(Monroe)
I’m preaching tomorrow on Luke 16 and the story Jesus tells of the outrageously rich man and the radically poor-and-outcast man Lazarus. As I’m now sitting down and working more on this message it strikes me that most of us feel offended that this rich man didn’t do one thing to help Lazarus, who lived outside the gate to the rich man’s mansion. I suggest to you that any moral outrage one feels when the poor are ignored and abandoned and overlooked only makes sense if there is a God. Here’s why.
If there were no God, then I think one would not be immoral to be totally self-centered in this life. Why not? Surely there would be nothing “wrong” about using all your money on your own self. Others might not like that you do this, but who cares? Only people, not some “God.” If there’s no God who is the source of all right and wrong and to whom we are accountable, then we’re not really accountable to anyone or anything in this life. If this sounds strange to you I can tell you that there have been and are serious atheists who would agree with me. It’s really hard to develop an ethical system if God does not exist. Personally, I think it’s impossible.
But maybe our sense of moral outrage that happens when the poor are ignored is due to an evolutionary adaptation that helps us survive as a species? Even if that were true, it would not make it “right” to help the poor and “wrong” to ignore them.
Any moral outrage you feel… about anything… only makes real sense if there is a God who made you in his image. The Romans 2:15 way of putting this is to say that God has written the requirement of the moral law on our hearts. You are a creation of God. God has made you in his image. And God is perfectly good and perfectly loving. Thus the moral impulse in you is a sign that God does indeed exist. This is what C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, referred to as “the clue to the meaning of the universe.”
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