Strangers & Aliens

One of the greatest problems with atheism, by atheist's own admission, is determining morality. How, without any base point, can you say what is right and what is wrong? Murder? We all agree, don't we, that murder is wrong? Why? What circumstances make it OK? Without a standard against which to measure, morality is vacuous.

Last week the Episcopal church in the USA voted (essentially) to allow homosexuals to be ordained priests and consecrated bishops, despite a last minute effort by the Archbishop of Canterbury to dissuade them (read about this here). Today's leader in the Times took a very supportive view of the move: "The sources of Christian inspiration are diverse. They do not derive only from a private response to Scripture." Their final appeal was that this was an issue of "justice."

But what is justice? By what standard is this applied? Is it the standard that all are equally suited to the posts? Surely not! Not only does this contradict the exhortations of Scripture (e.g. 1 Tim 3.2-3) but it implies that all kinds of people the Times leader writer would not want as bishops have an equal shot.

The justice in view must be the leader writer's own view of justice - justice as it appears to him or her. And that is, of course, problematical. For one person's justice may well be another's injustice.

The only answer is a set source of Christian inspiration - a standard which is clear and unequivocal. Does Christianity have such a standard? Oh yes! It's the Bible. So any argument that ignores the supremacy of the Bible (as the Times leader does) is holed at the waterline. Evangelicals must listen to (and gently and wisely refute) biblical arguments that are put forward against our position on sexuality - but an appeal to justice alone must be rejected for what it is; subjective and varying.