A freewheeling generation has cast off the old restraints. Today anything goes. People set their own rules.

Where do our ideas of right and wrong come from? Why do we need them?

Why do they change? And should they change? And what happens when the distinctions between right and wrong blur and disappear?

 

A story in a major newsmagazine highlighted the problem. "Students were debating whether one student was right in returning $100 she'd found in the hallway to its owner. They concluded that she'd done a dumb thing, and asked the counselor's opinion.

"He replied, `Well, I think she did the right thing. But I'm not going to push my idea of right and wrong on you. After all, I'm your counselor.' "

But what's a counselor for, if it isn't to steer people toward taking a right course of action? What good is a neutral stand like that? How can there be a neutral position between right and wrong?

 

This counselor, whoever he is, was correct not to want to push his own ideas of right and wrong onto his students. But what made him think that telling young people it's wrong to steal was his idea? And why was he willing to concede for one second that the students might have a point when they thought the finder was stupid to return the money?

Is stealing or not stealing just a "matter of opinion"?

It's time we took a long, hard look at what's been happening to the difference between right and wrong in our societies over the last 50 years or so.

 

When Right Was Right

The world of the 1930s was a very different world from today. In some ways circumstances were much worse. During the years of the Great Depression many were living under conditions of great privation. The lines of the unemployed stretched for blocks, and once-proud breadwinners were forced to the soup kitchens.

People ate stale food, wore old clothing and struggled to survive through those bleak years.

 

But in spite of that, there was still popular understanding of the difference between right and wrong. People weren't perfect, but there was no serious question that it was wrong to commit adultery or to lie or cheat or steal.

But our attitudes have changed dramatically since. Now, it's quite acceptable-even fashionable-to cheat on government taxes, to have an affair, to have sex before marriage or to adopt what we euphemistically call "alternative lifestyles," just so long as it "doesn't hurt anyone else." It seems that as long as we're consenting adults, anything goes and nothing should be considered wrong.

Now that might be so, if there were no moral law, absolute in nature, governing human conduct. Today, it's old-fashioned to think that there might be such a timeless law. But why should it be? Let's look at this question objectively.

 

A Universe Governed by Law

We live in a law-abiding universe with the law of gravity, laws of physics, of chemistry, of motion.

We didn't make these laws, but over the centuries, we've learned to define and respect them, to understand them, and to rely on them.

Because we study the laws that govern the universe, and are willing to apply them, we're able to launch space probes from earth and have them rendezvous with distant planets years later. Because we accept the inevitability of physical laws, we can predict where planets will be-and where our spacecraft must be-to the exact moment in time.

 

It would be arrogant and foolish to think we could ignore such laws. Rather, we spare no effort to get in step with them-and because we do, we succeed.

So what makes us think that we can disregard the laws governing morality-showing us the difference between right and wrong?

 

Every society has realized that it must have laws to live by. When laws are kept, society is stabilized. When they're broken, penalties are paid. If enough people break laws for long enough, the society collapses.

In the Western world, when we think of the highest law we usually think of the Ten Commandments that God gave to ancient Israel. They've been the basis of our concepts of right and wrong for centuries. Great lawmakers, such as King Alfred the Great of England and the men who drafted the Constitution of the United States, held God's law in high esteem.

 

An Enlightened Society

Even what we sometimes think of as primitive societies govern themselves with codes of ethics.

The Pygmies of the Central African Ituri Forest have a body of moral law and practice predating the coming of the European to that continent.

The Efe Pygmies of the Ituri forest in Zaire have an enlightened philosophy and laws regulating their relationship to one another, to their forest environment and to a God they recognize as a Creator and Sustainer. Their moral law forbids killing, adultery, lying, theft, blasphemy, demon worship

and sorcery, disrespect toward elders and other forms of misbehavior.

Therefore, the Efe Pygmies don't indulge in cannibalism or human sacrifice, mutilation, sorcery, ritual murder, intertribal war, initiation ordeals or any other cruel customs.

 

It's interesting to notice how many of the commandments of the Pygmies coincide with the Ten Commandments God gave Israel. Could it be that there's a long forgotten connection between these people and the law given at Mount Sinai?

 

The Need for Law

It seems that deep down man recognizes that he must have laws against stealing, adultery and murder, if a society is to function.

The difference, is that the Ten Commandments were not something man dreamed up. They were given by God to regulate every aspect of human behavior-from the obvious prohibitions against murder, stealing and lying, to the perhaps less obvious laws concerning idolatry and the Sabbath.

 

God made these laws just as surely as he made the laws governing the universe. In fact, they're even more binding. Remember, Jesus said in Luke 16:17: " `And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle [the smallest detail] of the law to fail.' " Yet today, those laws are under attack.

 

That's why we have situations like the one in which a high school counselor was reluctant to teach his students it's wrong to steal, in case he was pushing his ideas of right and wrong.

It isn't his idea. "Thou shalt not steal" is God's law-one of the Ten Commandments. Why should there be any question about it?

In the days when the New Testament was being written, the apostle Paul was very concerned how wrong ideas were affecting the thinking of the people of his day.

 

He wrote to the Christians in the Greek city of Colosse, in Colossians 2:8: "Beware lest anyone cheat [or deceive] you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ."

Most of us don't know much about those philosophers, but we have our modern philosophers who've changed the thinking of our world.

Today many people question the relevance of the Ten Commandments. We have to ask: What has happened that has changed the way we think about God and his law today?

Three Minds That Spellbind the World

There are several powerful ideas that have dominated our time. They come directly, or indirectly, from the minds of men like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud-three great thinkers of recent times.

Darwin was one of the first proponents of the theory of evolution; Karl Marx was the originator of the system known today as communism; and Sigmund Freud is recognized as the father of modern psychiatry.

 

These men's ideas have been greatly modified-and in some instances even discarded-by some of their most devoted disciples. Yet the notions of these three men have come together at this point in modern history with an incredible impact on civilization. It's as if the effects of their thinking 100 years ago have finally reached critical mass.

 

Let's look briefly at their ideas and how they've changed man's thinking about morality, about what's right and what's wrong.

A common starting point for each man was the recognition that traditional religion doesn't provide the answer to life's fundamental questions.

Charles Darwin's works on evolution gave expression to the notion that man is the outcome of a natural progression from lower forms of life. That isn't a new idea. Aristotle wondered about that.

 

But Darwin brought together several isolated threads of human reasoning and produced his version of the origin of the species. He cast doubt on the cherished belief that man is a special creation in the universe. Darwin's theory postulated that man is nothing but the result of the evolution of life forms over millions of years from the simple to the more complex.

At one stage of his life, Darwin had wanted to become a minister, but just as he qualified to take up a position, he made his pivotal voyage on the Beagle. Eventually he became disillusioned with religion.

In his autobiography he wrote this: "I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.... This disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last was complete."

But he also came to doubt the validity of his own revolutionary theories. Writing to a friend, he admitted this: "I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design."

 

The theory of evolution as expounded by Charles Darwin is now under great stress, and leading scientists are questioning some of Darwin's most basic conclusions.

But the damage has been done. Darwin has had a massive effect on mankinds thinking about God's authority over man.

 

The second great influence on morality is that of Karl Marx. His arena was economics and politics, but the effect of his theories on morality has been no less remarkable. He, too, was opposed to traditional religion. He dismissed it as "the opium of the people," and wrote: "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness."

 

Marx developed his ideas during the early days of the Industrial Revolution-a time of great social upheaval in Europe. He rightly identified the abuses suffered by the working classes. He campaigned against the exploitation of the working man by the manipulative boss. But as with all human reasoning there was a flaw in his thinking.

Prosecuted on a charge of plotting to overthrow the government in Germany, Marx gave a speech in his own defense that shows his view of law.

 

"Society is not based on the law. That is a legal fiction. Rather, law must be based on society. It must be the expression of society's common interests and needs." He went on to say, "Any attempted assertion of the eternal validity of laws continually clashes with present needs."

So for Marx the idea of absolute moral law is a fiction of man's imagination. Marx has changed the way people think in many different societies. Whether we agree with him or not, Karl Marx has played a part in shaping our ideas about society.

 

Another great influence in our time has been that of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Like Darwin and Marx, Freud was a product of the Europe of a hundred years or so ago. And like them, his ideas reflected the times in which he lived.

Freud certainly had problems believing in God's Word. Like Marx, Freud was of Jewish background, and he too seemed desirous of denying his past, and of course, the religion of his forefathers.

 

In turn-of-the-century Vienna Freud practiced the new science of psychiatry. From the case histories of his patients, he devised an elaborate road map of man's mental structure. He put together an entire system that purported to explain the dark stirrings of the human heart, of the unconscious mind and its attendant fantasies.

The idea of the unconscious mind determining what we do was an invention of Freud's own mind. It allowed modern man to believe that he can free himself from the guilt and responsibility for his actions. Blame and guilt have become irrational.

 

According to an article in the Times of London, "Perhaps no science has been a more powerful source of forgiveness than the psychoanalysis of Freud. The sinner becomes a patient. And if he seems to do wrong, it is not really he who does it but an unconscious whose machinations are unknown to him."

But do we really have a mysterious unconscious mind that predetermines what we do? Are we just victims of our unconscious minds with all of their bizarre sexual conflicts? If that is true, we certainly can't be held responsible for our actions in any meaningful way.

 

Now this view of man has promoted a hopelessness about the human condition and justified wrong actions.

Although Freud himself was quite prudish about sex, his theories and speculations about the human mind have been construed by many as a justification for disregarding standards and ethics in their own sexual lives. Later disciples of Freud took his ideas even further than Freud ever intended. As the moral barriers came down, compounded by the turmoil of two world wars, the floodgates burst open.

 

So instead of hearing about right and wrong today, we hear about right and repressed, or right and not mentally healthy, or right and liberated. What used to be self-indulgence is now self-fulfillment. What we used to call living in sin is now a  meaningful relationship. What was once discipline is now unhealthy repression.

 

But What Does God Say?

Like it or not, thinkers like Darwin, Marx and Freud have had a massive effect on modern man's view of God. We react strongly against someone imposing his or her ideas of right and wrong on others. But that's exactly what these men have done. They set up their own structures of morality on the shakiest of foundations-human reasoning.

 

Every one of us has to some extent been influenced by these and other philosophers who thought they knew better than God. God warned the people he chose, time and again: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" (Isa. 5:20-21).

He explained the reason for this moral confusion in verse 24: "because they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel."

 

God places much of the blame on teachers, ministers and philosophers who set themselves up as authorities to decide on right and wrong.

Now those are positions of trust, and God doesn't take it lightly when such individuals disregard his law.

Look at God's blistering condemnation of the false teachers in the ancient nations of Israel and Judah as found in Jeremiah 23:13-14: “And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: They prophesied by Baal and caused My people Israel to err. Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem: They commit adultery and walk in lies; they also strengthen the hands of evildoers [and that's precisely what's happening today], so that no one turns back from his wickedness. All of  them are like Sodom to Me, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah.' "

 

And what does God say to those who listen to these false prophets? "Thus says the Lord of hosts: `Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; they speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord.' "

Can't we realize that this isn't some old-fashioned biblical epic? This is what always happens when people drift away from the laws of God, and decide for themselves what's right and wrong.

Ancient Israel and Judah lost their moorings. They drifted. As Isaiah wrote:

"We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as at twilight; we are as dead men in desolate places" (Isa. 59:10).

 

And that's what we're like today. We want to be tolerant but we're at the point of tolerating things that society cannot put up with and stay healthy. We shy away from judging others, but we are at the point of believing that all judgments are wrong.   We're lost at sea without a compass.

 

Many of our young people are not being taught the difference between right and wrong. They're not immoral anymore, they're amoral-they don't even know the law, never mind the difference. And confusion reigns.

 

Another Old Testament prophet, Hosea, speaking for God, puts it all together very succinctly: " `My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children' " (Hos. 4:6).

It wasn't that ancient Israel and Judah didn't have the knowledge. They'd simply rejected it.

 

God's Laws Don't Change

We too have the same knowledge.

Never before has the Bible been so available as it is in the Western world today. There are more copies of the Ten Commandments now than ever. They're in your Bible, in Exodus 20. They're repeated in Deuteronomy chapter 5.

But knowledge demands responsibility. And responsibility in turn demands accountability. Like it or not, and despite some of Sigmund Freud's theories, we are responsible for our actions.

Times change-but the laws of God don't change. The penalty for breaking them is as sure today as it was those thousands of years ago.

Can we heed the warning? There's a terrible penalty to be paid for moral bankruptcy. We're becoming people who no longer know the difference between right and wrong.

 

The Ten Commandments.

These laws are still the basis of any successful society. You need to know how to put them into practice in your life now, and see why obedience to them will lead to success, with real prosperity and security and stability.