Our culture tends to speak a lot about character and being a “good person.” Most people think they’re good because they haven’t killed someone or done something “really bad.” Some people say things like, “Well, at least I’m not like Hitler,” suggesting that people intuitively know that there is a certain line we aren’t to cross. 

Many Christians in the past have suggested that if you don’t believe in God, you can’t possibly live a moral life. I used to think that way, but have changed my mind on this. 

I have lived in Japan for almost 9 years, and have found that even though the majority of Japanese people don’t believe in the God of the Bible, they naturally demonstrate good moral principles. 

Paul echoes this in Romans 2:14-15: 

“Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right.” (NLT)

The question that people aren’t asking is whether we can be good without believing in God or have moral values without referring to God. The real question is can there be goodness without God. 

What we’re asking people is on what grounds they are basing their morality. What we believe will directly affect our moral life. It will affect our conscience, and how we understand free will, human rights, and objective morality. 

If someone, for example, grounds their morality in a relativistic worldview, it’s very hard to determine what is moral and what is immoral. This is because the main idea behind moral relativism is “What’s good for you may not be good for me, and what’s bad for you may not be bad for me.” Labelling something as absolutely right or wrong is frowned upon by moral relativists, even though they instinctively do it themselves. 

Moral relativism, however, can be dismantled quite easily by using one moral truth to demonstrate that moral laws exist. For example, “Slavery is wrong,” “It’s wrong to torture children for fun” and “Murder is wrong.” Statements like these go straight to the heart and are very difficult to argue against. 

Similarly, grounding morality in an evolutionary worldview is problematic because evolution is an ever-changing process, so what’s moral now may not be so in 50, 100, or 1,000 years from now.  

Despite all the efforts to try to be “good” without God or to establish our moral standards, people intuitively know that they are fallen and cannot live up to their standards. As A.E.Taylor beautifully put it:  

“A man cannot receive the power to rise above his present moral level from his own inherent strength, because the process is one of rising above himself, and, in the moral as in the physical world, you cannot lift yourself by the hair of your own head. “

If we’re being fully honest, we do good things usually to earn praise, gain recognition, and approval. These ambitions are selfish and self-centred. God’s goodness has no hint of this. That is why we need Him to be good because we inherently do not possess the goodness that God does.  

We feel guilt when we don’t live up to the law of right or wrong and we find ourselves trying to resolve it. We tend to make excuses for their failures, but this in itself shows that we recognize a moral standard. But we cannot do this forever. This feeling of guilt ultimately points us in the direction of a personal and perfectly loving God.  

God is the moral lawgiver, the creator of the universe, and the embodiment of goodness. He is light, in Him, there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). God’s actions are always in accordance with that right, true and good. Goodness is His very nature and He cannot contradict Himself. Jesus said that no one is good (excellent) except for God alone (Luke 18:15-30). 

The moral argument for God is probably the most challenging out of all the arguments you will learn about in apologetics. That is because it requires personal responsibility, which people in our society today often try to avoid or try to get rid of. 

Although this is the case, the moral argument is a really powerful tool to use when talking to non-Christians. Morality is something people see, often think about, and have to deal with daily. This is especially true in how we treat one another: 

• Will I be kind to this person or not? 
• Will I retaliate when someone offends me or show emotional restraint and deal with the situation calmly? 
• Will I put someone down or try to build them up?  

Unfortunately, we’re at a time where poor behaviour is rarely punished, people are not being held accountable for their actions and certain people are given a pass. 

As we all know by now, Will Smith’s behaviour at the Oscars was very unusual and costly to his reputation. With all that has been going on between himself and Jada, it was only a matter of time when something would cause Will to lose it. And Chris Rock’s joke was that thing. 

What surprised me the most was after Will assaulted Chris and cursed at him, he was still allowed to give his acceptance speech as if nothing had happened. The crowd even cheered for him. It appeared at that moment that the Academy was rewarding poor moral behaviour. 

The speech itself contradicted what Will just did to Chris. He talked about wanting to shine light and to love people. But the weight and pressure of all that was happening around him and relying only on himself showed that he was unable to live up to his moral standards. That is why we need God to exercise goodness. 

I want to encourage you today that all hope is not lost. Yes, it is scary to share our faith with a world that is extremely hostile towards Christianity and is apathetic to any solid evidence you give them. Appealing to the heart is important in trying to reach someone who is trying to suppress the truth because that’s usually the root cause for their objections to Christianity. 

“You must show a man that he is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.”

-C.S Lewis

References: 

• Moral relativism: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/moral-relativism 
• The Evidence Bible by Ray Comfort: https://www.amazon.com/NKJV-Evidence-Bible-Ray-Comfort/dp/0882705253 
• The Moral Argument: A History by David Baggett and Jerry L. Wallis: https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Argument-History-David-Baggett/dp/0190246375