I was raised in the big city of Atlanta. My parents moved there when I was 2 years old. Dad got a job at General Motors. We went to church every Sunday at the Doraville Presbetarian Church. As a child, I was aware of all the fantastic stories in the Bible. My two younger brothers and I went to Sunday school and had a great time. After high school, I went to MTSU in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on a scholarship. I was even involved in the Campus Crusade for Life ministries at college. After college, I moved back to Atlanta, and began life. I got a job and an apartment. I got a Mustang. I had bills to pay. Life happens. The excitement of knowing Jesus and God faded into a childhood memory. I got married, had two beautiful girls. More pressure. Then bad things started to happen. We could not “keep up with the Jones’s” as they say. I was not making enough money to pay the bills. My wife decided that she could do better elsewhere, and took the girls away. I was depressed. I could not do anything about it! The job went away, and I got another, then another. How could I have let this happen? What was I doing wrong? Life was tough, then you pay taxes, and then you die, right? There has to be a way out of all this mess.
This old world has gone to pot! The times are getting harder and harder. How could there be a “God” who would allow such bad things to happen? Have you ever heard these types of things being said? That’s exactly what I used to think. How could a good God allow such disaster and a general turn for the worse? If there is a God, why does he not stop this downward roller coaster which human society is on? It was much easier to just say, all this religious stuff is just made up by man, there is no truth in any of it! We are just dust in the wind. When we die, we go back to dust, just like everything else. I don’t have time for all the hype and silly religious ways, I have to go to work, and try to be a surviver in this mess. After all, if people are going to continue to make bad decisions, this world is going to continue to get worse, and eventually destroy itself. There is not anything I can do but go along for the hopeless ride.
I was talking to a good friend and neighbor, Mr. Elrod about this very thing, when he gave me the book Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis. He told me it was a “thinking man’s book” and said it was made for folks like me who would analyze things before making decisions. That aroused my interest and I began to read it.
C.S. Lewis – “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?”
Have you ever seen those cartoons that show someone about to decide what to do? There is this little devil on one shoulder telling you one thing, and a little angel on the other shoulder telling you to do the opposite thing. I can remember Yosemitie Sam, Sylvester the Cat and Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV with these moments of truth. Perhaps you have seen similar cartoons with these situations. Being brought up as a child, we learned from our parents that the little angel is right, and the little devil is wrong. Ever wonder why we were taught this? Someone had to think of this stuff for the cartoons. Perhaps they just know that there is always a right and wrong? Perhaps you yourself have had similar crossroads, where a decision had to be made? At various times in my life, I have had tough decisions to make. Most people do. It seems that more bad decisions were being made, rather than good ones. If I was going to make the world a better place, not to mention making myself better, I needed to be able to understand which decisions to make.
Have you ever wondered where right and wrong came from? C.S Lewis does a good job of explaining right and wrong in his book Mere Christianity. He states that this is the “Moral Law” we all know and deal with every day. C.S.. Lewis argues that Moral Law is not merely instinct, where one would act because of hunger, self-preservation or natural herding tendencies. It is not a learned behavior, where parents and teachers and society in general thought this up because they liked it. It is not a physical Law like the law of gravity or other scientific laws, they are just observations of the way things act. It is the idea of what we ought to do. Moral Law is an awareness of right and wrong. If you will, it is the ‘Spirit’ of truth, goodness, honesty, and purity, and loveliness.
These are the things we think about when we decide what is right and wrong.
C.S. Lewis – “People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.”
Every decision changes your future, small or big, bad or good. Morality is the realization that we have to choose from the two opposing ideas, good or bad. It’s the choice, not the right or wrong. We cannot choose to have a rock fall away from gravity. We cannot choose what people like or dislike.. There is only one law with which we have the ability to choose, right or wrong, or the Moral Law. Of all the laws of science, physics and nature, morality is something that we have inside us directing our decisions. This quest to determine the difference between good decisions and bad ones, was leading me to a deeper understanding of myself, and a realization that there was something bigger than myself, and something bigger than all of us.
There was a ‘Spirit’ inside me, letting me know what the right decision ought to be, not that I always acted the right way, but nevertheless, it was there. It is there in all of us.
Do you know that it is wrong to steal? Of course you do. How about this, if you saw another person in need, what would you do? One might feel the need to help out. Another might fear for getting hurt and run. As a human being, down deep inside, that little angel is telling you to help out your fellow man. Whether you help or not, it’s your choice, but you just know what the right thing ought to be. That knowing, the thought of helping, is not from you, but it’s in you. So we have now a right, a wrong, and this third thing of a ‘power’ of knowing the difference. Have you ever had someone tell you that he doesn’t believe in right or wrong? He will be the first one to complain when a wrong is done to him. He will also be the first one to make excuses for a wrong he has done to you. That should tell you that the moral law really does exist, he just denies it.
Is this ‘power’ inside you, or ‘Spirit’ in you starting to sound familiar? If you have ever read the Bible, It should. It’s God! REVELATION, yes there IS a true God! Yes, He has given us the ability to choose. We knew what we ought to do from the beginning, He made us that way. God has given us the ability to think like himself. We were made in His image, Genesis 1:27. Do you want friends that want to be with you because they love you and choose to be with you, or friends who are just with you because you forced them to be that way? If you decided that you want friends to be with you because they made that choice themselves, you know where that came from, God! He did not create a place where everyone acts like machines, and he can pull the strings where and when He chooses. He created a place where we can choose to love Him and get to know Him. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 30:15 “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;”, 30:19 “therefore choose life”
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Everyone deals with the issues of morality, the pressure is always there, God is the answer. He provides a way for us to be forgiven of all our wrong doing. God’s wants for us to be more like Him, and get to know Him.
He wants us to choose the right way, so He gave us the ability to know what the right way ought to be. We can rest confidentially on His word to make the right decisions. They may not all be easy, and we may not choose them all the time, but He is always inside us pointing to the right way.
So, in my quest for finding out how to make good decisions, I found that there was really a God. A God of Promise, a God of justice and a God of forgiveness. Reading Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis was a life changing event for me. I let God forgive me and became a Christian. It has been the best decision I have ever made. I believe that God placed C.S Lewis’s book in my hands through my good friend and neighbor Mr. Elrod. I believe that God gave C.S. Lewis the ability to take his radio programs and write them down in a book called Mere Christianity. He has a unique style of simplicity and reasoning that reaches people like me. People who have to analyze and think about things instead of just believing what others say.
