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Contemporary Moral Problems – An Undergraduate’s Point of View

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My review to a book written by Greg Bahnsen entitled “By This Standard” in compliance to my missed midterm exam and quiz in ITETHIC.

Introduction

Let’s try to be realistic and consider the fact that all of us follow a certain standard of living. We prefer to have and follow our own preference or the basic norm we are used to in whatever we do like in choosing our clothes to wear, food to eat, place to live in, and even people to be with. This is because in our life, we choose to follow a certain benchmark on which we become reliant to with regards to our decision making and direction taking. This benchmark can be influenced by a lot of the existing surrounding factors in our environment and one of those factors is our belief in the word of God written in the Bible – as Christians. Bible is said to be the oldest book in our history, written by men that lived hundreds of years ago in belief to spread the good news. Having the Bible to explain to us how one is best known to live, it became an obvious point of the Bible to set the moral standards that guided men through the ages. A lot of people believed, trusted, and followed these norms, thus, making it the basis of their individual judgment. But are these the right standards to follow on how to decide whether a certain act is right or wrong?

What I think

The book “By This Standard” by Greg Bahnsen tackled the issue in ancient Greece in the Roman City where Caesar ruled and was said to be the god who sets the rules to be followed so that Bahnsen can elaborate on providing explanations to what is the true standard. As explained by Bahnsen, Caesar was questioned with a lot of moral issues like about him being the deity. In some passages of the Bible, it was told that John portrayed a beast where the rule of God was desired to be replaced by the rule of man. The issue brought up by the passage was then answered by the medieval church where the promoted the two yardsticks of ethics coming from the revealed scriptures and man’s nature for reasoning on how to explain the happenings in nature. With plenty of concerns being stirred already, “men came up with one standard yardstick to measure the standard practice of morality, declared from sola scriptura and tota scriptura (only scripture and all the scripture), to be the Bible”. From that time, the Bible became the normal reference of our lives, which was the same reason why we our encouraged to keep, follow and cultivate God’s commandments.

Even though the Bible became the established reference of the people on assessing matters concerning our lives, they often misunderstood that it is just a reference and does not dictate us on what we should do. The entire Bible provides different sets of norms we have to follow, from the first verse of Genesis up to the last verse of Revelations, God is described to be perfect making the standards which He set for us must be put to practice. In addition to that, none of these verses ever told something negative on life or to anything existing in this planet.  It was also said that He has this immeasurable love for us humans, that He gave his only son to redeem us from sin. With this love, He of course expects us to follow all his orders for us to be live a life with love for others. This is the reason why the Bible is said to be the standard yardstick of ethics, because it sets the guidelines on how we have to live our life and that is in accordance to the word of God.

All the standards set by the Bible is useless unless it is put to practice. We have to abide on these laws, as how we abide with the laws of man, but how do we really tell if we are obeying God’s standard the right way. Do we need to be like the Pharisees with short tenor of obedience just as what Jesus revealed in His Sermon on the mount? Or more than what they do, just like what God wants us to be. The answer is pretty obvious; God wants us to be obedient in a way that all our life, we would obey every word He commanded. This obedient is not limited to physical activities, because even if you might be active on helping others, but secretly asked for someone to be hurt, then you still not doing what you are asked for. We also sometimes adjust these standards in a way that it would suit our lifestyle and would not intend to need any sacrifice. Though what we do is good for the others, still this kind of obedience is not pleasing to God’s eyes. Because true obedience means sacrificing, doing what is written in the commandment and not adjusting it and editing what is written so it won’t require any extra effort on our side when obeying it. Doing it with a fully devoted heart would really make a difference, for the reason ‘when it comes to the obeying the Lord, it Is not simply the thought that counts, but the love you felt when you did it.

We all know that somehow, politics and ethics can never go as how we want it to be. If you would write something about politics, you have to set aside your ethical values because there will always be a conflict between these two highly regarded topics. But that was before, before when Christians believe that the Gospel of the Lord is a unique and can never get along with other subjects. Now we can say that Christians open their minds in a matter that they can relate other areas such as science, arts, economics, politics and everything else to ethics. This became a bridge in the gap between man’s political and ethical life. “Christians believed that Christ is the Messiah, the Lord and the Savior or soler (Greek). It can be found in the passage in Act 5:31 and 1 John 4:14 which states ‘We have held that the Father has sent the Son to be Savior of the World’.”  Other passages in the Bible also provided other verses that would prove that early Christians really believed and claimed that Christ is the one and only Savior.

Yes, Christ is the Savior, and that is something that all Christians believe – no doubt. However, how could this statement help Christian Bible-believers answer questions concerning his will on political ethics? The answer to that would be difficult to explain clearly. With all the books published to answer all this issues, is there any of them that precisely answered the question. The answer is, none. Because even if Christians opened their minds to political matters, there is still no concrete evidence of using the Gospels in answering issues raised in that manner. There is a lot of approach that responded to this concern. One would be the social gospel of Modernism, which challenged the biblical teachings and weaken the fundamental religious studies of the church. Another one is the individualistic gospel of Fundamentalism, which implies that we should live the way the church told us to because in time, Jesus would return to save us all from this miserable world. This approach also caused short-sightedness in Christians in terms of their faith. Another style would be the dichotomistic gospel of Romanism and Lutheranism. Though Romanism and Lutheranism oppose each other, they both boil down to the same idea of being neutral on politics and the scriptures cannot do anything about it. The second to the last approach is the unsure gospel of neo-orthodoxy, which so far is the most uncertain because it doesn’t proposes man to repent with their sin or be converted in order to be saved and doesn’t give clear answers to social concerns. The last would be the comprehensive gospel of the reformed theology. This opposes all the other approaches, for in this approach, the fullness and greatness of God’s grace. This approach firmly believes in sola scriptura and tota scriptura.

We’ve grasped the idea that we are following the whole Bible to be the standard morality. This is explained by the Old Testaments and again proved by the New Testament.

Disobedience of law deserves a punishment; this applies to both law of man and God’s Law. The only difference would be how this punishment should be executed. It may be in terms of money or physical violence in the law of man while in God’s law, God would be the one and only who has the right to decide. He created the law; therefore He would provide the necessary punishment. However, man needs to act for himself as well. The scripture shows that punishment for civil crimes are necessary, man cannot just stand and wait for someone to rob or kill him, and civil laws are enacted to assure the safety of individuals. But then again, these civil laws still have to be under the law of God or else there would be a chaos on judging whether the punishment given for a certain crime is just of not and without God’s law ruling over the civil law, man’s judgment may be off the standard or tolerable punishment that is due to the person who committed that crime.

Even after long discussion on whether to accept God’s law or the Bible as the standard for our ethical values, there’s still one issue not resolve and is really hard to resolve: the issue of using our ethical standards for our political concerns. There are a number of arguments presented on this. One is the directionless revelations wherein it opposes the new revelation in which Christ would return to us in time to redeem this world. Other would be the uniqueness of Covenant Israel, where they said that those who didn’t experience such covenant would not understand such scripture. Another would be the Israel’s heightened purity, which states that commandments sometimes would predict the final judgment but won’t mean that it is what would really happen. Last would be the multiple moral standards, which simply states that God has two moral standards, one is that of the nature and conscience and the other would be the Bible.

To Conclude

Man can never be contented, it’s our nature. We always intend to look for something to argue or to solve. Just like the issue of having the Bible as our standard when it comes to ethical concerns. Some Christians would question authority of these scriptures if they still are applicable today. One source of that doubt is the issue regarding the Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament is said to be the one binding all Christians because of God’s Law, and this added up confusion to people saying that the New Testament is not the continuation or the fulfillment of what God has promised us in the Old Testament. However, the turmoil made by this issue was not enough to change the fact that the Bible with both the Old and New Testament, for Christian Bible-believers, was the standard for all moral actions in this world.

Greg Bahnsen, as tough it is to conflict with his ideas, made it a point to explain all the possible sides of this “standard”. He stated and put into the table the other aspects in why other people don’t consider the Bible as a standard or chooses otherwise. Presented with great knowledge and passion about the topic, Bahnsen still allowed us to deliberate on our own, select our own standard but with much given explanation to all possibilities. So I leave it to that, the Bible, as explained, can be or cannot be the standard of living because there are still no books available that can explain such influencing topic.