H O W I m p O r TA N T I s T H E B I B L E ?
“Ahh . . . ,” replies Hobbes as he strolls thoughtfully away. Much of Calvin’s blood flows through the veins of all of us. We want the freedom to do what we want, but don’t want others to have that same freedom if it impacts us negatively. That is why we need the Bible. The Bible gives us moral standards that are necessary if we are to get along with each other. If not for God and the Bible, it would be hard to tell how far civilization might degenerate. If everyone looks out only for himself, the law of the jungle becomes the law of the land . . . the survival of the fittest. Only as people willingly look out for one another can civilization advance. When Jesus said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31 niv), He voiced one of the most profound single sentences in the history of humanity. With acceptance of that one principle, many of humanity’s greatest problems would disappear. “If there is no God,” wrote Dostoevsky in his great novel The Brothers Karamazov, “then all things are permissible.” Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical theologian, spoke prophetically when he used to teach that unless you can appeal to God, there is no such thing as right and wrong. You say something is right; I say it is wrong. We cancel each other out. Only if there is a God, and if God has revealed right and wrong to us can we say something is right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust. Hitler killed six million Jews and many Christians who tried to help them. Stalin killed over fifty million of his countrymen. Mao was responsible for perhaps as many as seventy million Chinese deaths. All three of these men were committed and reasoned atheists. Without God, the “rights and wrongs” of what we call civilized countries disappear. If there is no God, then there is nothing inconsistent with what these men did. You may not like it. You may prefer that they not have done it, but you cannot call it wrong. They thought it was right. So who are you to call them wrong? But if God calls them wrong, then you have something. There is leverage there. Why do we need the Bible? Because right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust disappear into a fog of formless gray without the Bible. Unless God has revealed to us a moral code, we have none except that which is imposed on us by whoever has enough power. Our light becomes darkness.
Life after Death As we look at the great conveyor belt of life, we see people sitting on it out in front of us, and as they get to the end, they drop off. But we don’t know where they go.
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