One of our most enjoyable and most effective aspects of ministry has been a “Young Leader’s” Bible Study. We’ve held this off and on for a few years now. The first study was an overview of Systematic Theology. Our second study was “What Is The Gospel?”. We held a very short course on Apologetics at the beginning of this year, which was interrupted by our Mukhanyo Theological College classes. After a couple months off God laid it pretty heavily on both Jim and me that we needed to restart the Young Leader’s study. So about a month ago we started up a discussion on Ethics.
I was inspired to do this course while attending the Bible College Consultation Conference hosted by Mukhanyo in June this year. It was well attended, with Bible Colleges from all over southern Africa represented. There were schools from Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and of course, South Africa. One of the speakers is from George Whitfield College in Cape Town. His presentation was on his schools Ethics course (taught by himself, obviously). He made the point that most Bible colleges have a one term course of study for Ethics, yet it’s really something covered en masse in Scripture. In fact, most of Paul’s letters he starts with some pretty heavy theology, then moves into ethics as he gives instruction about how that theology is worked out in a cultural context. So his school has a 3 year course in Ethics.
We’ve noted that many of our young people, having grown up without godly parental influence, often struggle to apply the truth they glean from God’s Word into the practical decisions of everyday life. For us, an Ethics study is really an offshoot of our previous courses. “How do we live out the gospel?” “If we can provide a defence for our faith, are we then living according to it?” “Are we truly doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God?” So we decided to start a study of our own to discuss how we live out our moral values in our specific cultural setting.
Another speaker at the conference, Dr. Dave Beakley, the principal at Christ Seminary (a ministry of Master’s Seminary) made the comment “In every lecture we are trying to tear down and rebuild worldviews.” This hit home with me. I find that this is very true in all our teaching. It’s consistent with Genesis 3, after all, isn’t it? Ever since we sinned we believe that we ourselves are the standard of right and wrong. We’re the straight measuring stick and everything that doesn’t agree with our opinion must therefore be crooked, right? So as we started this study on ethics we’ve focused very much on the concept of “worldview.”
We’ve defined Ethics as “a code of morality, what is believed to be right and wrong.” From there we discussed Ethos, or "the characteristic morality that defines a group of people over a span of time.” We then took some time breaking down what kind of Ethos we find ourselves surrounded in the culture(s) of South Africa today. Words such as selfishness, crime, corruption, hopelessness were mentioned. From there we asked the question: Why is “worldview” so important?
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Ultimately, a worldview is how we filter the facts we observe around us. It then influences all our decision-making. Think aboutit. Everything a person does, he does because of what he believes to be truth. Proverbs tells us that from our heart come all the issues of life (4:23).
This then prompted a discussion of various worldviews that we might find common in the world around us. Naturalist worldviews such as Humanist, Evolutionist or Rationalist will lead someone to believe certain things to be true, which will then influence that person’s decision making. Religious worldviews would do the same - look at the varying cultural values of the Hindu peoples vs the Muslim peoples vs a Judeo-Christian mindset.
For instance, if you believe that everything we see is a product of billions of years of random chance, then your truth is based on the concept of “survival of the fittest.” But followed to it’s logical conclusion, we find the moral statement made by that worldview sees death as a good thing. I mean, if our planet has limited resources, and if some creature is less advanced than another, it would be right for that lesser creature to be eliminated in order to ensure more resources for the advancement of living things.
A belief in Karma, taken to it’s logical conclusion, would state that acts of charity are themselves immoral. If the governing power of the universe is bringing about suffering in the life of one of its creatures to balance out some past injustice perpetrated by this creature, then to intervene and reduce or end that suffering is in conflict with the governing power that is seeking to implement justice, and is therefore unjust itself. This would then dictate some future suffering by the very one bringing that act of charity to bear.
See how so many various worldviews leave us morally bankrupt?
A common solution to this dilemma is to state that morality arises from society itself. But then we must condone the abuse of women and girls so common in many worldviews. We must conclude that Nazi Germany was right to do what it did to Jews, racial minorities and the infirm. The belief that truth is relative will only lead to confusion. As we are quickly finding out, a post-modern worldview is a slippery slope ending in a moral cliff.
So is the solution as simple as living out a Judeo-Christian worldview?
Is there a difference between a gospel-centered worldview and a traditional Judeo-Christian worldview?
If so, what is that difference?
A traditional Judeo-Christian ethic is very concerned with justice. A traditional Judeo-Christian ethic is rooted in the Old Testament, specifically in the Torah, the Law of Moses. It must be, after all, since the Jewish tradition doesn’t accept the New Testament as Scripture. Outside of the 10 Commandments, maybe the most famous statement of the Mosaic Code is “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
But a gospel-centered mindset is also very concerned with justice. And certainly, the New Testament and the Old Testament agree in their moral code - after all, all of the 10 Commandments are repeated in the New Testament (the sabbath law is affirmed in principle, just not in the way that Jesus’ contemporaries were practicing it). Yet, I believe there are some very nuanced differences in the way a gospel-centered worldview and the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview approach things.
Take for instance the nightclub shooting in Orlando a couple months back. Since it was a gay nightclub, presumably all the victims were homosexual. Any sincere adherent to the Judeo-Christian mindset must agree that the Law of Moses requires the death penalty for homosexual activity (Lev 20:13, among others). And this is affirmed in Paul’s seminal New Testament treatise on the gospel (Rom 1:27, 32). Murder is also condemned as the 6th commandment and is affirmed throughout the New Testament. So the Judeo-Christian mindset might consider that justice is being served to those practicing an act the Bible condemns, yet would also insist on justice against the perpetrator as well.
While a gospel-centered mindset is concerned with justice, what we find very clearly in Romans 3 is that justice has already been accomplished. God’s wrath against sin was satisfied by Jesus' death on the cross. He is the propitiation - the sacrifice that appeases wrath. Justice requires “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Any violation against an infinite being then requires an infinite payment. This is why sin against God results in death. Sin requires life in return. Any sin is worthy of death (Rom 1:32). Jesus, though, never sinned. Yet His voluntary death makes it possible for God to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).
A Judeo-Christian worldview will lead someone to insist on their rights - that’s justice, after all - and to insist on their own rightness. But a gospel-centered worldview understands that I, myself, am worthy of death. I justly deserve God’s infinite punishment since I’ve sinned against His infinite holiness. But justice for me was paid by Someone else. My punishment has been fulfilled and therefore I will never have to face the penalty of my sin. And since justice was satisfied at the cross, offered freely to all mankind, rather than self-righteously feeling satisfied that those who violate God’s sexual laws might receive justice, I’m heartbroken that 50 souls entered eternity likely having never personally known this scandalous imputed justice for themselves!
Yet, how often do we stop and consider where our belief in the gospel ought to lead us?
We ended our study two weeks ago with the illustration of the Orlando Nightclub Shooting, and left with the homework to read the story of Jonah. But this post is already dragging on too long, so I’ll need to come back to that another time. Until then...