Do you believe you can determine with absolute certainly what is right and wrong?

If there is a right and a wrong, then who gets to determine that? Is it God in the Bible? Or is it a government authority, a judicial court, or the popular vote of the majority? Or does each person just do what he or she thinks is the right thing to do in a circumstance or situation?

These are good questions that set the standard of behavior, if there is such a standard. Somebody or some group has to say what’s good and what’s bad, or what’s evil and what’s righteous. If not, then every person becomes his own god to do whatever he or she feels like it at the time.

Think about your own life and your views. Who or what is the standard in your life and what is the criteria by which you evaluate behaviors? Can any behavior be labeled “good” or “evil”? Why?

Is the murder of innocent children and others wrong? Was it evil and wrong for Adolph Hitler to order the extermination of six million Jewish people? Or for Josef Stalin in Russia to kill twenty millions of his own people? If you believe that these acts were wrong, then why were they wrong and by what “right” do you have to determine that? Was it “pure evil” as stated on the cover story of a major magazine when hijackers deliberately flew airplanes into the Twin Towers of New York City and caused the deaths of over three thousand people? What made it evil and why?

Do we as human beings have the right and the ability to determine right and wrong? If we do, then the standard varies from culture to culture and from person to person. If there is no absolute, objective standard then right or wrong is what any person or groups of persons wants it to be. If “everyone does what is right in his own eyes” and that is the standard, then no one can condemn anyone else for anything that he or she does. In effect, that does away with law enforcement and the judicial system because no one has the right to condemn another person’s actions. This means that “might makes right” and society would be governed by the “golden rule “that says, “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”

Those who believe in an eternal, loving creator of us all believe that this God and his moral nature are the absolute standards of right and wrong. This God reveals himself in the Bible. His word there represents him. He could no more deny his word than he could deny himself. He is a God of truth and justice. His word is not capricious or arbitrary but comes from his very nature. It is a standard that can be trusted by everyone everywhere. It is universally applicable. God does not play politics by favoring the poor or the rich, the educated or the uneducated, the men or the women, the majority or the minority, the white or the people of color, or one tribal group or ethnicity. God’s standards are permanent. They do not change from person to person or with what people think or do.