Well, at the age of 16, Lance Armstrong started competing in triathlons.
He became national sprint course champion in 1989 at the age of 18, two years after starting
competing and again in 1990.
In 1992, he became a professional cyclist at the age of 21.
He won the world championship the next year.
Three years later, 1996, he was diagnosed with cancer.
He returned to cycling just two years later in 1998 and won the Tour de France.
And for the next seven years, he won that race, seven years in a row.
He was a champion who beat cancer.
And we love winners, particularly winners who overcome adversity.
So why is he not liked anymore?
Because he cheated.
He broke the rules, took performance enhancing drugs.
When it first was raised in his career around about 1990, 1999, he denied it and eventually
came out with a public admission in 2013.
He was stripped of all of his awards and he was given a lifetime ban from all sport.
Not just from cycling, from all sport.
The judge, in declaring that, considered that he was the biggest cheat they'd ever experienced.
As human beings, we don't just look at the world through the lens of what is.
We look at the world through the lens of what ought to be.
We can't help but think that some things are right and some things are wrong.
But how do you decide which is right and which is wrong?
There's a whole range of ethical issues.
We face it every single day of our life of what's an ethical issue.
Use of plastic bags.
The origin of the clothes that I wear.
Cold power stations.
Generosity.
Immigration.
Sexuality.
Whether I'm allowed to poke little furry animals with sticks.
Like, the range of issues is you're confronted with it every day.
What's good?
What's bad?
But specifically, on what basis do you decide what's good and what's bad?
What we're seeking to do in the coming weeks is to look at Christianity.
Look at the rising tide of secularism in our society.
And we're also looking at some other religions, occasions.
We throw that in there.
And see which of these belief systems, and they are all belief systems, including atheism.
So if you weren't here last week, go and check that one out from last week.
And work out which is the best solution to what every human being needs in order to flourish.
In life.
Things like meaning, the ability to face suffering, an identity solid enough to endure all the ups and downs of our personal performance.
A basis for moral judgment, deciding on what is right and wrong, which is today.
Belief systems is what provides these things, so which does it best.
And the goal in the next number of weeks is to strengthen the faith of the believer, but also to challenge the skeptic to see that the Christian faith, which is increasingly becoming rejected in our society, is both plausible, relevant, and good.
And so today we're looking at the contribution to Christianity in the issue of morality.
And I want to do that by three ways.
What we're looking at is by looking at how these good and evil decisions, morality decisions used were traditionally made, how they're made in a secular culture like today, and the unique contribution of the Christian faith.
So traditional good and evil.
A moral judgment is how we explain moral convictions, moral obligations, and moral motivation.
So every moral judgment has three elements to it.
A moral conviction or a moral feeling, a moral obligation, and a moral motivation.
A moral conviction is I feel X is right and I feel Y is wrong.
I feel I feel I should always do X, but I should never do Y.
And it's a moral conviction, it's a moral feeling.
It's personal.
A moral obligation, however, is when I say I feel X is right and you also should feel X is right.
You're obligated to feel the same way that I feel.
It's moral obligation.
Even if you don't feel it, you should feel it.
It's an ought.
That's the difference between moral feelings and moral obligation.
So what is the basis for moral obligation?
That's the key that I want to really unpack today.
What's the basis for moral obligation?
Historically, all religions and traditional cultures have said that the basis for moral obligation
is a sacred order that exists outside of the world in which we live.
It's transcendent.
Christianity, Judaism, Islam have traditionally said,
if God says it's wrong, then it's wrong.
Even cultures that didn't have any concept of a personal God, such as the Greeks,
still believed in a realm that existed beyond the physical material world in which we lived.
In fact, the Greeks called that realm the logos.
The thing that was behind the world that gave order to the world was the logos.
The logos was the cosmic order, a set of moral absolutes that stood outside the universe.
And to live a good life in this world as a Greek was to align yourself with that moral order of the logos.
Ancient Chinese, especially Confucius, had a similar idea.
Confucius told people how to live, but not because he said so.
Confucius said you must live this way because it fits with heaven's will.
A wise and a virtuous life was aligned to heaven's will.
Now, of course, all the different religions and cultures have different opinions on that sacred order
and therefore on what those moral absolutes were.
But there is, and nevertheless, that was the basis of a rational justification for every bit of morality and moral decision.
That is, every justification for morality was linked to purpose.
There's a purpose behind the universe.
And unless I obey the moral absolutes and fulfil my purpose, then I will most likely destroy my life now
and also in the afterlife if that belief system had an afterlife.
Now, that's how people used to make decisions of what was good and what is not.
It was linked to purpose.
Telos is the Greek word for purpose.
Telos, the end, the goal of life.
Your life must align to the telos.
And the other Greek word that they used, as I mentioned, was logos,
which means the word, the logic, the reason for something,
the purpose and the reason, the telos and the logos.
You must align your life to the telos and the logos.
For instance,
is this a good watch or a bad watch?
On what basis do you make that decision?
Because it's black?
You must first ask the question,
what is the purpose of the watch?
You see, I could put this watch on and say,
well, it's a, you know, I think it's a good watch.
And then I decide that I'm going to hammer a nail into this brick wall with my watch.
And it breaks it and you go, bad watch.
Bad, bad watch.
But that's not the purpose of the watch.
What is the purpose of the watch?
You cannot decide whether it's a good or a bad watch
until you first understand the purpose of it.
And that is what traditional cultures do.
What are human beings made for?
And the answer to that question is the basis of determining between good and evil.
Now, the secular framework for determining good and evil starts without any purpose.
Secularism says all of life is an accident
and it rejects any sense of the transcendent world.
A transcendent creator, a transcendent being,
in his book River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins writes this.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Now, let me just say here,
just in case you think I'm going to head in an unhelpful direction,
I believe, I think,
that secular people, atheists,
do good things.
It's not a question of whether they can do good things.
They can do very good things.
In fact, there are many atheists
who have incredibly high moral convictions,
moral feelings.
I do, however,
think that there is an enormous problem
for a secular society like ours
on the issue of moral obligation.
A secular worldview really struggles
to have a consistent,
coherent argument for moral obligation.
So Richard Dawkins writes that in a book.
And then the same Richard Dawkins,
in the summer of 2013,
when England was playing Australia in the Ashes Test,
and he's a major cricket fan,
accused English player Stuart Broad of cheating.
The fuming cricket fan Hawkins wrote on Twitter,
Stuart Broad obviously knew perfectly well he was caught,
refused to walk,
what a revolting cheat.
I now want Australia to win the Ashes,
and don't we all?
The question is,
on what basis did Hawkins make that claim?
It's a value judgment.
On what basis did he make that claim?
He can only say Broad was a cheat
if there is a purpose by which Broad,
Hawkins,
and you and I must live to.
On what basis does this secular person
call for moral obligation?
You must not cheat.
Now, I'll mention a few of the main arguments
for moral obligation in the secular world.
There's a number of them,
but here's just a few of the bigger ones.
First, there's the evolutionary argument.
It states,
Well,
all organisms are engaged in a struggle to survive,
and those things that help species survive
are selected.
A giraffe's long neck,
a cat's ability to land on its feet,
nine times out of ten,
or a human being's sense of morality.
It's an evolved sense we have.
That is,
the moral feelings we have come,
have come from our ancestors,
and they help us to survive.
One major counter-argument against that view
is that evolutionary ethics
describes function,
not morality.
Natural selection has chosen
the lion's pointy teeth.
It's chosen the eagle's wings.
It's chosen the baboon's big red butt.
Not because they're right,
not because they're good,
but because they work.
They get the job done.
Another counter-argument is that
just because ethical behavior,
X, Y, Z,
helped my ancestors survive,
that doesn't in any way
obligate me to live in exactly the same way as them.
There's no obligation to follow a feeling
just because it's evolution.
A further counter-argument is that
if morality is a result of evolution,
then you cannot logically
criticize the past generations.
You cannot criticize
previous decisions of other cultures
because they were simply less evolved.
In other words,
what they,
at their stage of evolution,
determined to be good
cannot now be called bad.
It's like saying,
my cat is a terrible cat
because it cannot fill its own water bowl.
A secular person
cannot in any good conscience
criticize any past behavior of societies
as being immoral.
It's like that.
That's a difficult problem for them.
In other words,
marriage between a man and a woman
in past generations
was good.
They have to say it was good.
One last counter-argument.
If evolution and natural selection
is the basis for moral obligation,
then the strong eating the weak
is natural
and any feeling that I have contrary
is wrong.
Genocide is natural
because it's the strong
eating the weak
and it therefore has to be
determined as good.
Secondly,
the pragmatic argument.
This one is simply,
if no one does good,
then all we're going to get
is bad
and so it's in the best interest
of everyone to do good.
The pragmatic argument
isn't saying
it is wrong
to let the poor starve.
They're saying
it's just impractical
to let the poor starve.
It's impractical
not to help
Syria and Turkey right now.
Now the danger
of this argument
is the definition
of what is practical
comes down to
what's at my best interest.
The reason I should care
about the environment
and feed the poor
is because it serves me.
It's about my good.
It will turn out better for me.
It sounds very self-centred.
The third argument,
which is the one
that's really popular nowadays,
and you probably see this
worked out in the media
a lot more,
is the social consensus.
This one tends to be
the most popular, I think.
As a modern society,
we've progressed to see
that some things
that were done in the past
were not so good
and now we're seeing
them as bad
and we need to
right the bad.
Can you see how that one
conflicts with the first
argument of evolution?
And there is a social consensus
or there soon will be
that that stuff is bad
and needs to be changed
to the good.
If a majority says
it's wrong to starve the poor,
then it's wrong
to starve the poor.
Now, the counter argument
for this
is many
and it's pretty straightforward.
A thousand years ago,
social consensus
said that slavery
was fine.
So was it good then?
Or was it fine then?
It wasn't good then,
was it?
I mean, was slavery good then?
In other words,
has racism only just become
a bad thing?
Or was it bad
300 years ago?
It was wrong then too.
Even though there was
social consensus
for it back in those days.
Don't forget
there was social consensus
in Nazi Germany
to exterminate the Jews.
Social consensus
in itself
is not the basis
of morality.
There was social consensus
in our society
to effectively
denigrate
Aboriginal cultures.
There was social consensus
to exterminate them
in Tasmania.
Was that good?
No.
There's a second sting
in the tale of this one
which I think
that
the modern progressives
need to realise.
Anything that is called
good today,
your deepest values,
your treasured
moral standards
could well be considered
bad within the next 20 years.
Depending on how society changes.
Good cannot be determined
by society
because society shifts
so quickly.
It has a fickle mind.
The biggest problem
with the social consensus argument
is how quickly
it leads to the problem
of authority.
And the problem
of what if you are
in the minority
that doesn't agree.
it could be
the wealthy,
the government,
the newspaper editors,
the school bully,
the social media influence,
or just simply
the one
who shouts
the loudest.
The person
with power
can impose
their own
set of morality
on others
even if there's
no justification
for that morality
whatsoever.
ever heard
statements like
religion should have
no voice
in today's
modern secular society
when discussing
ethical issues?
That's an authority
argument.
The counter to this
is that if I have
a view
on an ethical issue
and you have
a different view
but I force you
to have my view
isn't that called
oppression?
And all we've done
in our society
and I want to put
my hand up
and I'm going to say
this a little bit later
the church has done
that in the past
it's just now
becoming a minority
voice
there's now
a majority
secular voice
doing exactly
the same thing.
We've just changed
from one oppression
to another oppression.
former professor
of law
at Yale University
Arthur Leff
who was best
known
for a series
of articles
examining
whether there is
such a thing
of morality
at all
once said
all claims
of moral
obligation
are authority
claims.
he concluded
that in the absence
of God
there are
but two options.
The secular world
has got two options.
You turn
every individual
person
into a little
God of themselves
able to decide
good and evil
for themselves
but then
who evaluates
between them
when there's
a clash
between
the little
God
claims.
Who does
that?
How do you
decide?
How do we
do that
in our
modern day?
One yells
louder than
the other.
Alternatively
he says
you can turn
the state
into God
and let it
determine
good and
evil
but then
might
power
becomes
right
and you
end up
with sheer
naked
brutality.
He says
if you
go down
that route
morality
becomes
meaningless.
If you
go down
the personal
God
route
morality
becomes
impossible.
What I
would add
is that
if the
former
ultimately
gives
the former
one
of every
individual
being gods
and making
their own
decisions
gives rise
to anarchy
in society
and then
you need
the latter
to solve
the anarchy.
secularism
has a
very
significant
problem
between
determining
what is
good and
evil for
society.
It cannot
produce
moral
obligation
by itself
and so
in secular
society
all we do
is yell
at one
another
yell
and yell
and so
the rise
of social
media
angst
yelling
about
who's
right
and who's
wrong.
It's
interesting
that
left
himself
an agnostic
and therefore
didn't think
it was possible
to know
whether God
existed at
all
ends
his essay
by
pointing
out
that there's
only one
solution
one solution
and that
would be
that goodness
was something
bigger
than us.
This is an
agnostic
saying this
something
outside of
this
something
outside
of us
only then
could ethics
morality
and law
work.
perhaps
this
source
of
goodness
could
also
help
with
the
question
of
purpose
give us
a clue
that we
are not
merely
cosmic
accidents
churned up
from the
genetic
cauldron
of chaos
but instead
that we
were made
for something
we were
fashioned
to be
something
of course
this raises
its own
problem
what are
the implications
for us
if we
fall short
of the
transcendent
source of
goodness
what if
we discover
that we
are not
aligned
to goodness
what if
we discover
that we're
actually not
good
as people
if goodness
is not
controlled by
me
if it's not
controlled by
society
it may
turn out
that this
transcendent
goodness says
that I'm in
fact messed
up
that this
world's
messed up
everyone's
messed up
because the
whole point
of a moral
standard is
that we all
would measure
up and
what if we
don't
this is what
makes the
issue of what
I'm talking
about this
morning the
issue of
morality
reality not
simply a
philosophical
discussion
but a
highly
personal
one
so what
if we
were made
for something
what if we
were fashioned
to be
something
and even
as
Christianity
declares
intended
to know
someone
that's
the
unique
contribution
of
Christianity
to this
whole
discussion
or if
you like
the unique
contribution
of the
goodness
of Jesus
Christ
Christianity
stands
with all
the other
great
religions
in declaring
that there
are moral
absolutes
that are
outside of
us
that are
the basis
of our
moral
feelings
and our
moral
obligation
they're the
basis of
moral feelings
and moral
obligation
and also
behind our
moral motivation
having said
that
what we see
in our
society right
now in
this country
and many
places in
the western
world is
people shedding
religion and
particularly in
the western
world shedding
Christianity
because they
see a
self-righteousness
in that
Christianity
they see a
legalism
they see a
cruelty
they see a
hypocrisy
they see a
history of
oppression
throughout history
religion and the
Christian church
has in my
view got blood
on its hands
for abuse of
power on
moral absolutes
religious
institutions
have in
the past
when they
had the
power
yelled
the most
many have
abandoned
that therefore
abandoned the
Christian faith
and moved
towards secularism
as a reaction
to what they've
seen in the
hypocrisy of the
church in the
past
what I've
tried to do
this morning
is show that
if that has
been your
move
that doesn't
solve your
problem
secularism does
not solve your
problem so what
is the solution
hopefully you
remember this
a little while
ago I talked
about the
Greeks
and they
believed
the
logos
was the
cosmic order
behind the
universe and
gave it
its purpose
if you're
connected to
the logos
and lived
by the
logos
then you
would be
living a
wise and
virtuous life
that is in
obedience in
following the
logos is the
way of
a virtuous and
wise life in
this world
at the beginning
of the bible
passage that was
read out to
us by
noeline
john chapter
one we read
this in the
beginning was
the word and
the word was
with god and
the word was
god he was
with god in
the beginning
and through him
all things were
made without
him nothing was
made that has
been made in
him that is the
word was life
and that life was
the light of all
of mankind
and then down
into verse 14
this word became
flesh and made
his dwelling
amongst us
this word who
was god came
and lived
amongst us
and we have
seen his
glory the
glory of the
one and only
son who came
from the father
full of grace
and truth
that word there
is referring to
as you go
through john's
gospel you
realize in
verse 17 it
makes it very
clear the word
is jesus christ
why is he
calling him the
word john's
writing this to
greeks why is he
referring to jesus
what a weird thing
why call him the
word because in
the original
language the word
word is
logos
john in writing
this is using a
technical greek
philosophical term
to say that
there are moral
absolutes
there is a
purpose
it's not an
abstract set of
standards but the
logos of the
world the purpose
of the world
the standard of
the world
is not a book
it's not a set of
laws
it's a person
jesus christ
there is a
rational design
and order behind
the universe
it's not a code
it's a person
it's jesus christ
i find it
remarkable
quite telling in
fact
that when
a secular
person
is engaging
with the
christian faith
they pick out
obscure passages
from the old
testament
and talk about
the implausibility
of those
passages
as if it's
some sort of
code to be
obeyed
and they don't
look at the
person of jesus
christ and pull
apart him
they don't pull
apart his
character
what we discover
about the logos
in john's gospel
is that the
deepest moral
obligation
of every
human being
the
ought
of every
human being
is to
know him
having
been asked
in john
six
what was it
that god
required of
people
jesus responds
the work of
god is this
to believe
in the one
he has sent
that's the
deepest moral
obligation of
every human
being
to acknowledge
the son
jesus christ
knowing him
through knowing
him through a
personal love
relation with
him we come
to the heart
of the universe
christians believe
that we are not
good or saved
by living up to
some abstract
moral code
moral standards
we are saved
by jesus christ
the logos
coming into
his creation
to die on a
cross for
for us
not living
up to
our deepest
deepest
moral obligation
as people
and that is
knowing and
loving and
worshipping the
creator god
christian declares
that god has
set the
perfect moral
standard
and jesus christ
god himself
has come into
this world
in order
to achieve
it for us
he lived
the perfect
life for
us
and he
died
the perfect
death
for us
a christian
is someone
who trusts
in the goodness
and the grace
of jesus christ
and so
brothers and
sisters
if you're a
christian here
at the moment
to the degree
that you
really
understand
the very
heart of
the faith
is that
jesus christ
is the
logos
who came
into this
world
onto this
earth
he died
for you
to cover
over all
of your
wrongdoing
all of your
moral failure
so that you
live by grace
and love
is to the
degree
that you
as a christian
will in fact
live by grace
and love
in this world
the goodness
of jesus
what it does
more than
anything else
it does not
turn you into
an oppression
we're going
to see
this a
little bit
later on
in this
series
the goodness
of jesus
humbles
you
it does
not say
that you
are good
it says
that he
is good
it humbles
you in
such a way
that as
you pursue
the moral
absolutes
of this
bible
it turns
you
it doesn't
turn you
into some
self-righteous
legalist
who waves
their finger
at the
rest of
the world
it doesn't
make you
an oppressor
of others
as you
embrace the
goodness of
jesus
it turns
you into
a person
of goodness
that's the
unique
contribution
of the
christian
faith
in our
society
right now
and we
need it
to
listen
so
um
well