I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity--the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time. And I have been chosen as a preacher and apostle to teach the Gentiles this message about faith and truth. I'm not exaggerating--just telling the truth. -- 1Timothy 2: 1-7 (NLT)
As the nation continues to grieve the loss of life in Connecticut we see politicians, pundits and ordinary people all scramble to try and find something they can "fix" to avoid such tragedy in the future. We see the usual calls for gun control as if evil cares what the laws of the land are. We see the debates over psychiatry heat up again as if evil cares what box we try to stick Adam Lanza into. We see all the conversations except the one that truly matters. Good versus evil. God versus Satan. Black and white versus shades of grey. Until we stop allowing the devil to distract us from the real conversation all we are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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. -- Isaiah 5: 20 (NIV)
The truth is our society has devolved not evolved. For all of our scientific evolution we have equally devolved morals. You have to realize that God designed this world based upon His absolutes. His Word is absolutely true. His law is morally absolute. There are no "thou may" verses. There are thou shall and thou shall not verses. Period - end of story. Our culture however has devolved into a state of perpetual moral relativism. This says that morals cannot be defined absolutely. As such, it is wrong to say that someone is morally wrong because they may have a differing opinion. God does not care about our opinion -- He cares about our obedience.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. -- Proverbs 14: 12 (NIV)
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. -- Proverbs 16: 25 (NIV)
It appears that God wanted to make sure we did not miss this point since He repeats it word for word in two different sets of Proverbs! There is a way that seems right to man but in the end it leads to death because it does not obey what God has taught. We see moral relativism everywhere in our culture. It is repackaged and relabeled to make us feel better about our disobedience but it is abounding. Terminating life in the womb is repackaged as "reproductive rights" or even worse -- health care. Homosexuality is relabeled "alternative lifestyles" or even worse -- civil rights. But these are just the easy ones to talk about; the low lying fruit. The reason the church has no moral weight behind their arguments is that the world sees our hypocrisy. With divorce rates equal to those in the world we see moral relativism infect the church as well. Arguments such as "God wants me to be happy" are equally hollow in light of the teachings of Jesus Himself. One day the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking Him about divorce. Jesus answered with the black and white design of God. The Pharisees then asked why it was that Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away. Here was Jesus destroying their moral relativism:
