Because God exists we know what goodness is. And through Jesus we can be forgiven and accepted even though we don’t do it.1
Introduction
Today I want to think about whether we can be good without God.
At the outset I want to clarify what I am saying and what I’m not. I’m not saying that it is impossible to be good without believing in God. It is, of course, perfectly possible to do good without believing in God. But it is impossible to do good without God. That is to say, if God does not really exist then doing good is impossible.
This is an important point but it is obvious if we substitute ‘fly to New York’ for ‘doing good’ and ‘aeroplanes’ for ‘God’.
It is perfectly possible to fly from London to New York without believing in aeroplanes. Believing in the aeroplane is irrelevant to your ability to rely on it and let it transport you. You might be unconscious for the whole flight. You might be mad and imagine that you are flapping your arms the whole way.
However, it is impossible to fly from London to New York without aeroplanes. In the whole history of humanity until the invention of the plane, noone managed it because it could not be done.
I am arguing that while it is perfectly possible to do good without believing in God, it is impossible to do good if God does not exist.
My argument has three parts:
First, that morality – good and bad/right and wrong – is real. This is what I call the ‘moral law’.
Second, that the moral law’s reality depends on God or someone like him existing.
Third, that it is Jesus who shows us truly what the content of the moral law is.
- The Moral Law is Real
In Romans 2, St Paul argues that there is a moral law – a sense of right and wrong – and that deep down everyone knows this even without being told.
To be plain, what I mean is that right and wrong are real things. They aren’t just questions of taste – like whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice-cream. Rather they exist independently of us and over us.
That is how we speak – how we argue – by appealing to principles that are above us. We assume that there is a moral law at work in the universe and that everyone ought to obey it.
It is fashionable to ignore this and deride it, particularly on the left. There is a great temptation to say that there is no such thing as objective morality that ought to be known and shared by others. Yet, the funny thing is that even those who argue for this position in one moment, then appeal to morality in the next.
The man may say there is no moral reason people should keep their promises. But if you try and break a promise to him, he protests that you are not being fair. Or he tries to justify breaking his own promise by some other factor that means he hadn’t really broken the moral law at all.
This was brought home to me when I studied legal philosophy at University. My teacher, a brilliant legal philosopher called Nigel Simmonds, knew that there were lots of smarmy undergrads who would object that right and wrong were not real. He offered to debate the point. But only with someone who really believed that the transatlantic slave trade was fine. Unsurprisingly, no-one argued the point. Everyone knows right and wrong are real things and those who say they are not are just playing games.
It is not an objection that different societies have different moralities. They differ in the way it works out (who we should be unselfish towards) but they always agree you should be unselfish to someone. They agree that you cannot kill whom you please but disagree about the precise way of working that out.
Here I am making a limited point. I’m not arguing that every culture, everywhere has agreed on right and wrong. They plainly haven’t. But they do all agree that there is something called right and wrong. They all agree that there are things that we shouldn’t do, not just because they are inefficient or hurt me. But because they are wrong even if they benefit me or enable me to get what I want.
This is the universal experience of humanity, even those who protest it.
Before moving on, we should note that we all break the moral law. We know it. That is why we feel guilty or ashamed at times. Noone has to tell us to feel that way; often no one knows what we have done. We can try to dampen down that feeling by making an excuse or blaming someone else.
Ultimately, however, even our excuses demonstrate that we feel there is something we need to excuse. We know that there is a moral law. And we know that we break it.
- The moral law depends upon God
So the moral law is real. There is a sense of ‘ought’ that every human being shares and which governs the way they behave.
But what lies behind it?
There are basically only two explanations for existence.
The first is materialism. In this view, everything comes down to matter bouncing off itself and colliding with the world around it. The materialist believes that matter and space have always existed. Noone knows why, what caused them, and any question like that should not be asked because it is difficult to answer.
The matter bounced against other matter until, over time, by a mindbogglingly unlikely series of accidents, governed by the operation of laws (which came from nowhere and were caused by no-one but which are nevertheless extremely powerful), the matter rearranged itself into creatures that we call humans. On this view there is no such thing as a ‘mind’, ‘thoughts’ or ‘morality’. Only stuff. There is nothing fundamentally different between a man and a mountain except the arrangement of matter.
The other view is a religious view.
On this view the universe was caused by a mind that chose to make it. The religious view argues that this great mind thinks about things, cares about things and has a purpose for the universe he created. Its laws are perfectly explicable because they are made by a lawgiver. It worked to produce creatures that think just as it thinks.
The religious explanation accepts that the Creator works through physical processes. It accepts that stuff changes because it hits other stuff.
The key difference is that for the religious explanation of existence, there is such a thing as mind and morals. Indeed, they are the most fundamental reality.
These views have both always been present in humanity.
The argument can’t be settled by science because science does not and cannot address any of these questions. All science does is tell you what is physically happening. It doesn’t tell you what is behind it anymore than a TV replay can tell you conclusively why a football manager picked a player or waited to make a substitution.
Now that doesn’t mean that we cannot answer the question. We have some information that helps us.
We know that human beings universally experience themselves and the world around them as if minds and morality are real.
In every place at every time people have behaved as if the moral law is real, even if they have disagreed about exactly what it means. Everyone knows there is something they ought to do and that sometimes they do not do it.
Let me put it more plainly. We know from our own experience and the experiences of every other person that the moral law is real. In the only place we could expect to find evidence that minds and morals are real, we find evidence that they are.
We find that we know that something or somebody wants us to behave in a certain way and that at times we don’t. This only makes sense if there is something directing me and everyone else.
What is more, this is very much like a mind. Matter cannot give us a manual. Atoms cannot give advice. Only a person can do that.
And so we find that we have arrived at a second point in our argument.
There is such a thing as the moral law.
Behind the moral law must be a mind, a lawgiver. This is what we call God.
- Jesus
Everything we have said so far points to the idea that there is a God. It is almost impossible satisfactorily to account for the way human beings experience the world – which is the thing in the universe we have best evidence for – without God.
We should note that this is a vision of God that is uncompromising and strong. The moral law is absolute – it tells you to do whatever is right, however hard it is to do. The mind behind the universe must not just be a bit good. Our experience suggests that he must be absolutely good. And that is terrifying.
We know three things.
First, we know there is a law because we all experience its effects.
Second, we know that because there is a law, there is a law-giver. There is no other satisfactory explanation for its existence.
And third, we know that we break that law. And the universal experience of laws is that breaking them has consequences. This isn’t comfortable. But it is true. And truth is, at the end of the day, the most important thing.
So what do we do about it? What is the truth about this moral law? And how do we fix the problem of our breaking it? This is where Jesus comes in.
Christians don’t believe that everyone else in the world is completely wrong in their beliefs about the universe.
Atheists believe that they are completely right and everyone else completely wrong. Christians are more generous. We believe that there is usually some echo of the truth in every culture and religion. It is there, a story that keeps being told, an intuition that can’t be shaken off. It is like everyone has had a dream they know was true but they can’t quite remember.
Now, to be clear, where other belief systems differ from Christianity, we believe that it is right and they are wrong. But there is something of God remaining everywhere. And Jesus fulfils and makes known to us this God.
More than that, he takes the consequences of our breach of the moral law, of our continual failure to do what we know is right.
Christians believe that in Jesus, God became one of us.
In his teaching we hear the moral law that all societies know in part explained to us perfectly. To love one’s enemies, to care for the poor, to refuse revenge, to love and honour one’s spouse, to forgive. In these words we find the summation of the human moral project. Noone has improved on it. Those who have tried – like Marx or the Communists – have only succeeded in causing immeasurable damage.
Wherever Jesus’ message has gone, life is better. It improves the position of women, of children, of minorities. It is the foundation of modern legal systems protecting the oppressed, of the modern scientific method, of human rights, of the welfare state.
Jesus’ teaching is the supreme and purest explanation of the moral law.
In his life we see it lived out. A life lived for others, without grasping riches, healing the sick, teaching the poor, accepting the stranger, purifying the unclean, forgiving the unrighteous, challenging the strong, dying for his friends.
Jesus’ life is the supreme and purest demonstration of the moral law.
And in his death and resurrection he takes our failure to do what we know we should and he bears its consequences. His infinite goodness, his moral perfection, is swapped with our failure. Every breach of the law has a consequence. And he took mine.
In its place he offered me his perfect obedience. It is this that brings us back into a right relationship with the lawgiver. The breach is repaired and we are made right with him.
This is the distinctive claim of Christianity. And it is really good news.
Conclusion
So can you be good without God? No.
In fact, on our own we cannot be good at all.
But in and through Jesus we can be forgiven and accepted anyway.
- In preparing this blog I am almost completely dependent not only on the Bible but on CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity. You need to read this. It’s one of the most influential books of the last 200 years. If you are wondering about Christianity, even if you are not sure and think you might not believe, you should read this book. ↩︎
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