Do our moral feelings point to God?
As humans beings, we tend to interpret the world not just through a rational grid of truth and falsehood, but also through a moral one of good and evil. When you consider the outrage culture that seems to animate social media, or the way we reflect on historical events like the gas chambers of the Third Reich, it seems we cannot escape being judgmental creatures. All of us, every day, make dozens of moral judgments about ourselves and others, driven by an innate sense that some things really are right, and others are wrong; some things are good, and others are evil.
So how does the Christian story make sense of morality - do our moral feelings point to God?
The Bible traces the root of our moral intuitions beyond mere social evolution of time and place and culture, arguing that our human categories of good and evil are best explained in light of our divine origins.
Avoiding the two horns of Euthyphro’s dilemma, Christian theology teaches that God’s very nature is the source and objective standard of all goodness. Meaning whatever aligns with God’s nature and will is good, and whatever departs from it is evil. With God weaving His moral law into the fabric of creation, the Christian story argues that humanity was created for good in God’s image, and as such, that our consciences are designed to tap into moral reality, helping us discover that there is an objective foundation for good and evil—an oughtness to the universe—which all people everywhere are bound to follow.
Of course the Christian story is honest that not everyone agrees about what fits into those circles of right and wrong. Since all of us have become damaged by evil, none of us have a total grasp on moral reality. Our consciences can be dulled by our choices, warped by our social environments, or crippled by psychological conditions. And sometimes, because we don’t like the obligations that moral reality demands of us we just suppress our moral feelings, redefining good and evil on our own terms, such that everyone does what is right in their own eyes.
Even still, despite not being a perfect guide to moral reality, the Christian story argues that our moral feelings still do, like a compass, point towards something real, which is why philosophers have long argued that they serve as evidence for God’s existence. While it is entirely possible to do good without believing in God, it turns out to be very difficult to justify why anything is good without believing in God, or to have a solid footing from which to oppose evil.
Take the barbaric example of colonial slavery. Transport yourselves, if you can, through films or stories, to the torturous hulls of these slaver ships, which trafficked countless African lives across the Atlantic to be sold to plantation owners or sugar barons.
What are we to make of our visceral sense that this trade in human misery is utterly evil?
If we throw out God as the traditional anchor for moral objectivism, we bump into an uncomfortable reality. Either we have to accept moral nihilism, which says there is nothing wrong with slavery, because there is nothing wrong with anything, or we have to accept moral relativism, which says that slavery is only wrong according to our culture’s vantage point. That in another time and place and culture, slavery could be considered morally right.
Now few people are prepared to go against their moral apprehension outright and embrace moral nihilism, but for some reason moral relativism has almost become the default position, which, understandable as that may be given our moral differences, still strikes me as strange. Because our everyday experience runs counter to moral relativism.
Every time we speak of moral progress rather than simply moral change, we imply that there is some objective standard, or some moral goal, against which we can measure such progress. When we praise William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King Jnr as moral reformers we refuse to accept that, according to moral relativism, they were in fact moral dissidents, immoral for the way they went against the accepted social norms of their time, place, and culture. When protest heinous evils in other cultures, from genocidal slaughter to sexual slavery, we believe that we are doing something more noble than merely foisting our culturally determined sense of right and wrong upon another culture in some act of moral colonialism.
It seems to me, despite how we may populate the circles of good and evil, we all live as though such categories really do exist. That there is a moral reality or moral law which our feelings tap into, which, by way of some version of the moral argument, lends support to belief in God. And I think that’s good news.
The Christian story doesn’t just shed light on our moral experience, offering an objective foundation from which we can oppose evil. It doesn’t just present Jesus as the perfect moral exemplar to light up for us the way of love. Honestly, if Christianity only offered morality, some moral standard that none of us live up to, that would be bad news not good news, a crushing weight more reminiscent of our cancel culture right now which convicts people of sin without any hope of redemption.
Instead, what the Christian story offers, having exposed our hidden darkness in the light of Christ’s goodness, is a way for our evil to be dealt with, where the good news is that in the place of judgment we experience God’s grace. Jesus died so we can be forgiven, rose again from the dead so we can live forever, and sent the Holy Spirit into the world so that we can all be morally transformed as we follow Him as our King. So not only do our moral feelings point to God, but the Christian story offers a way for us to realign with moral reality, being saved by Jesus to become again who we were always created to be.
