VOLUME 24.3 I WWW.RZIM.ORG THE MAGAZINE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES JUST THINKING + MUST THE MORAL LAW HAVE A LAWGIVER? PAGE 02 LONGING TO COMFORT PAGE 22 NO MATTER THE COST PAGE 26 BY HIS HAND PAGE 30 Just Thinking is a teaching resource of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and exists to engender thoughtful engagement with apologetics, Scripture, and the whole of life. Danielle DuRant Editor Ravi Zacharias International Ministries 4725 Peachtree Corners Circle Suite 250 Norcross, Georgia 30092 770.449.6766 WWW.RZIM.ORG HELPING THE THINKER BELIEVE. HELPING THE BELIEVER THINK. TABLE of CONTENTS VOLUME 24.3 22 Longing To Comfort A painful situation with her young daughter causes Naomi Zacharias to look at her relationship with God in a new light—revealing how we often relegate God to the sidelines when grief or anger arises. 02 Must the Moral Law Have a Lawgiver? John Njoroge carefully examines the arguments made by atheists that we don’t need God to understand morality and offers several reasons why their conclusions are unsustainable. 26 No Matter the Cost Andy Bannister considers the troubling reality that many people, including Christians, lack conviction because they have no absolute sense of right and wrong. 36 One Question 30 As one who has stood before By His Hand various audiences around the “Without knowledge of self there world facing hard questions is no knowledge of God,” wrote for over four decades now, John Calvin. Danielle DuRant Ravi Zacharias can almost observes how the gospel offers predict one question he will the most plausible and hopeful get in nearly every setting, understanding of who we are whether in a public forum and why we are here. or private conversation. Must the Moral Law Have a Lawgiver? By John Njoroge Atheists don’t believe we need God to understand what is right and wrong. Yet, Christians point to a moral law that is written on our hearts by God, and our conscience testifies either for us or against us with regard to morality. [2] JUST THINKING • RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES efore I respond directly to the entirety of one’s being, including the question raised in the title of mind—a major part of the Greatest this article, let me say a word Commandment (Matthew 22:37-8)—is Babout what I take to be the not only commanded in the Scriptures, place of arguments for God’s but it is also integral to spiritual growth. existence. To the person who has walked Moreover, it is true that a rational pres- with God for any length of time and who entation of the gospel routinely serves as has experienced firsthand the reality of the catalyst that propels many to faith in God’s work in his or her life, offering God. For some people, the way to their arguments for God’s existence can feel as heart is through their mind. And when awkward as planning a surprise birthday the will is right—when what we want is to party for Auntie Jenny in her presence. I submit to a reality not of our own mak- suppose most people do not believe in ing—we find that God has really put us in God as the end result of logically airtight a world fraught with clues of his holy pur- conclusions built upon indisputable suit. Among other things, we are rational premises; they are first confronted with beings, and it stands to reason that our their own sinfulness and the need to be minds, properly chastened, should not be reconciled with a Holy God as encapsu- at war with the truth, wherever it may be lated in the gospel message and then found. To quote the legendary scientist build a rational case for their newfound Galileo, faith as questions, and sometimes doubts, arise.1 We should be careful not to over- I do not feel obliged to believe that emphasize the intellect at the expense of the same God who has endowed us the will. Just like any other good thing our with senses, reason and intellect has Lord has freely given to us, we can use intended us to forego their use and reason to conceal our flight from Him. by some other means to give us When it comes to making a decision knowledge which we can attain either for or against God, the defining by them.2 issue is the deceptively simple question Jesus asked the disciples of John the So, what do our senses, reason, and Baptist who expressed interest in follow- intellect tell us regarding the existence of ing Jesus, “What do you want?” (John God? There are many different strands of 1:38). Doubt and skepticism are valid pos- evidence available to us in answer to this tures as long as they are motivated by the question. We could, for example, consider search for truth rather than a repudiation the origin and complexity of the universe, of it.What we want to be the case can the presence of information in the DNA, keep us from accepting what is in fact the the origin of life and consciousness, bibli- case, in spite of the amount of evidence at cal history, including the resurrection of our disposal. Elsewhere, Jesus puts it this Jesus, and our immediate experience of way, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God. In this article, I will concentrate on God will find out whether my teaching the moral nature of our universe, which I comes from God or whether I speak on take to be one of the peskiest pointers to my own” (John 7:17, emphasis added). God for anyone who is intent on turning Nevertheless, there is indeed a his or her back on Him. place for taking a step back to consider In what follows, I will offer some the nature of the rational evidence that of the reasons why I believe we cannot may be marshaled in defense of our faith. make adequate sense of our experience of The process of loving God with the morality without God. My goal is not to JUST THINKING • VOLUME 24.3 [3] focus on the moral argument as a whole you must affirm a moral law on but on the obligatory or normative aspect the basis of which to differentiate of the moral law that I will argue cries out between good and evil. But when for a moral lawgiver. As the philosopher you admit to a moral law, you must Immanuel Kant noted several centuries posit a moral lawgiver.3 ago, morality is largely constituted by cat- egorical imperatives: nonnegotiable rules of Now, anyone who may be unfamil- behavior to which every human being iar with the academic literature on the must conform. I will argue that such a source of our moral intuitions might be demand makes sense only if there exists a surprised to learn that most philosophers moral lawgiver who made us as moral who teach ethics, including atheists, agents capable of apprehending an objec- accept almost each one of the claims tive moral standard external to us and Ravi makes in the above quote. In popu- applying it to ourselves. We exist in a lar culture (and in a few academic circles world that comes packaged with a moral as well), there are various attempts to law that we did not invent. We discover it explain morality in terms of evolution, and once we do, we find that we are bound social contracts, relativism, etc.4 Much of by it. This is, indeed, our Father’s world! the interaction on moral issues tends to take place at that level in popular circles. THE MORAL ARGUMENT And because there exists a gap between Like hundreds of other young men and the academy and the so-called masses women I have met in my travels around (and we are all members of the “masses” the globe, my first foray into system- outside our professional or academic atized philosophical thinking as it applies disciplines), addressing these topics in to Christian apologetics was occasioned the manner in which the masses grapple by a “chance” encounter with the spell- with them is vitally important. But binding lectures and messages of Ravi academic ethicists realize that morality Zacharias, especially his 1992 Veritas is too central and binding a reality in Forum lectures at Harvard University human experience to be relegated either that eventually found their way into his to individual or collective human will, provocatively titled book Can Man Live desires, or beliefs. Nor can it be Without God. I was barely out of my adequately understood on the basis teenage years, and I had traveled to the of social contracts or evolution. US to study medicine. But God used That morality is objective, binding, Ravi’s messages to lead me on a different and inevitable is most evident to us when path as I came to terms with the infinite we are either the victims of injustice or value of God’s Word, properly communi- when our sympathies for the helpless are cated. The rest, as they say, is history. awakened. Everything within us cries out One of the points Ravi emphasized against such experiences. A number of in his lectures, one that I found to be years ago, I read a story about a woman quite persuasive, was the fact that there is who had given birth through C-section in a very compelling link between morality a certain country. In the process of the and God. Here is a succinct summary of delivery, something went horribly wrong.