I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts.
He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.”
I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?”
He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.”
I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?”
He said, “That is correct.”
I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?”
All of a sudden there was silence.
You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.
--Ravi Zacharias
This is an amusing anecdote and may well have been an actual conversation, but it highlights a very true and VERY serious issue... If one takes away the foundation of a structure, it will ultimately crumble. It might not be overnight, but it will happen.
This can be said of morality as well. If we deny the existence of God, it is impossible to justify morality in an atheistic world. Let's be clear, I'm not saying an atheist can not BE moral, or hold moral values, I'm saying that without God one cannot JUSTIFY morality.
Again, I'm NOT saying an atheist cannot have morality, but that without an objective standard of morality, any moral code in a society will eventually give way. Nietzsche describes this in his Parable of the Madman. In this parable he describes a madman who is ranting about the death of God at one point saying "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." Later in the same parable he says this about the death of God:
"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves."
In other words, the implications of godlessness won't necessarily be immediately apparent. It will take time for the eventual implications to become apparent, but it will happen. I will contend we are starting to see the cracks in our society's moral structure today as we've removed God from our sense of morality...
The most common atheistic response I have heard for the justification of morality is that it is a survival mechanism that we evolved. You can say this, but it doesn't make it in any way objective. What if the person in question does not intend to survive? Are they now justified in taking the lives of others? Does life only have value because we want to survive and reproduce? If that's the case, one could easily begin to make the case for eugenics. By eliminating the weak or those who cannot reproduce, we can free up resources for the strong and produce stronger offspring. It sounds like a leap, but it is the ultimate end we arrive at if our only value is that of survival. And what of cannibalism? Are cannibal tribes now justified in what they do because they evolved a different moral code than ours? Would it be wrong to destroy societies that have a different moral code in order to preserve the one we've evolved? If morality is just a survival mechanism, then the ends ultimately justify the means.
Beyond that, if human thought is just a series of chemical reactions in the brain, then we have no reason we can call these reactions moral or immoral. If the universe is a closed system acted on by only by natural laws, then our choices are merely illusions and are actually made by the chemicals and laws themselves. However complex or free our choices may seem, they are completely deterministic and ruled by physics and chemistry. We cannot make value judgments on chemistry. Chemistry isn't right or wrong, it just is...
Whether or not we go this far when teaching it, this kind of morality is implicit when we present our children a world without a God. If our only reasoning for moral behavior is "because I said so" or "Santa won't bring you presents," then our children will eventually outgrow the morality we impose on them. They are smart enough to make the inference that the absence of God means all morality is arbitrary. By the time they reach high school (and usually much earlier than this), devoid of any real objective values, they build their own societies, cliques, with their own subjective values. Those who don't fit into those cliques are treated as having no inherent value and are relentlessly bullied. Those that are bullied have no objective values instilled in them either and now are forced to decide if they should trust the system that has failed this far in protecting them and we see these students take matters into their own hands. I ultimately blame godlessness in society for the violence we see in schools today. The students making hit lists, the school shootings and even, in many cases, the suicides.
And, if there is no God, who are we to say these actions are wrong? If students form cliques and bully, it is merely the tribal morality that they have evolved in a moral vacuum once they realized there wasn't a man in a big red suit who was rewarding them for good behavior and that their teachers and administrators are fallible. And the students that responded by violence or suicide? It was merely the response to stimuli. Maybe we could have fixed this response with medication that altered their chemistry, but it was all just chemistry, right? Can you put a moral value judgment on chemistry?
I don't want to get too political about this. I'm not going to take a hard stance on the gun control question. In the end, I do support the 2nd Amendment. Are there common sense restrictions we could place on the purchase of firearms? Maybe. Will it stop the violence? Probably not. There are online guides for making homemade explosives from household cleaners. If a student is so bent on violence, couldn't they just build a bomb? I'm not saying we should sit back and do nothing... I'm saying the problem is deeper than any legislation could reach. This violence is the eventual result of a godless society. Without God, who's to even say human life has any value at all?
I don't have a political prescription for this, but I've said for years that politics can't save us. That is the job of Christ. I know the part I need to play as a father. I need to instill objective morality into my children and make sure they understand that the Creator of the universe is also the author of morality. I need to make sure they see me valuing my faith, since my words will be empty if not backed by action. This means doing the right thing even when I don't think they are looking. This means not classifying certain immoral behaviors as "adult" since that lets children know that they can redefine morality as an adult. This means requiring church attendance... I may get some push-back on this but I hear many people say they don't want to force their beliefs on their children, and I wonder: If your kids see that you don't require they attend church, but do require they attend school, what message does this send them about our priorities? Do we value success and academic development over moral and spiritual development? Do we encourage Bible study the way we encourage homework?
Ultimately, I mourn when I see the decay of our culture's morality, especially when it takes the form of mass murder. I've seen comments and memes that it's because God isn't allowed in schools, but I'm not even sure it's the schools' place to instill morality... Parents need to instill morality into their children and there MUST be an objective standard for it... Without God, our moral code is like a building with no foundation. It may have the structure we desire, but it will ultimately crumble under pressure. Jesus presents a parable about this. It's found in Matthew 7:24-27:
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”I can't tell everyone they need to be Christians or even theists. I would love it if everyone shared my belief in the loving and gracious God who sent his perfect Son to take away the sins of the world, but I cannot be responsible for anything beyond that which God has given me. My responsibility is to share and defend my faith and to raise my family with the moral code that was put in place by the Author of Life. Just as Joshua said in his final recorded speech to the people of Israel:
“Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Joshua 24:15-16
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