Is Biblical Morality Outdated? - by Dr. Daniel Carrel


	“Can you give me twenty Vicodins ? ” It was 4 a.m., and the emergency room had been busy. As the patients started to file out, I saw the nurse escort a limping man with a blue plaid shirt and blue jeans into a room. “Good morning, Mr. Brock,” I greeted the 42 year-old balding man who grimaced in pain as he sat on the stretcher holding his left thigh. “Hi, Doc.” “How did you hurt yourself?”. “I was on a tractor yesterday. I jumped off into the mud and got stuck. As I tried to pull my leg free, my groin muscle ripped. I was able to work the rest of the day, but tonight I couldn't’t sleep. I came in to get something for pain.”. “Have you strained your groin in the past?” “Yes I have but not this bad.” “Why don’t you lie back on the stretcher and let me examine you.” I put on a pair of gloves and palpated the muscles over the groin and upper left thigh. I tried to be gentle, but he let me know I was hurting him. There wasn't any evidence of a hernia or lymph node swelling. “I’ll have the nurse give you a shot and some ibuprofen to go home with.” “I’d rather skip the shot, and ibuprofen aggravates my ulcers.” “Then I’ll give you a dozen Vicodins,” I offered. “Can you give me twenty so I can make it through the whole weekend?” “Possibly.” I told him as I left the room. His last request wasn’t consistent with the farmer image. Most farmers wouldn’t have come in for a muscle pull. They would have taken some aspirin and stayed home. I had the secretary look up his past record. He had only been seen one previous time. He was given narcotics for pain. When he left, he stole a blank prescription, wrote out an order for more narcotics, and forged the doctor’s name. When he tried to fill the prescription, the pharmacist became suspicious and called our hospital. A nurse verified the forgery, and the patient had to deal with a criminal charge. With that knowledge, I went back into his room. “Mr. Brock, I can’t give you any narcotics because you previously forged a narcotic prescription,” I told him. He didn’t say anything. Then I left the room and let him get dressed. When he left, I noticed he walked out without a limp. I encounter people frequently in my medical work who lie to me. It is upsetting to me when I spend a significant amount of time and effort on people and then realize that their story is fictitious. They lie for various reasons, but usually they want drugs, or time off work. Rhonda, a 15 year-old, was brought to the emergency room because she was having seizures. Her mother was upset. After I asked the girl and her mother some questions and did a physical exam, I left the room to order some tests. Within a few minutes, the nurse called me back into the room. As I entered the room, I witnessed the girl shaking. She wasn’t having a typical grand mal seizure with involuntary contractions of her arms and legs and frothing at the mouth. Within a few minutes, her shaking stopped. She was faking a seizure. I didn’t want to give her any medicine. The next time she started to seize I asked her mom to come outside of the room. When the mom made it outside of the room, I looked back into the room around the curtain. The patient was still shaking, and she was peeking out of her left eye to see if anybody was watching. I explained to the mom what was going on, and then I confronted the patient to see why she might be doing that. She denied she was purposely shaking. The mom didn’t believe my explanation for the girl’s seizure. I ran the blood tests which were normal, and then explained to the mom that she could take her daughter home and follow up with the family doctor to arrange for an electroencephalogram to further document that she wasn’t having actual seizures. Why the young lady was doing that is still a mystery to me. I did ask her about her home life, school, relationships and she denied any problems. Occasionally the lies are somewhat harmless. On one Friday night, a husky football player came in with a forehead laceration. He told me he played linebacker and he had tackled an opponent with such force that he ripped open his skin. After I sewed up his skin, he confessed that he had head butted his friend before the game when they weren’t wearing their helmets. There are times that a lie can be fatal. Such as when a man denied having HIV when he donated blood. The woman who received the blood, acquired HIV, and died of AIDS several years later. Now and since 1985 all donated blood goes through testing for HIV and other infections. In the world of finances, we are affected by lies. In the bankruptcy trial of WorldCom Inc., the federal prosecutor said Bernard Ebbers told “lie after lie” in order to keep the accounting books in line with what Wall Street expected and to keep their stock prices high. It resulted in an 11 billion dollar accounting shortfall which bankrupted the company. His lies cost thousands of people their jobs, and costs millions to stockholders. The Statistics In America, lies are part of our culture. According to Bernice Kanner’s book “Are You Normal” 91% of Americans regularly lie, 20% admitted that they couldn’t go through the day without going along with a previous lie, and more than 50% believe lying is not morally wrong. People lie about their age, their weight, and money as well as more serious matters. Other statistics include: 63% of Americans say they have called in sick to work when they weren’t ill, 17% say they have cheated on the their income tax, and 44% of employment seekers say they have lied on job applications. The Bible Satan, who is called the father of lies in John 8: 44, has lied for thousands of years. In Genesis 3: 4-5, Satan lied to Eve about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit, and the sin of Eve and her husband, Adam, has been passed on to the rest of mankind. In John 4: 1- 13, the Devil tested and tempted Jesus with lies and deceit. Jesus didn’t yield to the temptation. Jacob lied to his father, Issac, to obtain the birthright in Genesis 27. Then, later in his life, he was deceived by his father-in-law when he wanted to marry Rachel. When Jacob lifted his wife’s veil during the marriage ceremony, he discovered Rachel’s sister, Leah. He had worked seven years only to get the wrong wife. His father-in-law also deceived him about his wages. Then his sons lied to him. They told him his son, Joseph, was killed by a wild animal, when actually they sold him into slavery. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira lied about how much money they were giving to the church. Peter asked Ananias why he lied to God. Before he answered, Ananias fell down dead. Then his wife came to Peter, unaware of what happened to her husband, and she lied also. She fell down dead. The story of this couple’s death brought great fear among the people. It is just a reminder of how God feels about lies. Lying is listed as one of the things that God hates in Proverbs 6: 17. Evolution I believe one of Satan’s biggest lies has been evolution. It has kept many people away from a belief in God, and it has eroded the faith of many Christians. If the human race evolved, then there is no need for God as a creator. If there is no God, then we are just animals with no purpose. We can do whatever we want. When I was in medical school, I commuted twenty miles every day with another student, who believed in evolution. We debated frequently, and exhausted our thoughts on the subject. In conclusion, we summarized our arguments into one statement “we both had faith in something we couldn’t prove.” He believed in a theory that man thought up, and I believed in a statement in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” He believed in man, and I believed in God. If he was right, I didn’t have much to lose. If I was right, he had a lot to lose. He would have an appointment with God after death and an eternity separated from God. We continued to ride together and share our philosophies, but neither one of us had convinced the other of our position. Years later, after God had been working in his life, he did accept Jesus as his personal Savior. How Big is the God I Serve? While I was in college, I went to Florida and met two young Jewish men. After we talked about some spiritual issues, one of them asked me if I actually believed that Moses, literally, parted the Red Sea. Because I had just recently studied the complexity of the body’s biological systems, I told them that if God created the kidney’s ability to filter the body’s toxins, the eye’s ability to see, the brain’s ability to think, and the heart’s ability to pump blood for a lifetime, then God would have no problem parting the Red Sea. We, as humans, have a hard time accepting God for who He is and worshipping him. It takes a step of faith. Is your God big enough to create everything you see and everything you don’t see? In Romans 1: 20 the verse states that man should recognize God’s power and creativity from the creation of the world. How can there be such a beautiful creation without a creator? We have no excuse for the rejection of God. What do Americans Believe? In a National Geographic Magazine article “Was Darwin Wrong?” the authors cited a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews in February 2001. They wrote that at least 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin-that is, divine initiative to get things started, and evolution as the creative means, and only 12 percent, believed in evolution without any involvement of a god. The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn’t changed much in two decades. “The Case for a Creator” Lee Strobel, in his book “The Case for a Creator” examined the evidence. Like many of us who were educated in public schools, Lee was taught about evolution as scientific fact. There was no need for a creator. Despite his catholic upbringing, he became an atheist after his education in high school and college. After college in 1974, he worked as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune and was sent on an assignment to West Virginia to report on Christians who were upset about the “anti-God” textbooks that were being used in schools. He wondered why Christians were so upset when, as one skeptic put it, “modern science had already dissolved Christianity in a vat of nitric acid.” He took his notebook to a town meeting, and a part-time truck driver and part-time preacher rallied a crowd. “We’re not evolved from slime. We’re created in the image of God Almighty, and he’s given us the best textbook in the world to tell us how to live!” Lee wrote down what he heard, but he felt the people were ignorant of modern science and didn’t stand a chance against the intellectuals of education. As he headed back to Chicago, he wrote out his article “Textbook Battle Rages in Bible Belt Country.” In his mind, he remembered what William Provine of Cornell University spelled out. If Darwinism is true, then there are five inescapable conclusions: There’s no evidence for God There’s no life after death There’s no absolute foundation for right and wrong There’s no ultimate meaning for life People don’t really have a free will Lee Strobel felt Christianity was taking its last gasps in the clutches of the ironclad evidence of evolution. However, because of his training in journalism and law, he didn’t abandon his search for answers. He agreed with two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, who stated “Science is the search for the truth.” He watched a seven-part series on evolution which appeared on Public Broadcasting Systems network. The spokesperson asserted that “all known scientific evidence supports evolution and virtually every reputable scientist.” In contrast to that statement, he saw a two-page advertisement that stated “one hundred biologists, chemists, zoologists, physicists, anthropologists, bioengineers, organic chemists, geologists, astrophysicists, and other scientists from institutions such as Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tulane, Rice, Emory, George Mason, Lehigh, the University of California, Washington, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, and elsewhere wanted the world to know that they are skeptical.” Their statement read “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” In his search for answers, Lee Strobel interviewed Jonathon Wells, PHD, PHD at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington. He wrote “Icons of Evolution: Why much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong.” Professor Wells explained the problems with the icons of evolution. The first icon he tackled was the Stanley Miller Experiment in 1953 which produced amino acids when an electric spark was shot through an atmosphere similar to the original atmosphere. However, scientists now believe that the original atmosphere was not what Miller used in his experiment. If the experiment is conducted with what is felt to be similar to the earth’s early environment (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor), the result would be embalming fluid which doesn’t get you to the first step in the origin of life. Then scientifically how did life begin? Nobody has a good explanation. Our textbooks still mislead our young people with the thought that it could have initiated out of nothing, but that is only because they do not want to concede to the non-scientific thought that there was intelligent design from a creator. Even biochemist, Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick (discovered molecular structure of DNA) concluded “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle,” The next icon he talked about was Darwin’s “Tree of Life.” His sketch represented the theory that all living creatures have a common ancestor. He believed that if a population was exposed to different conditions, then natural selection would modify the two different populations. Eventually, two separate species would result. The theory suggested progressive change, which the fossil record never supported. Darwin believed future fossil records would prove his theory true, but it hasn’t. Professor Wells stated Darwin’s “Tree of Life” is not a good explanation, and he further emphasized “If you consider all of the evidence, Darwin’s tree is false as a description of the history of life. I’ll even go further than that: it’s not even a good hypothesis at this point.” Another icon was that of the embryos of a fish, salamander, tortoise, chicken, hog, calf, rabbit, and human side-by-side at three stages of development. The similarity of the embryos supported Darwin’s claim of a universal ancestor. In actuality, the embryos are not similar. The embryos were drawn to look similar. This misrepresentation was known in the 1860’s, but the drawings still persist in textbooks today. The last icon dealt with the progression from ape to man which supposedly occurred over 5 million years? The Java man was the missing link between ape and man. However, the Java man was an artist rendering of a skull cap, femur (thigh bone), and three teeth that were excavated by Dutch scientist, Eugene Dubois, on an Indonesian Island in 1891 and 1892. The truth is Java man was distinctly human and had a brain capacity well within the range of humans living today. “Time” magazine as recently as 1994 treated Java as a legitimate evolutionary ancestor. Professor Wells summarized his thoughts on Darwinian evolution by stating “My conclusion is that the case for Darwinian evolution is bankrupt. The evidence for Darwinism is not only grossly inadequate, it’s systematically distorted. I’m convinced that sometime in the not-too-distant future-I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty years from now-people will look back in amazement and say, ‘How could anyone have believed this?’ Darwinism is merely materialistic philosophy masquerading as science, and people are recognizing it for what it is.” False Religion Another one of Satan’s lies is that all religions are right. It doesn’t matter which one you believe. However, if a person investigates religions it is clear that religions can’t all be correct. Religions can co-exist and tolerate each other, but somebody is right and somebody is wrong. Wouldn’t it be simple if there was only one religion? We could either believe in God or not. The chaos occurs because we have thousands of religions. Which one is right? Was there a time when there was only one religion? Is there only one true religion now? What is the truth? What are the lies? Let’s examine the Bible, and cults. The Bible God’s acts and His words were written down by men in the Holy Bible. It became the foundation for Christianity. It was meant to be a guide and a standard. God wanted mankind to read it, know it, and meditate on it. What does the Bible teach? -The Bible is the final authority on all matters. -There is one God who has a personal interest and involvement in our life. -The trinity is composed of the God the Father, Jesus Christ the son, and the Holy Spirit. -Jesus Christ is God, not just a prophet. -Jesus Christ resurrected. -Jesus Christ is 100% God, and 100% man. -Jesus Christ has authority to forgive sin. -Jesus Christ has authority over nature, life, and death. -He is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, Holy, and loving. -He is to be worshipped as God. -Salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ and not by our good works (Ephesians 2: 8-9). -Man is made in the image of God, but, because of sin, separated from God. -The Holy Spirit indwells believers. -There is an everlasting conscious punishment of unbelievers and an everlasting conscious blessedness of the righteous (Hebrews 9: 27). Satan’s lie is that the Bible can’t be trusted. It is not the Word of God. Jesus Christ was not God. As a result, 12,000 false religions have surfaced. All these religions stress the person’s need to do something to earn their salvation. Whereas, in Christianity, the work of redemption has been done by Jesus Christ. He paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross. If we realize our sin separates us from God, believe that Jesus died for our sin, and ask God to forgive us we can have a relationship with God the father, Jesus Christ the son, and the Holy Spirit throughout this life and eternity. Another distinguishing feature of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. Christianity is the only religion with a resurrected Savior. Cults or False Religions The definition of a cult or a false religion is “A perversion or distortion of Biblical Christianity.” The following are characteristics of cults: -They claim to have a new truth. -They have a new twisted interpretation of Scripture. -They have their own scripture. -They teach about a different Jesus. -They reject orthodox Christianity. -They have inconsistencies in their doctrine. -They reject the trinity. -Dictator type leadership, “Messenger of God.” -Salvation by works. -Unfulfilled prophecy. -Financial exploitation. -Satanic influence. -Secret practices -Aggressive proselytizing A Brief History of Religions As we have gone through history, when did these other religions come into existence? In the beginning God created the world. He set up a sacrificial system to atone for sins which was a foreshadowing of the supreme sacrifice that Jesus Christ paid for sins on the cross. God chose the Jews as his people. The rest of humanity worshipped other gods, or didn’t worship any god. When Jesus Christ, a Jew, came and died for the sins of the world, the Christian church was formed. The Jews either accepted Christ and became Christians, or they rejected Christ and remained in the Jewish religion. The other major religions reject Jesus as God. The Islamic faith says that Jesus is a prophet. Ergun Caner, who wrote “Unveiling Islam,” realized, after he heard about the saving grace of Jesus, that Islam was wrong about Jesus being a prophet. He said Jesus claimed to be God. A person can’t claim to be God and be a prophet. A prophet of Allah was supposed to lead people to God, not claim to be God. Claiming to be God is blasphemy, and blasphemy is a capital offense. Ergun questioned whether Jesus was insane, or whether he was and still is the God he claimed to be. He decided Jesus Christ was God and placed his faith in Him. Satan is in this world to confuse people and to keep them from the truth. In II Corinthians 4:4 Paul wrote “the god of this age hath blinded the minds of them who believe not….” In II Corinthians 11: 13 Paul penned “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.” We find the truth by seeking the truth. Lee Strobel in his books “The Case for Christ” and “The Case for Faith” detailed his journey for the truth by investigating the evidences for Christ and Christianity. What he found caused him to abandon his atheism and embrace Jesus Christ. As he strummed out a melody, the inmates all joined in. Their voices blended as they praised God. They sang joyfully, and the decibels peaked with the lyrics “set the prisoner free.” After a few more songs, the study leader put down his guitar and picked up his Bible. He began to speak to the fifty men gathered in the auditorium about the repentant thief on the cross. They listened intently. He closed by offering an invitation to trust in Jesus as the thief on the cross had. I was impressed by the spirit, the humility, and the teachable hearts that were present. After the service, I talked to a few of the inmates, and then we went home. It was a great experience. Now, he wanted me to do the Bible study. How could I relate to these guys? I couldn’t think of any Bible passage or topic. My testimony of good parents, salvation at a young age, and a life dedicated to God’s will didn’t seem appropriate. I put it in God’s hands. As I struggled through the week with different thoughts, one idea seemed to persist. Help them see Jesus. He could feel their pain and relate to them. They could relate to Jesus, who was mocked for his assumed illegitimacy, beaten, scourged, misunderstood, hated, rejected, lied about, and crucified. He knew about their lives, their hurts, their mistrust, their shame, their loneliness, their tears, their grief, and their heartaches. He could offer them hope, heaven, joy, peace, forgiveness, contentment, wisdom, and faith in God. He was no ordinary man. He was God. When I went in for the Bible study, the lesson was about Jesus. I explained how I couldn’t understand everything they had been through, but Jesus could because he suffered in many ways similar to how they had suffered. I encouraged them to focus on Jesus. Jesus As I think about this chapter on “Living in the Light,” Jesus again comes to my mind. He is the only one who ever lived perfectly. His sinless life was the only sacrifice acceptable for my sins and the sins of the world. I’ve had people say to me that they’re going to heaven because of the good things they’ve done. However, their sin separates them from God. I ask them why Jesus came to earth, lived a life without sin, and died for their sins if they could earn their way to heaven without him. *Salvation* When I was growing up, my parents took me to church every week. I am thankful for that. At the time, I had other things I would rather be doing. However, it was at church that I learned about God, heaven, and hell. I wanted to go to heaven and avoid hell, but I didn’t understand what salvation was all about. At church, when I was ten, one of the leaders told a Bible story. After the story, he asked if anybody wanted to know more about getting saved. I wanted to know exactly what the Bible had to say about salvation. I asked one of the men to show me. My parents had explained it to me before, and I had heard it in church many times before. Nevertheless, I didn’t know it in my heart. The leader showed me four things from the Bible. First of all, he said that all men have sinned. He said it is part of our nature to disobey God. He showed me Romans 3:10 which reads “there is none righteous.” He asked me if I had sinned. I hadn’t robbed any banks or killed anyone, but I remembered going into a neighbor’s yard to retrieve a plastic ball and finding a tennis ball. As I picked up my plastic ball, I also picked up the tennis ball. Then I looked up at the neighbor’s house and saw a lady in the window. I felt guilty for wanting to take that ball out of her yard. I told the leader that I realized I was a sinner. He told me the second thing I needed to know was that because of my sin I deserved to be separated from God for eternity. He showed me a verse in Romans 6:23 that said “the wages of sin is death.” In other words, when a person works at a job they get wages for the hours they work. In the spiritual realm, the wages of all my sin is spiritual death or separation from God. If the Bible ended with that message, then we would all be without hope. Some of us are better than others, but none of us deserves to be with God. Next, he told me that the good news is that Jesus paid the penalty for my sins. He showed me Romans 5:8 which explained that God proved his love toward me as a sinner by sending Jesus Christ to die for me. Only someone without sin could die for my sin. Lastly, he explained that salvation is available when we ask for it (Romans 10:13). He said it is a gift from God, and it is not my gift until I receive it. I was ready to receive it. I bowed my head in prayer and acknowledged my sin and my need for a Savior. I asked him to save me. I’ve not regretted that decision. It is the simple message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some have heard that message and responded the first time. Most others have heard it hundreds of times before they responded with a sincere commitment.