Some of us distrust God because we disagree with his moral values.
We endorse what he condemns. He draws distinctions we dispute. We elevate issues he considers secondary. He esteems what we deem disposable.
Instead of aligning our moral values with God’s principles and precepts, we adjust our view of God and his moral code to accommodate our values.
Underlying Motivation
Moral disagreements with God usually stem from one of five root causes.
We lack understanding of what God says in the Bible. Instead, we rely on the incorrect doctrines of those who are equally ignorant or on the rhetoric of those who actively oppose him.
We distrust God generally because he allows suffering to exist. We mistakenly believe that he is indifferent to affliction and, therefore, untrustworthy. As a result, we reject his moral values.
We are offended by judgmental believers who claim to speak for God and, understandably, do not want to associate with them. So we disdain God’s values, mistakenly assuming that he shares their obnoxious contempt.
We find the hypocrisy among reborn believers repulsive. We rightly believe they should live more righteously. We discard God’s values because they seem to have little bearing on the behavior of his stalwarts.
We are unwilling to agree with God because doing so would require us to revise our values and change our behavior, sometimes at considerable social and economic risk. Disagreeing with God is safer, more comfortable, and sometimes more pleasurable.
Regardless of our underlying motivation, moral disagreements with God evidence our fallen nature.
Natural Inclination
God embodies moral truth. His values emanate from his character. He created humans in his image, with a flawless nature designed to uphold his moral code.
Our nature became corrupt when Adam and Eve sinned. We now supplant God’s moral code with our own, as necessary, to justify doing whatever we want, whenever we want.
We would like to believe that God concurs with our moral values that differ from his, because we are his handiwork and he loves us unconditionally, but this is untrue.
God’s internal consistency would not allow him to create us in his image and then give us a nature that opposes the moral values that emanate from his character.
And the unconditional aspect of God’s love does not constitute an endorsement of the moral values embraced by our corrupt nature.
Instead, our natural inclination to subvert God’s moral code confirms that the flawless nature he initially gave Adam and Eve has been marred by sin.
Moral Relativism
Dismissing God’s moral values leads to moral relativism.
God is inherently and singularly good. Therefore, his moral values are good. Abiding by them produces goodness. Moral relativism justifies alternative values that are less than ideal. Abiding by them produces inferior outcomes.
God’s moral values represent absolute truth. Like him, they are immutable. To the extent we disagree with God, our moral values are provisional truths. We can revise them at any time to accommodate changes in our circumstances.
God’s moral values are valid for everyone because he is morally superior to us. To the extent our moral values differ from his, they are not objectively true for others, since, as fallen creatures, we are not morally superior to anyone.
Those who disagree with our moral code live by their own. Since they are morally equal to us, the values they uphold that differ from God’s have the same validity as ours. We may abhor their aberrant values, but we lack the moral authority to declare them unrighteous.
Embracing moral relativism allows our worst traits to flourish because it can ultimately justify every act of wickedness. It also requires us to passively tolerate retrograde cultures that sanction hatred, bigotry, oppression, misogyny, corruption, and stagnation.
Conversely, adhering to God’s moral code nurtures our virtue by aligning our behavior with his character. Embedding its principles in civil law produces innovative modern cultures that promote universal human rights, freedom, dignity, equality, justice, and dynamism.
Small God
Disagreements with God about his moral values require us to diminish him and the Bible.
If God exists and is our Creator, he is superior to us and sovereign over us. His moral values take precedence over ours.
If the authors of the Old and New Testaments were divinely inspired when they wrote their original manuscripts and if those documents have been accurately copied and transmitted through the ages, then the Bible faithfully conveys God’s moral values.
To discredit God’s moral code, we must believe that at least one of these claims is false. This requires us to disregard the testimony of nature, history, and textual criticism.
Contrarian Dilemmas
Nature bears witness to God’s existence and his role as our Creator.
To argue that God does not exist or is not our Creator, we must explain how energy, matter, time, and space emerged from nothing and formed the universe.
Then we must describe how life spontaneously emerged from these four lifeless elements and began reproducing.
Next, we must account for the fundamental laws of nature—e.g., inertia, gravity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and planetary motion—that have kept the universe orderly since its inception.
We must then identify the author of the DNA instructions governing cell behavior.
Finally, we must explain why we are born with an innate sense of right and wrong.
Nature provides sufficient evidence of God’s existence and of his role as our Creator to satisfy those willing to follow him on his terms.
However, no amount of evidence is enough to satisfy those who want to live independently of him.
History attests to the Bible’s divine inspiration.
Old Testament prophecies concerning Babylon, Phoenicia, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Israel—not to mention those concerning the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—were fulfilled years, decades, or even centuries after they were recorded. Other Old and New Testament prophecies about future events are increasingly being fulfilled.
God deliberately included prophecies in the Bible about verifiable historical events throughout human history so their fulfillment would validate its divine inspiration for all generations.
Evidence for the Bible’s textual accuracy far exceeds that of other ancient texts.
Like other works of antiquity, the original Bible manuscripts have long since disintegrated into dust. The Old and New Testaments we read today have been reconstructed from copies of these documents.
We have thousands of partial or complete copies of the Old and New Testament books, including copies of the Gospels that date to within a few decades of the events they describe.
We can be confident that the Bible we read today is a faithful rendition of the original manuscripts because so many of these copies agree in their text.
There is less support for the textual accuracy of other ancient texts we read today, such as the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, as well as the historical accounts of Josephus, Herodotus, and Thucydides.
Only a few copies of their original manuscripts survive, and the oldest texts are dated centuries or even millennia after these men lived.
Therefore, if we deem the Bible unreliable, we must also question the authenticity of these other ancient texts.
God’s Perspective
Misguided believers dogmatically contend that God hates those who reject certain tenets of his moral code, as they do.
They are wrong. In fact, they are violating God’s third commandment when they invoke his name to justify their personal hatred.
God dislikes the sins that result from our rejection of his moral code, whether in whole or in part, but his love for us is not conditioned on our agreement with his values.
In fact, our acceptance and adherence to God’s moral values are not his top priority.
God’s Priorities
God’s primary concern is our salvation. Above all, he wants us to qualify for heaven so we can spend eternity with him.
Our communion with him is his next priority. He wants us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
God’s third priority is the quality of our relationships. He wants us to treat others as we want to be treated.
Jesus said that if we consistently pursue these priorities, everything else God wants for and from us will eventually fall into place, including our adoption of his moral code.
Eternal Treasure
In Matthew 13:44, Jesus told his disciples a parable that addresses moral disagreements with God. Here it is:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, he sold all he had and bought that field.
Jesus used the phrase “kingdom of heaven” in his teachings to describe the reign of God in our life. This reign is not a function of his conquest or dominance. Instead, it is a matter of our acceptance and consent.
God’s reign in us begins when we accept his gift of salvation through Jesus. After that, it entails our voluntary submission to his authority and our consent to be renewed as he sees fit. Implicit in God’s reign is our conscious agreement with his moral values.
As with other changes he makes in our life, God never demands that we abide by his moral code, even after we ask him to reign in us.
Instead, he enlightens us about the superiority of his moral values as we walk in harmony with him, and instills in us the desire to uphold them to the best of our ability. As this desire intensifies, we increasingly align our morals with his to please ourselves and him.
Through this parable, Jesus tells us that the benefits of asking God to reign in us—true contentment in this life and eternal bliss in the next—are worth far more than the risks we take, the price we pay, and the control we relinquish when we submit this request.
