Greg Koukl and Natasha Crain note how Christians often turn to friends and family for moral guidance instead of the Bible, leading to a lack of conviction when defending God’s truth
Transcript
Natasha: I think the number one thing that we, as Christians, have to get back to—and this is the most basic thing of all—is that our God is a God who has revealed himself. He has revealed himself through nature, but also through his Word. When we’re trying to come up with an answer to the kinds of issues that we’re talking about today, and we’re trying to understand them, a lot of Christians don’t actually go to the Bible to form their moral views. In fact, researchers have looked at this, and the majority of Christians will actually agree with the statement that most of their trusted moral advice comes from friends and family. How does this happen, that Christians would say, “Yes, most of my advice about what’s morally right and wrong comes from friends and family”?
It’s outrageous. We have the God of the universe, who created and sustains everything. He’s given us a book, and he has revealed what’s true about reality on the things that we need to know, and yet, overwhelmingly, the body of Christ today is not going to that book to form our understanding.
Greg: It’s the power of socialization. These are the people that mean something to us, and that’s, lots of times, the voice we’re going to follow instead of following the Lord, especially when those voices sound more attractive to us than what God has to say and maybe are less troublesome.
Natasha: Exactly. So, I think that’s the number one thing that Christians have to get back to—just understanding that the Bible is God’s Word. And if a Christian doesn’t understand why we have good reason to believe that’s true, then they really need to get back to that fundamental level first—some basic apologetics—to understand that, because then you’ll have the conviction of knowing that when you stand up for these difficult positions, they’re actually positions that are rooted in God himself. If you don’t have that conviction in the first place, you’re not going to get out there in a hostile culture.
Greg: Well, you’re also going to get a different definition of “love” and “justice” from God’s perspective than you are from the culture’s perspective, and this seems to be a major point of conflict right now.
Natasha: Yes, absolutely. We need to define God in order to understand these issues correctly. God is love and defines love, and God is just and defines justice. These two points alone will shape so much of the discussion that we have today because the word “love,” especially, gets thrown around so much. People hear the word “love,” and they’re accused of not being loving, and Christians say, “Wow, I don’t want to be unloving, and I don’t want to be harmful. I want to be helpful to people.” All these words come along, and yet we’re not using what God says to define them. Just because someone tells you that you’re not being loving, that doesn’t mean you actually aren’t loving. A lot of times, being loving means wanting God’s best for people, even when it’s not what they want for themselves. That’s the hardest thing to do. They’re going to hate you for it, but you’re actually being loving according to God’s standards.
Greg: The portion of 1 Corinthians 13 that comes to mind when we’re talking about this is “Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness.” It’s amazing to me how that word has been so twisted. In fact, it is so effectively twisted that now a slogan in favor of some things that are certainly not loving is advanced just by a repetition of the word “love.” “Well, love is love. There you go.” It appeals to so many people. That word has so much power, and it ought to. But when it’s wrongly understood, it creates damage and destruction.
I gave a talk many years ago called “Love Is a Lie,” and this is an example of it—when love is used as a justification for things that are just plain evil, wrong, destructive. And yet, this is a point of conflict between Christianity and culture. And the same thing is true of justice.
Natasha: Justice is about making right that which is wrong, and anytime you’re talking about categories of right and wrong, that requires a standard. Anytime Christians need a standard, we should be using God as our standard. So, if you think about the very concept of justice being about making things right that are wrong according to a standard defined by God, then that should tell us right away, if culture is not looking to God as their standard—which, of course, they’re not going to—any standard you use other than God to define justice is going to get you to the wrong place. Sometimes, it might line up. For example, talking about serving in a soup kitchen, people might recognize, yes, it’s the loving thing to do—to help people who need food, who need a place to stay, these kinds of things. Sometimes they will align—not because they’re actually using God as their standard, but because whatever standard it is that they’re using will lead them sometimes to that same conclusion.
A lot of times, the standard that they’re using will lead them to a vastly different kind of conclusion. And this is how we get concepts in our culture today like “reproductive justice,” which is a euphemism for abortion—this idea that women should have the right to kill a pre-born baby because that is “justice.” Well, that’s justice according to a very different standard. That’s justice according to the standard of the social binary based on neo-Marxist ideas and critical theory that men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed, and therefore it is unjust for men in society to be able to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies. When you use the wrong standard, you’re going to get wrong ideas of justice. And even if the culture calls it justice, it’s not actual justice according to God’s standards.
Greg: The use of language is such a key factor here. Someone once said, “If you get to define the words, then you control the argument.” It’s so true. The outside world in general really knows how to use language in that kind of way. They’re very good at it.