Apologetics at the Cross by Josh Chatraw & Mark D. Allen

Author:Josh Chatraw & Mark D. Allen [Chatraw, Joshua D. & Allen, Mark D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Published: 2018-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Moral Beings

God created humans as moral beings who are responsible for the decisions they make. Because God made us this way, we cannot help but make decisions based on what we sense is “right” and “good.”3 As humans we not only have desires, but also, unlike animals, we reflect on these desires and evaluate them, making moral judgments. A lion does not ponder the morality of his selfish desire to keep all to himself the zebra he just mauled and not share it with his fellow lions. Humans, on the other hand, have the capacity to evaluate their own desires. For example, I (Josh) once had a student confess to me, “I really hate him, but I know it’s not right.” Even the fact that we almost always attempt to rationalize our decisions to follow our impulses (the student who spoke to me may well have thought something like, I have every right to hate him, because he stole my girlfriend) is a sign we were created as moral beings. Only humans are capable of losing their temper and then, after reflecting on the situation and realizing their anger was illegitimate, feeling bad about it. Our propensity as human beings to evaluate the desires and motives of ourselves and others—to make moral judgments—is both unique to us and universal among us.

The point is not that all humans and, by extension, cultures, agree on a particular moral standard, but that all humans and cultures have a moral standard and make moral judgments about what is good, bad, appropriate, inappropriate, meaningful, and inconsequential.4

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