Introduction

A study of morality is a study of what human behavior is right or wrong.  On this web site, morality is explored from a Biblical perspective.  As it turns out, the Bible has a good foundational introduction to the issue of morality in the book of Genesis.  These are the primary points taken from Genesis from which we will begin:
  • God existed first
  • God is the ultimate sentient being and He has his own purposes for everything
  • God designed, according to His purpose, a plan for everything's creation and existence
  • God created everything according to His plan and purpose
  • God created everything over a period of time
  • God created everything by effort which warranted a time of rest
  • God created us to worship and obey Him according to His design
  • We exist in a reality of God's design which operates by principles God designed and implemented
  • A key element of God's design of, and purpose for, us is freedom (or "free will") and morality
  • We are confronted with a fundamental temptation and moral question, "is God good?"
  • We abuse our freedom by disregarding God's morality for us, God's design for us, God's purpose for us, and God Himself
  • Our disconnection from God and God's morality has had adverse repercussions throughout the rest of reality, including damage to our human relationships with each other
  • We had eternal life spans with God, but with separation from God, death became a part of our nature
  • God feels pain, and is pained by us, but God respects His original purpose and design for everything, including, within the order of all things, our free will
  • At our first sin, God began working, with effort, over a period of time, to reconcile us to Him
  • We have had a broad spectrum of responses to God's love, from further rejection to repentance
  • As a whole we have continued to reject God and His efforts to redeem us
  • God intervenes overtly in our activities from time to time to advance His plan for our redemption
  • God's plans for reconciliation include calling upon individuals and groups to do His will
  • God makes covenants between Himself and man to advance His plan for our redemption
  • God's ways are different from our ways
Genesis begins with the assertion that there is a God.  This is obviously pivotal to our understanding of morality.  It is not our goal here to make a complete case for the existence of God; otherwise known as apologetics.  Many volumes of books have addressed the issue both in favor and against the case of the existence of God.  We each  make our own decisions of faith.  The case for God's existence here will primarily consist of how appealing we each find the arguments of morality from a Biblical perspective.  For instance, one concern many of us have, in a world that has not only atrocities and on-going wars, but has a rich history of these as well, is, "if there is a God, and He is good, where is he?"  An answer is mentioned in the points above and further below.  If the answers point to something we individually perceive as divine or not, then these answers may affect our belief in God.

Genesis is a book addressing the fundamental aspects of existence and it reveals that morality is vital to our existence.  Some of the most fundamental questions that confront us in life are related to our purpose: "what am I?", "why am I here?", "what am I supposed to be doing?", "what is important?".  Morality is intimately tied to these questions.  "What I am," is strongly related to, "why I am here," and, "what I do."  "What I do," is strongly influenced by, "what is important."  The fact we do not already have the answers to these questions indicates that we are disconnected from the designer of our lives and introduces the, "supposed," to the idea of, "what am I supposed to be doing."  Morality is about what is important, what we are supposed to be doing, and therefore who we are.

When we choose against God's morality we are concluding not only that we can determine for ourselves what is good, but we have also concluded that God is not good.  Perhaps the history, and current events, of the world can be taken as an indication that going it alone, rejecting God, may not be all that we thought it would be.  Furthermore, the fact that God has endured with us for so long is a testament to His goodness, not ours.  Most of us can also conclude that if God were not good, things would be much worse than they are.  So while some of us feel that God has been too patient for not having moved in apocalyptic fashion to correct the world, others of us believe that only with more time will we be able to progress to godhood.

The Bible also indicates that only God's morality is correct, and anything else is immoral.  Genesis 2:17 states, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."  The Bible is using symbolism, and "Eating of it," might also be interpreted as, "profiting of it."  Our attempts to profit from writing our own moral code, by creating our own, "knowledge of good and evil," is commonplace (one does not have to think long to find examples of laws that favor one class of people over another).  Morality is significantly related to how we all get along together.  If we create our own knowledge of good and evil, our behavior will impact others, and probably ourselves, adversely.  The argument that morality is an invention of human self interest is an example of man preparing to create his own morality.  The world is indeed dying of its own moral codes.


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