34. Sociology

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” Ro 1:24-25 (ESV)

The Creation model makes specific predictions about morality and moral standards. Even though moral laws did not become written code until the time of Moses, Genesis clearly indicates people knew right from wrong from the moment Adam ate the forbidden fruit.

Moses was probably not the first to legislate morality and he was certainly not the last. Mosaic law is unique in history for many reasons. Aside from technical and cultural differences, Mosaic law is most unique because the boundaries Moses set for Israel were given to him by God. The differences between human law and divinely given law are profound. For example, Mosaic law protected the weak from the strong. Women had legal protection and recourse for rape. Abuse of slaves, women, children, elderly and the poor was forbidden. Human sacrifice and in particular child sacrifice was explicitly forbidden. Many laws provided for the benefit of community health from washing to quarantine to meal preparation. Ceremonial and worship laws not only kept the people focussed on God, but also provided a strong sense of unity among a large and sprawling society.

God is not only Creator, He is the ultimate lawgiver. God gave Moses those laws as a gift to His chosen people. The purpose was not to burden the people, it was to help them. The Law reveals the righteous character of God. It is a gift of love. So then, why do men so often reject God’s law? God’s standards are holy and perfect because He is holy and perfect. Human nature is corrupt. Our darkness rejects the light of God. We seek to do our own will and satisfy our own desires. Our corrupt nature seeks to reject the perfect law because we know that in our corruption we can never be good enough to satisfy the perfect and holy requirements of God’s law. Just as many in ancient Israel rejected holy law, even after Jesus Christ succeeded in fulfilling the requirements of the law, we too seek ways to reject or ignore God’s law. We want to do what we want to do. We are selfish and self destructive by nature.

If it is difficult for those who believe in the Creator and the absolute standards He established for morality, consider what lengths those who do not believe will go to in order to throw off the oppressive yoke of law that prohibits all the things they love by nature. When the Creator is vanquished from society, the source of ultimate law and morality is vanquished. As people make God smaller, less important, less real, they can indulge their carnal desires with less restriction. By eliminating God completely, moral absolutes are eliminated completely.

There are those who would argue that the United States was not founded on Christian principles because our government is secular. These are often the most vocal opponents of Christianity and Christian principles. They seek to throw off the oppressive yoke of Christianity in every form precisely because scripture demands holiness and they do not want to be holy. The anti-Christian movement is made up of many factions and takes many forms. Some of these movements include those who support homosexuality, abortion, drunkenness, recreational drugs, pornography, animal rights, just to name a few. Any one of these sin cultures would be small on their own, but to gain power and legitimacy they band together in the name of “tolerance.” They are willing to tolerate each other as distinct factions, but they share a common enemy in Christ. The war they wage is not for land or money. The war is for minds and hearts.

In the name of “tolerance,” individual sin cultures seek to convince the general population and even Christians that they should be accepted. Holiness and sin cannot abide one another. The attacks come on many fronts, but the most effective are those attacks on the foundation of faith. By destroying faith in the first chapters of Genesis, the foundation of Christianity is destroyed. Such a statement may sound illogical, paranoid, delusional, or spiteful. After all, Jesus Christ is the basis of Christianity, not Genesis. Right?

It is from Genesis we discover God is the source of life and sin is the cause of death. From Genesis we learn of our purpose and place in nature. From Genesis we learn that we were meant to live in peace with God and nature. If not for human sin, we would not need a redeemer who can fully atone for our sin and give us hope for eternal life. When this foundation is removed, the purpose of life is removed. If humans evolved, they must have transitioned from prior animal forms. Death and the struggle to survive through natural selection, as described in the Evolution model, turns Genesis into a fable. There can be no absolute morality, no sin—original or otherwise—and no need for a savior. The work of Christ to atone for sin on the cross is rendered null and void. If his stated purpose in life and death and resurrection is false, his entire ministry must be a sham. By tossing out Genesis we can and indeed must dismiss everything else in the bible. At best the bible becomes a collection of stories about history. Ancient Israel becomes just another superstitious tribal culture who just happened to have a monotheistic superstition.

If God is who He claims to be—an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent mind of pure holiness and love—then it stands to reason the revelation He gave to humanity must be true. We may not fully understand it and it may not be written in a popular modern language with “proper” scientific terms, but the information it does contain should be correct in all details. A broad range of views of the Creation account do not take the plain text at face value. After all, cycles of light and dark lasting 24 hours make no sense at all prior to the creation of the sun and establishment of our solar system. Right? But if God says that is how it happened, then perhaps the problem is not what God said, but maybe it is our lack of understanding. Later in this book we will consider theories explaining how three normal days could have passed with increasingly ordered cycles of light and dark until the sun was fully and finally formed. For now, suffice it to say there are logical explanations. The ultimate question is not answered by a technical detail—it is answered in your heart.

Regarding society as a whole, both origin models make various predictions. The question, as with each topic we consider, is which model better fits what we actually observe.

Evolution (Materialism) does not predict absolutes for morality. Law and morality are subject to the interpretation of those with power to establish and enforce standards. Although free will is not predicted, the will to survive is assumed in this model. For the sake of preservation and evolutionary advancement, laws should favor the fittest and allow the elimination of the least fit. Few if any other laws are needed. In fact, any system of establishing and administering justice is not predicted. The “fittest” should automatically be the ruling class and those less fit would be allowed to exist only to serve those more fit. Regardless of class, individuals should seek to preserve themselves and their immediate family at the cost of everything else. After meeting basic survival needs, individuals would seek to obtain whatever gives them pleasure and greater fitness.

The Creation model predicts moral absolutes. It predicts a sense of right and wrong within the minds of individuals. This internal sense of right and wrong is called “conscience.” It predicts altruism. It predicts awareness of nonmaterial reality and personal interaction with the Creator. It also predicts free will. It predicts a distinction between holiness and sin. If those in power choose holiness, they will obey the directives of the Creator and establish laws which are holy and just. If they exercise their free will to deny the Creator, they will tend to ignore their conscience and do what pleases their sin-nature instead of what pleases God. The former leads to a free society with justice for all people. The latter leads to despot rulers. Both types of societies can and do exist in our world today.

Although we see ample evidence of societies led by those who believe in the Evolution model, we do not see the Evolution model itself at work in any of those societies. Consider Nazi Germany. Hitler believed in racial superiority. He supported extensive eugenics experiments and he supported destruction of what he considered to be inferior races. In so doing, he exercised free will at every turn. Hitler was a master of propaganda. He appealed to the hearts and minds of his people. Millions of Germans went to war because they loved, trusted, and believed in Hitler, or in other cases were simply compelled and chose service over the alternative. If Evolution were true, it makes very little sense for so many to sacrifice so much.

Conversely, consider the efforts of Wilber Wilberforce in the early 19^th century. He was privately a devout Christian. Although not physically well himself, he spent a substantial share of his wealth on care for the poor. He gave up on his personal dreams to serve in British Parliament with a burning desire to end what he felt was the grievously unjust slave trade. He toiled countless hours and risked his reputation and by some accounts his life in order to rescue untold thousands or even millions from slavery. His efforts were a model and a beacon that would fuel the American abolitionist movement and culminate in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Neither Lincoln nor Wilberforce acted alone. Free will predicts some will seek evil while others will seek good. In both England and Britain slavery was a thriving business built on the capture and trade of other human beings. In both countries there were some who supported the trade and others who felt the practice was an abomination. The free will application of justice stands as strong evidence against Evolution.