On September 27th of the year, 2000, Ambassador Alan Keyes and Attorney Allen Dershowitz engaged in a debate on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The subject of the debate was about the role of religion in society. The obvious tenor of the debate focused on morality. Stanley Michalak, the moderator of the debate and Government Professor at the college, opened the debate with the following words: “The dreams of a new world order emerging in a post-Cold War have proven to be just that, dreams.” The world that we are seeing today is a dismal shadow of what we hoped for.
Is there any controversy about the fact that these are frightening times? Failed and unsustainable states that collapse into religious, ethnic, and civil violence; international conflicts spurred by rising population rates and inadequate resources; road warrior societies that collapse into futile anarchy; borders that become replaced by moving masses of people. At the same time, all of the religious and ethnic conflicts of the Cold War remain with us today. Of course, there is the state of America itself. Here at home, secular and religious forces battle over prayer in public schools, the abortion issue, the teaching of Darwinism in schools, and the promotion of gay and lesbian rights. Meanwhile, as we witness the rise of globalization, we are seeing a new America emerge. Private affluence and technological wizardry co-exist with urban poverty, drugs, crime, violence, gangs, spiraling divorce rates, homelessness, failing schools, and a driven entertainment industry that has helped to deny our children the innocence of childhood.
Much has happened in our world over the last several decades, and none of it has decreased the need for an analysis of the moral and ethical problems facing Christians today. The moral conflicts that confront Christians in our contemporary society are many, and there is an ever-increasing need to bring God’s standard to bear on these issues. We live in a strange time where the relativity of Einstein is considered absolute, and the absolute of the Bible is considered relative. But where is moral certainty to be found? Is it to be found in scientific journals or perhaps in popular media? True morality is to be discovered in the Divine will written on the pages of scripture. And we have an entire generation of young people who are in great need of rediscovering God’s morality.
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1 Norman L. Geisler (1989), Christian Ethics: Options and Issues, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House) p 13.
Rick Harrison