COLOSSAL JOKE

Dear Professor Theophilus:

My son has a question that I can't answer to his satisfaction. In your books you describe deep conscience as a witness to moral truth. What he wants to know is why we should we assume that this witness is telling the truth.

Following up what you say about our design, I told him that it would serve no purpose for the Designer to fill conscience with lies. That would be like fashioning a sledgehammer out of clay. I also pointed out that the basics of conscience, like not taking what you aren't entitled to and not hurting your neighbor gratuitously, make life better.

My son isn't persuaded. He is willing to assume that conscience was built into us by a Designer, but he asks "How do we know that we aren't a colossal practical joke? Maybe He implanted false morals into us, and now He's sitting back to watch what happens."

Reply

What you told your son is fine, but I can see why he isn't satisfied. Your first reply presupposes that the Designer is good. Your second one presupposes that life lived a certain way turns out good. Both replies take for granted that we already know something about good. That's just what your son wants you to prove. I think he wants you to justify believing that anything is good — to prove the very starting points of moral proof.

I'm on your side, because what he's asking for is impossible to provide. This isn't just a problem with ethics; it's impossible to provide in any branch of knowledge. Every argument begins with premises. Not even geometry starts from nothing, because you have to begin with what can't be proven (the axioms) in order to prove what can be (the theorems). If someone asks you to prove the axioms, he is missing the point. They neither can be nor need to be proven. Their self-evidence is offered to us ahead of time, as a gift of the Creator. We need a leg up, and He gives it to us. It's the same way with the "first principles" of every subject, including morality. You just have to recognize the gift.

But the kind of skepticism that your son is pitching is a game. You can ask questions like "What if the law of non-contradiction is false? What if equals added to equals aren't equal? What if loving my neighbor is evil instead of good?" But you can't believe that the law of non- contradiction might be false, that equals added to equals aren't equal, or that loving my neighbor is evil instead of good. You have to use the law of non-contradiction even to deny the law of non-contradiction, for denying it is saying that it's false and therefore not true. You have to know that equals added to equals are equal, or you can't do arithmetic at all. And you have to know something about good, or you've thrown out your equipment for arguing about it. You don't even have a leg to stand your doubt upon.

Games should be exposed for what they are. A student once asked me "Morality is all relative anyway. How do we even know that murder is wrong?" I asked him "Are you at this moment in any real doubt about murder being wrong for everyone?" After a long uncomfortable silence, he admitted that he wasn't. I replied, "Good. Then we don't need to waste any more time pretending that you're in doubt about morality. Tell me something you really are in doubt about."

In the same way, you might try asking your son something like "Are you really in doubt that it's better to love your neighbor than to hurt him?" See what he says. If he answers, "That's right, I am," then ask him what it is about love that seems evil to him, or what it is about gratuitous harm that seems good. If he says "Well, for all we know love might be evil," don't let him off the hook; he's ducking the question. Try asking "How do you know that it 'might' be? Is there something that makes love look suspiciously evil — something you know even better than you know that love is good?"

Of course not. One has to know something even to intelligently doubt something else, and there is nothing we know more surely than first principles. May God guide your conversation.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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WHERE DO I BEGIN?

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I am a recent college graduate who suddenly finds herself feeling unfulfilled. I always clung to my school work and had a ravenous appetite for literature. I earned two degrees, a minor, and graduated with honors. I don't list these accomplishments to brag, but to demonstrate that getting what the world offers can leave a person as empty as before. While gorging my mind, I neglected my spirit.

A line in your article "Escape From Nihilism" struck to the heart of what I've been feeling. You wrote that "given the meaninglessness of things," you "had no reason to do or not do anything at all. This is a terrible thing to believe." I'm feeling that meaninglessness now, and it's terrible. I can't find meaning in anything any more, big or small. I'm searching for God, but I'm afraid — of what I'm not entirely sure.

I guess my problem is that I do not know where to begin. I've never attempted a journey such as this. I was exposed to some aspects of Christianity as a young child, but not by my family. I even own a Bible given to me on my eleventh birthday by a passing missionary women. Inscribed inside is the date in which I prayed for Jesus to save me, but I no longer remember that day.

Do you have any advice for a person just beginning her journey to find God after 23 years of denial?

Reply

My dear, how my heart goes out to you. You say you're not entirely sure what you're afraid of. I can tell you what most people are afraid of at the point that you've reached. We fear that the search will turn up empty, that there won't be any meaning after all. At the same time, we fear that the search won't turn up empty, because in that case the meaning must be God's. We aren't at liberty to make it up. Something in us would rather go on failing at being God than have God succeed at being what He is. Given that something, it is a miracle of grace that we can search for Him at all. You are experiencing that miracle now. Despite the fear of not finding God, despite the equally terrible fear of finding Him, you are searching for Him anyway. It is He who made this possible.

Here is my advice. The three counsels that follow are intended to be followed all at once — not one today, another in a week, and another in six months. They work together.

First, pray. Pray in the name of Christ, who is the revelation of God Himself in person, even though you don't yet know Him, and do so with all your heart. This is not what you prayed on your eleventh birthday with the missionary lady. The purpose of your prayer is to ask Him to lead you, by His own ways, into all His truth. Ask Him every day. I know you don't yet know whether anyone is listening. That's all right. You can pray to God, "I don't know if you're real, but if you are, you can have me. Just show me, because I can't tell." That's what I prayed when I was where you are. For months it seemed that nothing happened, but that was only because he had to clean so much stuff out of my ears before I could hear Him.

Second, start living as though you were a Christian. You will often fail; so do we all. That's why we need Him. Remember that when we disobey Him, He doesn't stop speaking to us, but our ability to hear Him diminishes. It works the other way too. The more we obey, the better we hear.

Third, find the best church you can, worship as fully as you can, and learn everything about Christ that you can. The temptation is to think "First I'll figure out what it means to be a lamb, then I'll go find the flock." No, for it's only in the flock that we learn what it means to be a lamb. You will need God's help to find a good church, but there is a practical side to it too. I've written about what to look for and avoid in How to Stay Christian in College.

Don't lose heart. Remember, the fact that you are restless is a sign that He is calling your name. He loves us more than we love ourselves. He searches for us long before we search for Him. He never stops. And He is wonderful.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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HOW COULD HE DO THAT FOR ME?

Dear Professor Theophilus:

A friend asked me a question that I couldn't answer, and it's been bugging me ever since. We Christians believe that Christ paid the penalty for our sins. My question is how this "substitutionary atonement" could be just. If we're the ones who are guilty, then aren't we the ones who should pay? Suppose that I murder someone, and my mother offers to be executed in my place. Does that seem right? It doesn't make sense that she could take the consequence that I deserve.

My Dad, who is a pastor, says that in questioning God's justice I'm imagining a still higher standard of justice than God's and demanding that He live up to it. That seems true, but I'm not sure that it helps.

My brother's suggestion makes a little more sense. He says that the offended party decides how one repays him. In the case of sin, the offended party is God, so if God allows someone else to pay what I owe, that's good enough. I agree that if someone takes my money, I have a say in whether he has to compensate me, but if I let someone else pay his debt he's still guilty, isn't he? He's just not punished.

Can you clear this up? I don't want to pretend that my understanding of justice is higher than God's, but I'd like to understand, and I'd also like to be able to explain to my friend.

Reply

The question that your friend asks used to bug me too, and I wasn't satisfied with the answers I was given either. Take your Dad's. It's a thoughtful, excellent reply to someone who complains that God is unjust, but your friend isn't wondering about that; he's wondering whether Christianity has God's justice right. Your brother is correct that a creditor may not care who pays the price, but you're right that the debtor still didn't do what's right.

Have you ever read any of John Donne's meditations? He's the fellow who said "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." The line is in Meditation XVII; take the time to read the whole thing. In the old days, when I read such language I thought that it was a sentimental exaggeration. In the view I held then, by nature we are all disconnected; connection of one person with another is never more than partial, and always partly an illusion.

But I had it all backwards. What Christianity teaches is just the opposite of what I believed. Disconnection is the illusion, for by nature we are all connected. We aren't the same person, but we are so deeply identified with each other that you can't tell one man's story without telling the story of his fellows. If you think I'm only saying that a solitary human life would be unhappy, you misunderstand me. It would not be a human life at all. Yes, of course, we are individual persons, but we depend on each other so completely that without others I would never know that I am me. The most private and personal gains its meaning from what is shared and held in common. In my case, these insights were a long time coming, and came only through marrying and becoming a father. Some people get it more quickly.

Eventually I got it. For better or for worse, our true condition is connection, and connection changes everything. If we aren't connected, then when Paul writes, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22), he isn't making sense. Wasn't Adam the one who sinned? Then how could we die "in him"? But Adam was the representative of our shared humanity, and the dye of sin spreads in all directions. My sin is a reproach to you; yours, a reproach to me; his, a reproach to us all. Redemption works that way too. Wasn't Christ the one who died and rose? Then how could all be made alive "in Him"? But Christ was the representative of our shared guilt, and the dye of life spreads in all directions too. If, by grace, I too bear my Cross — if I allow His very identity in death and resurrection to interpenetrate my own — then this other statement of Paul makes sense too: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

Is it just? If by justice you mean how justice looks under the illusion of disconnection, no; it is better than justice. But the demands of justice are truly met, for a deeper reality is at work, the reality of connection. The Church is the Body of the crucified and risen Lord. We are parts of the Body of which He is the Head. That isn't metaphor but very truth.

I don't know whether your friend will get it or not. It isn't fully convincing except through experience. Some things you can know from the outside, but the living grace of Christ isn't one of them. You have to get into the river to get wet.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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If you have a question you'd like Professor Theophilus to consider for this column, please send it to asktheo@trueu.org. Please note, all questions that are selected for "Ask Theophilus" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.