the number one virtue of relative truth is tolerance.

Not the meaning of the word tolerance in terms of accepting people for where they are, but tolerance as in anyone who says this is right and this is wrong on any issue is intolerant. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And before we hear the remainder of his message, let me quickly ask you, has someone important in your life walked away from God or is intensely opposed to the Bible? Let me encourage you to keep listening after this teaching to learn about our newest small group resource that'll walk through how to skillfully and intentionally share the truth of the gospel in this post-Christian culture. If you're interested, stick around. Okay, let's get back to our series, Caring Enough to Confront.

The number one virtue of absolute truth is truth and justice. And what I'd like to do is take you on a little journey and talk about how we got here. I told you I met that friend on that basketball team, and my first book by Francis Schaeffer, I wasn't a philosophy major, and so I was getting words like metaphysics and epistemology. And so I remember having a three-by-five card where I would read a paragraph, go to a dictionary, look things up. Later, that became the basis of my master's thesis at West Virginia University because I decided I needed to dig in and find out what's true, what's not, what's happened. And so those three books, along with a lot of other information, became the heartbeat of why do I believe what I believe, why do I believe, or do I believe that there is an absolute truth?

And what I want to do is give you a thumbnail sketch. And here's my challenge. Some of you need to pick up some of these books and read and think. We are so technically savvy to get right now information. When it happens, we're living inside of a bubble, and you're living inside of a bubble about what's practical and what can you get and what about this and what about that. But you don't stop to ask the big issues of life. Sometimes you need to read some books that are hard to read, that are thoughtful, that are deep. And then you need to take those concepts, especially if you're a parent, and sit around the table and talk about not just what's right and what's wrong and be a good person, but why do you think the way you think and what's the basis for it? Wisdom, according to the Scriptures, is built on knowledge and understanding. Knowledge is about the what. Understanding is about the why.

So bear with me, but let me give you a little journey on what happened. How did our view change so dramatically? For the first 1,200 years of the church, truth was defined by revelation. In other words, God has spoken.

He's spoken through his word. Old Testament, New Testament. But most people didn't have a Bible.

There wasn't a printing press. The only people that had the truth were, quote, the clergy. Well, after 1,200 years, actually after about 500 or so, we saw that what the church was saying and what the Bible actually taught, there was corruption, just like there's corruption in the church today. And so little by little by little, the church began to teach things that the Bible would say this, but the church would say this, and you have the period that's called the Dark or Middle Ages. People didn't know much.

A lot of things were said in the name of God that were contrary to God, contrary to his will. And religion got used and mixed up with the state. Then we saw the big breakthrough, and the big breakthrough happened in the 13 to about the 1500s called the Renaissance. And the Renaissance, in essence, the word means rebirth. And a rebirth happened in two streams. The one stream in the secular world was going back to the classics, to Greek literature, to Plato, to the arts, to statutes, and pretty soon, instead of man being this worm and this person that has no value or nobility, the Renaissance was the birth of humanism.

It's that man has value and nobility, and given enough time and energy, we can change the world and make the world what it is. And so the classics and art was changed. The other stream was among Christians, and there was a return to historic Christianity to the original text. And so people like Martin Luther began to actually study the Bible for themselves in the original autographs, the Hebrew and the Greek, the Latin Vulgate, and they began to do things and said, realize, you know what, the church is saying this, but the book of Galatians and the book of Romans says this, and that gave birth to the Reformation.

It was a calling back to truth, a calling back to what does God say? And so the Reformation occurred, and you had Zwingli and Luther and Calvin and Melanchthon and this return to truth and this return to what does the Bible say and the authority of Scripture, and you had a revolution occur. Overlapping that was then the Enlightenment in the 1600s to 1700s. It was called the Age of Reason. Rousseau would say that man is basically good, that what we need is we've had all these difficult, painful things that have happened in history, but man is basically good with enough time, with enough education, that we can produce a utopia. Immanuel Kant would follow up that, and you had what's called the rationalist and people that thought reason instead of revelation. Now, it's man's thinking. Man is the center, man is the measure, and we and our thinking and our reasoning is the authority.

When what we think is different than what God says, reason champions. And so you had this birth of the Enlightenment. After the Enlightenment, again, crossing over was the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s. More inventions in that period of time happened than probably the last 2,000 years, amazing inventions, inventions that began to change the world, and prosperity occurred and industry occurred and things were just multiplying, and so now man is the center, reason is the authority, and the self-sufficiency of we can actually change the world.

We'll make the world what we want it to be. In the midst of that, in the 1700s and 1800s, Charles Darwin wrote a book. Did you know he was a theology student? 1859, he wrote a book called Origin of the Species. Now, what you need to understand is that it had little or no scientific impact.

No one bought into it whatsoever, but at the end of the 19th century, it became a buzzword, evolution, and it was the soft or the social sciences that picked up on evolution as a way of thinking and relationships, and it began to become how people begin to think, not that there was scientific credibility behind it. At the same time, another young man, the theory of relativity would be birthed by Albert Einstein. Einstein never thought truth was relative. What he was talking about was a new way of looking at the world, a new paradigm, instead of through just one reference point, and he said, no, no, no, no, you can look at reality through more than one reference point. But the buzzword in the early 20th century was about this idea of relativity. Now, the philosophers then got a hold of this. German philosophers first, and then those German philosophers began to extend through Europe, and then from Europe across the channel, and as I said, then to America. And so that gave birth to what's called the age of modernity or modern thought, 1890 to about 1930.

You had people in ways like never before saying, you know what, truth isn't absolute, it's relative. And so as they came through all these seasons of history, a group like Jasper, later it would be Kierkegaard in Danish, and then later across the channel in France, Jean-Paul Sartre. And pretty soon Nietzsche and the God is Dead movement, and all this was like way out there kind of weird intellectuals, and then it came across to America. And then they began to teach this in the universities, and it began to make its way early in the seminaries of the major denominations. Dewey then in the early part of the 20th century would say, you know something, the real issue isn't what's right or what's wrong, the real issue is what works, and pragmatism was birthed. And basically the whole educational system rather than the classics, and this is true, and what we know, and God being the authority, it's man's the center, our reason trumps everything, truth is something that is a matter of perspective, and then it moved because since that doesn't work, that reality doesn't work in real life. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and you've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Whatever Happened to Right and Wrong, from our series, Caring Enough to Confront. Our world right now can be characterized by one word, divided.

There's a dangerous us versus them mindset out there that's invading every aspect of society. And unfortunately, even in the name of holiness, Christians have begun thinking this way too. So when confronted with the hot button issues of our day, how should followers of Jesus respond? In this vital series, we'll learn the true meaning of being salt and light. Join us as we explore what the Bible says about topics like abortion, politics, and sexuality, and how we are to lead with grace when we engage with those with different beliefs.

You're not going to want to miss a single program. Also, throughout this series, Chip and our guest teachers mention many resources to educate you about what's happening in our world and prepare you to respond in a Christ-like way. We've gathered all of these resources together for you, so check out the entire list right now at livingontheedge.org. That's livingontheedge.org. Well, Chip joins me in studio now to share something with all of you that really ties in to what he taught today. Chip?

Thanks, Dave. The truth of the matter is our culture celebrates our culture and elevates a worldview that's in direct contrast to the Christian one. There's big words floating around on Instagram and TikTok like deconstruction and ex-vangelical. And you can almost go anywhere, your work, the store, a restaurant, and you see a bumper sticker or a T-shirt or a button that just openly declares a belief or opinion that because of our Christian roots, we would just absolutely disagree with. And it's easy to start avoiding those people and grumble about the state of the world or even write them off. Or maybe your strategy is to post a counter opinion on social media.

But there's a better way. My observation is most people would say, yeah, but I don't know how. And that's where this new small group series, Not Beyond Reach, can show you how. It'll show you how to build a bridge to non-religious people. It'll show you how to answer some of those questions in a non-threatening way.

It'll show you how to kind of lighten up and just find common ground and love people where they're at and listen to their story and really engage and make friends. And you will then learn when and how to share the gospel and share your story in meaningful ways. Most people have never met a godly, winsome, loving, other-centered follower of Jesus that they say, I want my life to be like yours, and I'd like to have a marriage like yours, and I'd like to have the joy that I see in you. Could I encourage you? Ask God for a heart for those that are outside of Christ. Then learn with a group of people how you can actually experience no one is beyond reach. The love of God is so powerful and so good, and He wants to teach you and have it come out of you.

Have it come out of your life and your words and your actions so that those who don't believe there's even a God and those who can't imagine Him caring about them could have eternal life and see their life change like never before. Dave, take a moment, if you will, and share how people can get this brand-new small group series. Be glad to, Chip. For complete details, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. As you and your group or Sunday school class dive into this material, we hope you'll develop a renewed drive to reach this next generation with the love and hope Jesus offers. To learn more about our new small group study, Not Beyond Reach, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. App listeners, tap Special Offers. As we close, you know a great way to get plugged in with our resources here at Living on the Edge is through the Chip Ingram app. You can listen to past series, sign up for daily discipleship and more. Let us help you experience God in a new personal way starting today with the Chip Ingram app. We'll listen in next time as Chip wraps up his new series, Caring Enough to Confront. Until then, this is Dave Drouie saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge. Music