Sorry for the long hiatus, everyone! I was busy preparing a lecture series on science and faith that I will be giving to my church next month.
In my previous posts, I discussed why salvation through unmerited grace was moral. In short, I argued that grace is moral because:
1) It was freely offered by Christ through his perfect life and sacrifice
2) Receiving this unmerited righteousness from Christ inspires us to freely love God and others out of gratification and humility
3) The institution of marriage affirms the importance of grace and unconditional love
But are there any viable alternatives to righteousness through grace? Let's explore other morality systems one by one to compare:
Alternative 1: Righteousness by works
This is the morality system set up by the majority of religions and even by most atheists. The basic premise is that for a person's life to be validated (whether it be heaven, reincarnation to a higher being, karma, respect, honor, etc.), they must live up to a certain moral code. Nearly every religion but Christianity, and also many secular societies, operate under this model.
Perhaps the biggest pro of a works-based morality is that it is fair. If a person lives up to the moral code, then they get the reward or the respect. If they fail to live up to the moral code, they get punished and disgraced. Fair, right?
However, a huge problem crops up for anyone living by this system. If your moral code comes from the Bible, it becomes very clear that everyone is constantly falling short of the divine laws ascribed there. For example, Jesus teaches that anyone who even looks at another person with lust in their eyes has committed adultery in their heart, or that anyone who speaks in anger against another person has committed murder in their heart. Nobody I know can live up to that. Even people living by a more personal code of morality fall short of their own rules. Imagine that you had a tape recorder that recorded every moral statement you ever made (for example: it's wrong to tailgate). Now imagine at the end of your life, this tape record is played back to you, just think of how many of your own "rules" you have broken yourself! In the end, nobody can live up to their moral ideals, whether they come from the Bible or even just from their own personal feelings of justice.
In my experience, only two paths are possible when people operate under a works-based morality that they are unable to live up to.
A) Accept defeat: The first option is to recognize that your life has fallen short of your moral code and accept failure. This is obviously self defeating, and people who give up on themselves ironically usually start sinning and doing more harm than ever.
B) Moral compromise: Another option is to compromise your morality so that you just barely pass the bar. "Well, yes there was that one time I tailgated, but it's not like those other people who tailgate all the time on purpose." "Okay, sometimes I get drunk, but I'm not like those people who are using hard drugs." "Well, sometimes I shout at my wife, but at least I didn't get a divorce like all those other people." But this is a cop-out, clearly your moral standards are being heavily compromised to validate your own deeds. This is not driven by a sense of justice or truth but by selfishness and delusion. This sort of "halfway" morality raises all sorts of difficulties: how do you define how many moral failings one can have while still be seen as "righteous"? How do you demand justice for other people's shortcomings while simultaneously excusing your own moral failings?
Alternative 2: Moral relativism
Besides righteousness by works, the only other conceivable alternative to righteousness by grace is to completely remove ALL conditions for righteousness. In other words, everybody lives their own life, and all lives are equally valid. There is no final judgement, or if there is, everybody is given a free pardon because everyone can find their own way to truth and justice. There is no objective or external sense of right and wrong, instead, "to thine own self be true".
The huge problem with moral relativism is that nobody I know can really be a relativist. Most people who act like nobody should judge anybody have no problem getting morally outraged at Hitler and the Holocaust. Yet how can this anger be justified if there is no objective morality? Clearly, in every human heart lies the profound truth that there are indeed objective moral values and duties that we need to be held responsible for.
Coming full circle: back to grace
The amazing thing about righteousness by grace is there is no sense of compromise. Jesus truly lived a perfectly righteous life of perfect love without sin. Since Jesus is freely offering to give this righteousness to us as a gift, this means that by extension we too can be seen as righteous without compromise. Grace also removes the need for vindictive anger toward others, as our grace is not by our own deeds, so we cannot view ourselves as morally superior to anybody else. And since God will be the ultimate and perfect judge, we can trust that He will exact justice on unrepentant sinners without needing to take vengeance ourselves. In conclusion, righteousness by grace inspires gratitude and love while suppressing anger and vengeance, and is a more rational and reasonable route to salvation than works-based righteousness or moral relativism.
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