Episode 215

You may have seen these ads in subways, billboards, and other public spaces as you go about your day, claiming that we don’t need God to be Good. You don’t need God, we’re all basically good, and we can all discern right from wrong without Him. Is this true? After all, some argue, not everyone believes in God, so we have to create a more inclusive and tolerant morality in our society. In this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we interview recurring guest MD and explore this statement. What does the Bible say about “being good?” What does it mean to be good in the first place? Who decides? Let’s see if we can explore the word of God together and find answers to these questions.

[MD]

Society has so far turned that way because they are so dead set determined to say, there is no God, there is no greater authority for good and bad than me.

[Jay]

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG. And we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

This is episode 215 of the Removing Barriers Podcast. And in this episode, we will be sitting down with MD to discuss a topic that has baffled much greater minds than ours. Ultimately, we will seek to answer the question, do we need God to be good?

MD, it is indeed a pleasure. Welcome to the Removing Barriers Podcast.

[MD]

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[MCG]

Great.

[Jay]

Hi, this is Jay. MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.net and subscribing to receive all things removing barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net slash donate. Removing barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

All right, well, let’s start by defining some key terms. I think two of the key terms will be God and good. So let me show it over to you, Jay, first. How would you define God, at least for our purpose?

[jay]

Big question, but I’ll do my best. I think maybe we could start by describing what he is not. He is not the result or the figment or the creation of our imaginations. He is not what we say or think that that he is. He is not a distant being, some nebulous person that is not involved in the everyday affairs of mankind. And he is not how the world portrays him to be. In some cases, it’s an old man in the sky or someone that would wink at sin or whatever we would define God to be. He is who he says he is. And in order to define God, I think we need to turn to the scripture. And I’ll just turn to three or four different places in the scripture to point to who God is. We know from Genesis 1 that he is the creator. He is the one who created space time, matter, all things in which we exist, he created. If we flip to Exodus chapter 20, where he gives us the Ten Commandments, he says very clearly, well, I’ll just read it. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of *******. And then he goes on to give the Ten Commandments. So we know from those words, he is a person, he speaks, he is the creator, he is actively involved in the very minute details of all of existence. He is the supreme arbiter for all the questions that we have when it comes to truth or reality, what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s evil, what’s real, what isn’t. He is the final authority. If we go to Matthew chapter 5, we have God in the Jesus Christ, giving the Sermon on the Mount, revisiting the Ten Commandments and the commandments given in the Old Testament, and expounding more on them. because he takes the commandments and he exposes how impossible it is for us to actually meet God’s standard. He says, you know, the Ten Commandments say that if you commit adultery, that that’s sin. But he goes even further and says, if you even look at a woman with lust, you’ve already committed adultery, or you’ve already committed adultery with her in your heart. So he takes the commandments even further to show that we can never meet that requirement for perfection that God is, and that he had to come down to pay the price for our sins that we might be saved. And if we go into Revelation chapter 1, we are able to see Jesus. I don’t want to say in his glorified form. I don’t know if I’m wrong in saying that, but Jesus, as he is today at the right hand of the Father, glorified and fully God as he always was and as he is. In Revelation chapter 1, verse 8, he says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. I don’t know if you can get a stronger declaration of his deity than that. Jesus is God, God What is the Creator? Three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And he is, as he says in Revelation, the beginning and the last. He is the truth. He is the way. He is the life. And anything that could even remotely be defined as good has to be measured against him. He is good.

[MCG]

Right. In other words, we are defining God as the God of the Bible.

[Jay]

Yes.

[MCG]

Jehovah God.

[Jay]

Yes.

[MCG]

The God who took on human flesh and died on the cross for sinful men. And of course, we know that to be Jesus Christ. We’re not talking about Buddha, Baal, or any other small G.

[Jay]

Absolutely. We’re not talking about people who would say that they are God themselves because they are, I don’t know, one with the universe or whatever people say these days. There’s only one God and we are not him.

[MCG]

Right. The Bible declare in Isaiah 45, 5 to 6, I am the Lord and there is none else.

[Jay]

Amen.

[MCG]

There is no God beside me. I gird thee. though thou hast not known me, that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. That’s the God of the Bible. That’s the God we’re talking about.

[MD]

I might add something else to that. Everything that you’ve said… comes from a document which is of antiquity. It’s an ancient book. And the modern view is, well, everything old can be thrown out because it’s, but in the Bible, God says he is unchangeable. Amen. He says he cannot lie. He says he cannot change. He will not change. And I had a coworker who used to come in to work, and there is a reference in the Bible that says the Bible is not of private interpretation. Yes. And he would come in on Mondays to work, and he would tell me all about what his preacher, the great private interpretation his preacher had over the weekend. And I would tell him, but wait, I would give him that reference. And he would say, would you limit God? And the answer to that is, no, I wouldn’t limit God. God limited himself. God said, I cannot do this. He said, of us, you cannot privately interpret my word. You don’t have secrets that I don’t know about. There’s nothing hidden. Matthew, that which has been said is going to be said. You’re going to hear this. Preach it on the housetops. That what you hear in the ear, preach in the housetops. It’s not hidden. But God doesn’t change. So everything you have referenced, everything you have said, is true as true today as it was when God said it. And that’s really critical because so many modern religious bents, whatever you want to call them, the He Gets Us movement, if you’ve heard of that one, basically taking advantage of He knows where we are and he saves us from where we are. The he gets us movement is not he saves us from where we are. He brings us from where we are. It’s he loves us where we are and he doesn’t care.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

And that’s ridiculous because God, one, is unchanging, two, is holy, absolute sinless perfection. Amen. And that is gonna make a big difference to the next question. So I’m gonna drop that right there, but that is biblical that he is absolute sinless perfection.

[MCG]

All right, so why don’t we get into it? Let’s define our next keyword. What is good? Let’s define good. Go ahead, MD.

[MD]

Well, I would start with talking about what man defines as good because it is not. It’s good in the sense that it brings temporary peace. It brings temporary happiness. It looks good. It makes us feel good, but it isn’t godly good. And that’s where the dichotomy has to be defined. You have to look at, for our purposes here today, it’s not what is man called good. So what man calls good is if you do something for your neighbor without any hope of being paid back for it. If you stop alongside the road and you, Good Samaritan, somebody’s broken down, you stop it, you help them change the tire. That’s good. And no one would argue that those things are good. No one would argue that obeying the law is good. No one would argue that abhorring Murder is good. That’s all good, but that’s all it is. It’s not righteousness and perfection. And the interesting thing is that in Romans chapter 3, the Bible says, there is none righteous. I mean, that’s a pretty stark statement. There is none righteous. It doesn’t allow for exception. It doesn’t allow for me to say, yeah, accept me or accept you or God said it. There is none righteous. Romans 3:23, For all have sinned. Oh, there it is. That’s why none is righteous and short of the glory of God. Romans 5:12, Whereas by one man, Adam, from Satan, sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men that all have sinned. You know, if death passed upon all men because all have sinned, What good does it do in terms of eternity to be good by man’s standard of good? It’s not enough. It doesn’t get there. Paul, who was probably one of the most righteous people in the New Testament, I mean, he would not say that. He never did. But if you know what he said, if you know what he went through, if you know what he did, and we know his history, we’ve read the Bible, we’ve studied it. Paul says, For that which I do, I allow not, for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I can send unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin dwelleth in me. Wait, wait, wait, wait, sin dwelt in Paul, Well, yeah, according to the Bible, sin dwelt in all men. And Paul goes on to say, For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Oh, whoa. So we’re defining what’s good. Paul is saying, Well, in me, there is no good. Yeah, okay, well, that’s in accord with what God said. So we’re not gonna argue that with him. For to will is present with me. Well, that’s a good thing. But how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. And therein lies the crux of the matter, when you’re talking about defining good, is that sin dwells in all man. And I don’t know how many people, when I’ve tried to witness to them throughout my life, they’ve said, Well, but there’s a little bit of good in everybody. Okay, well, I won’t argue that, but a little bit of good is not enough. And we cannot become more good than we are. I know we’re going to get into this later because it’s one of the things that we do on the Removing Barriers podcast, but God is the only way that we can become defined as good. But note, Paul had been through that experience, the salvation experience, and he still said, sin dwelleth in me.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

And that’s a thing that the world we live in has to understand about good. One, we can’t ever be good enough, but two, we can have righteousness nonetheless. But God said, Jesus himself said in the book of Matthew, he said, There’s only one way. There is only one. The path is narrow. And he said, few there be that find it, because it’s narrow. But there is a path. So I’ll throw it back to you, let you two carry on from here. But I think as far as the definition of good, the definition has to be that sinless, godly perfection, which we can’t get to.

[MCG]

Right.

[MCG]

I like how you can trust what society or even cultural or politically, how we would define good as compared to how God would define good and we already define God. In society, I think they would say good is anything that furthers or promotes something that is positive or excellent that is within us, that we culturally or politically. And the problem with that definition and anything that they will define good is that it is a moving target. And you have lived enough to go back and all of us have that we’d only need to go back 10 seconds and realize that what society wants was determined as being good or determined as being moral has drastically changed now. And now if you listen to the politicians and it is on both sides, they are running and they are having their views and things they want to do because they deem it to be good. They deem it to be their moral duty. If you listen any bit to any other politicians, this year for… the few states that are having either races like in New York and stuff like that, they listen to them. All of them are running on something that they deem or perceive to be good, something that promotes or furthers, you know, the policy for excellence, what they would consider part of society. But I like that you went back to the Bible because the Bible declares that God and God only is good. And I think if you miss that, you miss the entire crux of the definition. The Bible says in Mark 10, 17, And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him, good master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, why callest thou me good? There’s none good but one that is God. And if it goes to Psalm 53, verse 123, the Bible says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Perhaps I did and have done abominable iniquity. There’s none that do it good. God looketh down from heaven upon the children of men as if there were any that did understand and did seek God. Every one of them is gone back. They’re altogether become filthy. There’s none that do it good. No, not one. And of course, when you cross reference that to Romans chapter three, verse 10 and 12, which a verse did you already quote MD, where the Bible clearly said is that there’s none righteous no not one you have none understanding so Paul was clearly quoting the Psalms here therefore anything that is good must be a part of flows from the character of God So in order for it to be good, it must flow or come directly from the character of God, because we know that within us, as you said, there is no good. Psalm 16, verse 1 and 2, Preserve me, O Lord, for indeed do I put my trust. O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my God, my goodness extendeth not. to D. And these verses clearly saying that my goodness is nothing apart from God. So we have no goodness apart from God, and we can prove that again by going back to the Bible in Isaiah 64, verse 6, but we are all as unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags. Our best efforts, the Bible says, are as filthy rags. rags. So good, it must flows or come from the character of God, unless it’s not good. That’s why when the politicians say, well, is it my moral duty to do something that does not flow from the character of God? That’s why it’s not good. That’s why we cannot promote same-sex marriage, because it’s It doesn’t flow or come from the character of God because God condemns it. We cannot celebrate it. That’s why lying is not good because it doesn’t come or flows from the character of God. The Bible says that God cannot lie. And he also said he’s a man that he should lie. And it goes on and on. If he doesn’t come or flows from the character of God, it cannot be good.

[Jay]

As true as all of those things are, I wonder if that matters in our world today. Let’s take the United States very specifically. Our nation is pluralistic in its expression of religion. It’s A pluralistic society, and there is a strong current of atheism in the country. or at the very least, agnosticism, where decades ago, people would generally say that they are Christian and that they have an understanding of the God of the Bible. Today, you’d find that to be a less likely reality. So what does any of that matter if the people in the country either A, don’t believe that there is a God or B, believe in some higher power, but he’s not identified properly as the one true God of the Bible?

[MD]

You know, it’s interesting that you say that, Jay. When I was in the Navy, I had a conversation with, there were probably 20 people in the room, and it was about two o’clock in the morning. And you know, you’ve got to be up 24 hours a day. You get dead periods when you just talk. And I made the comment that our government, our constitution was founded on biblical principles. And I don’t think that’s hard to understand when you read what our founding fathers had to say. But The people in the room, the majority of them said, No, that’s not the case. We’re not founded on the Bible. We’re not a biblical nation. We’re not founded on the Bible. And this was 50 years ago. Yes, you’re right. I have lived long enough to have been 50 years ago, I was in the Navy. But the interesting thing was, when I said to them, If our Constitution was not written on biblical principles, then why do we have laws against murder? And they said, Well, because it’s bad. I said, By whose definition? What makes it bad? If it was not biblical concept, what makes it bad? Well, y’all are familiar, I know, with the concept of circular logic, and every one of the people in that room wound up circling for the simple reason that they could not come to any reason why something would be good or bad outside of God’s influence. So you look at the way our society is today, we’ve kicked God out of our society, and what do we wind up doing? We wind up looking for God because we know We don’t have the answers. And even if we don’t know what Romans chapter three, verses 10 and 12 say, or Romans chapter five, or Paul’s, maybe we don’t even know the Bible, but we know we don’t know the answers. And the only reason I think that society is so bent on finding intelligent design, or God as we know him, which went, I think it was the first place where I ran into God as you know him was when I was talking to someone who had been an Alcoholics Anonymous member. They knew they were an alcoholic. They were trying to, you know, and so they, God as you know him. Well, Alcoholics Anonymous used to be, back when I was a young man, and I was never a member of it, but as a Baptist preacher’s kid, small town, I heard a lot about it, used to be Alcoholics Anonymous called on God, not God as you know him. the God of the Bible. So they’ve turned away from it, and yet they still hope to help people. Society has so far turned that way because they are so dead set determined to say there is no God, there is no greater authority for good and bad than me. Well, you know, to me, that seems to be the epitome of arrogance to think that I’m good enough to say that I’m good. I’m not. I have the advantage of having accepted Christ as my savior as a young man, as a very young, six years old, as a matter of fact, but understanding even at six years old, I am not good enough. So here we are defining good and defining God and looking at the evils and the wickedness in our world that we’re in today. And the simple answer, truly is the simple answer that God gave us. Salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ and a ready acknowledgement of my inequity my wickedness my inability to be good enough and calling on God and saying Forgive me my sins But the point being forgive me from my sins and confer on me That righteousness which I do not have and cannot have.

[MCG]

Yeah, I think you said something interesting there that I want to piggyback on because You said that they remove God and go searching for him. I think it’s a little bit deeper than that. They remove him and declare themselves to be him. And I think that’s what we are seeing in society. Because when you think that you can change or declare yourself something else than what God created you to be, AKA the transgender movement that we’ve seen have been tearing through the communities in the last couple of years. you’re basically declaring yourself to be God. You’re basically saying, God, you made a mistake and I have to correct it. Basically, you’re declaring that there’s no God, or at least you’re declaring that I am God now. I can create out of nothing, which is the only person who can create out of nothing would be God. So the society has moved and they change They basically change the definition of God. That’s why it was so important for us to define God. Because again, I’ve been back on a politician, but the people do it all the time too. How do we judge whether we are moral or not? We look at the laws of our society and we compare ourselves among each other. Oh, well, you do that. Okay, well, I don’t do that. So I’m better than you or I’m good and you are not. declaring someone has been bad. The problem is that when we compare ourselves to a standard outside of God, all of us can come out to be looking better than someone else. But when we compare our standard to God, all of us are wretched. when we compare ourselves to that perfection that God is. And that’s the important thing. Where are you drawing that comparison from the unchangeable God or from your fellow human? Because all of us can always come out looking better than somebody because we compare ourselves to another fallible human being. But when we compare ourselves to the Holy God, it’s a complete different thing.

[Jay]

What if you’re comparing yourself to the consensus that is all of the people in your country, the majority? If a majority of the people in your country says that this thing is good, then that becomes the standard.

[MCG]

No, it doesn’t become the standard because God is God of everybody. And that’s the problem. I’ve met people in soul winning who will say, well, I remember asking her, okay, you determined this is to be good or this to be bad. Why is it that you will condemn North Korea for what they do? Because their society says right. It becomes technically whatever the leadership of that society or the people of our society determined to be good. And we kind of determined that we must go back to scripture. And this is leading into the next question that we have, because we’ll see many signs around, you know, the subway, even billboards across the country saying you don’t need God to be good. And the question is here; do we need God to be good and why? But before we get into that, let’s go into a little break and then we’re going to come back with you, MD, to find out, do we need God? to be good.

You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with MD and we’re discussing; do you need God to be good? We’ll be right back.

[Jay]

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[MCG]

All right, MD, the question is on you.

[MD]

Okay, back up for a second, but I’m going to actually get right into that question. Because as we were talking a little while ago, it came to me, 1 Corinthians 2, chapter 13, which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now, since that was 1 Corinthians, obviously that is a letter from the apostle Paul to the church at Corinth, and it doesn’t sound like he’s chewing them out for something. It just sounds like he’s doing what preachers do. He’s teaching them. Second Corinthians chapter 10, verse 12, maybe they didn’t get forward, because this is the 2nd letter. We dare not make ourselves of the number. or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. So we get back to the whole issue that we just went through. And basically it is a condemnation of society. And I’m not sitting here in condemnation of society. It’s fact. Truth sometimes hurts, but it’s truth. It’s God’s truth. God said it. God gave us the guidelines. They weren’t guidelines. God gave us the commandments. And it’s not only those 10. I’ve read somewhere that there are 1,700 some odd commandments in the Bible. I don’t know how many there actually are. The person who said that didn’t go on and enumerate them all, for which I’m thankful, because I’d still be reading, and it was about years ago. But here, Paul says, if you compare yourself to yourself, you’re not wise. Now, why would that be? And the answer to that would be because without God who defines good, we cannot be good. And anyone who puts up a signboard, anyone who wears a sandwich board, anyone who stands in a pulpit, anyone who preaches a gospel that says, oh, you’re good enough. Oh, you can be good enough. You can, like the Christian scientists, you can continue to study until you can go clear and you can become God. They are lying to themselves if they believe it and to everyone who hears them say it. And that’s not good. No matter how you look at it, that’s not good. I mean, we get back to the issue of, Who defines good? We know God does. We are not good enough to acquire salvation. We can’t meet God’s standard. We fall short of the glory of God. And without God’s definition of good, we’re never going to get to heaven. So then, as MCG, as you said earlier, God defines good and very clearly says, Ed, you can’t get there. We are sinners. We can’t get there. And Paul says of himself, I see it in me. I’m not good enough. I can’t get there. So can we get to heaven without God? And that isn’t the question we ask. But the answer to that is a resounding absolutely not. No way. So the billboard that says you can be good without God, absolute lie.

[MCG]

Yeah, I will agree. The short and quick answer is, of course, absolutely. We do need God to be good. I think the bigger question would be why, right? And I’m going to quote Nietzsche here or Nietzsche, depends on how you want to pronounce it, but these guys that I’m going to quote, they’re not Christians. As a matter of fact, I think at least two of the guys I’m going to quote here were atheists or anti-theists, however you want to put it. And he said he’s the one who coined the phrase God is dead. And one of his famous quote is, if God is dead, then any and all morality of love and human rights is baseless. He also said, if there’s no God, everything is permitted. So basically what he’s saying, you remove the foundation and say there’s no God. He’s saying that everything is permitted. Another guy I want to quote is Dusko Evki. He said, hold your tongue. You won’t understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God. And very important quote there because can you be good apart from God? And what these men, these atheists are saying here is basically saying, hey, look, we have no moralty, we have no base, we have no foundation. If there is no God, if there’s no God, then you have just declared yourself to be him. And also, Arthur Left, who I think he was one of those, what do they call these universities, that big universities, Ivy League university I’m thinking about. I don’t remember exactly one. I think he wanted to say Yale, but I could be wrong. He said, the fact is, if there’s no God, all moral statements are arbitrary. And that’s very important to note as well, because Who are you to tell me that I’m doing something wrong if there’s no God? And how do you determine good and where does the good come from if there’s no God? In other words, there will be no foundation for us to base a morality that is outside of ourselves. And that’s what he’s saying is that we’re declaring ourselves to be God. The change in culture, the change of societal norms that we build on, we will go full circle. As I said, there was a time in this country that even Hillary Clinton was against gay marriage and homosexuality. There was a time even Nancy Pelosi was against these things. These people, at least for Nancy Pelosi’s in her 80s, she didn’t, in her 20s and 30s, hold to these views that she has now. And a matter of fact, the same is true for the Republican leaders as well. So I’m not going to try to get down on the Democrats because the Republicans are the same thing too. The views Donald Trump hold to when he was in his 20s and 30s are not the views he hold to today. Why? Because society has changed. What is acceptable has changed. What has remained the same? is the word of God. And that’s where we are basing our stuff from.

[MD]

Yes. Let me, if I could, it’s maybe a little bit of a jar, but ride along with me. It’s not a total non-sequitur. Have we all read somewhere about some heinous crime someone committed and someone said he was a sociopath or a sociopathic tendencies? I think we’ve all read that, right? Sure. I read the definition, kind of a layperson’s definition of what a sociopath is, and I thought, and I was listening to you just now, MCG, and it brought this to mind. A sociopath is a person who does not see himself and what he does, herself, what she does, in the same framework of the society around them. What they do is right because it’s right. Circular logic, I know, but that’s, they do it because it’s right and it’s right because they say it’s right. And the interesting thing was the discussion that I was reading was in light of a polygraph test, which is a lie detector. And a polygraph, if you know anything about it, tests all sorts of body responses to that body’s lie. So we have this thing called fight or flight, which kicks off adrenaline and speeds up your heartbeat and increases your blood pressure, increases your respiratory rate, all because of the knowledge that what I am saying while I am strapped to the lie detector is a lie. And they’re going to catch me. Hence all that fight or flight. Sociopaths pass lie detectors with absolute ease, flying color. because they have no moral ground. They’re not worried about anybody catching them saying something that’s not true because whatever they say is true is true. By definition, it’s true. And I think that’s so much of where society has moved nowadays. We’re moving as a society toward sociopathology for the simple reason that we have, as we’ve been saying, we’ve thrown out all the God-developed, God-delivered, God-derived concepts of good and bad. And as you said, MCG, we made ourselves God. Well, if I’m God, then what I say is good is good. Then nobody can catch me out for being wrong about what I’m saying, because I don’t know I’m lying, because I’m not lying, because anything I say is true. anything, no matter what it is. Does that kind of ring with the way our society has become?

[MCG]

Oh, definitely, because especially, I think, for all societies, but if we even just concentrate on the Western culture, the Western society, what determines whether something is good or not is from a secular view, what our society builds. And even as we say that, to some degree, we cannot get away from the Judeo-Christian foundation that we have that many of us still base or morality on, even though it’s flawed. But if you go further than that, where does this Judeo-Christian foundation come from? It comes from the Bible.

[MD]

Absolutely.

[MCG]

And that’s what we have rejected in our society as the fact why we are where we are today. For someone to have their gall to actually display and say, hey, you don’t need God to be good. Well, they just declare themselves to be God, one. And two, what are you defining good as? Where does that come from? You’re going to go back and back and back and somehow we’re going to come either to culture or society or stuff like that. The problem with that, again, it changes way too much. I’m thinking about Romans 2, verse 14 and 15. The Bible says, for when the Gentiles, which have not the law, Keep that in mind. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are the law unto themselves, which through the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts demean while accusing them, or else excusing one another. We did in episode 169, Richard Dawkins and Cultural Christianity. And if you know Richard Dawkins, of course, he’s a self-proclaimed atheist. He wrote a book that, what is it, God is Dead or The God Delusion?

[jay]

The God Delusion.

[MCG]

And he was in an interview recently and we covered it, as I said, in episode 169, that he’s lamenting on the fact that his beloved country, the United Kingdom is moving away from a Christian culture. And he said he wants the Christian culture. He loved the Christian culture, but he rejects the Christian God. And that’s what he…

[Jay]

He rejects the Christian God that makes the Christian culture possible, right?

[MCG]

Right. He wants Christmas. He want hymns. He want carols, even though he doesn’t believe one lick of it, but he doesn’t want to see his country goes towards Islam. Let’s say two things. One, man is always going to worship something. So if you reject Christianity, well, Islam can come in and take this place. But the fact is, secularism already come in and take its place. Humanism already come in and take its place. Materialism already come in and take the place. Islam is just now way down the line where it’s coming in to take the place. But we already removed God from the society. So I guess what I’m saying is that we live in a rapid changing culture. And the concept of right and wrong depend deeply or solely upon the Bible. It has to be dependent on the Bible. That’s the foundation. As MD said again, of course, why is murder wrong? You go in a circle of reasoning because if Kim Jong-un determined that murder is not wrong in North Korea, how can you prove to him that murder is wrong? Well, if you don’t have the biblical foundation, and say that man is created in the image of God, that’s one and two, that God commanded you not to do it. Well, he’s not wrong. And also the Bible tells us that our conscience itself, which is… somewhat of God’s nature within us, if you want to put it that way, that’s probably a poor way to put it. But if you want to put it that way, that tell us that these things are wrong, they say the Gentiles, which have not the law, even people that don’t have the scripture, even people that are heathens, go to any remote society, they will tell you at least certain things like lying, stealing, murder, all these things are wrong, even if they don’t have a Christian foundation or Christian heritage, at least to some degree. have something that’s wrong and they have something that’s right there’s no culture that you will say hey it’s free for all stuff like that.

[MD]

No and I think that is a testimony to God’s incredible grace to man yep that in our society we stand here and we say there is no God I don’t believe in him I’m not going to obey him I don’t and he still in that quiet voice in the dark of the night, puts a conscience, his spirit, in your head, in your heart. And, you know, in the military, we have this concept of the foxhole conversion.

[MCG]

Yeah.

[MD]

You know, when the mortar shells are coming down, you’re in the foxhole, you don’t have, mortar rounds are the one thing, it can land on you no matter where you are. Guys are always saying, God, if you get me out of this, I’ll obey you and I’ll be yours forever. And then, of course, when he gets about, next thing is, Oh, well, I didn’t really mean it. Foxhole conversion.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

When man runs into really, really deep, dark water who doesn’t believe in God, they call on God.

[MCG]

Yep.

[MD]

I have a friend who didn’t want anything to do with God. His heart’s changed. His heart’s changed. But he called me one day and he wanted me to come up and pray with him about something that was going on. And I literally said, who are you and what have you done with my friend? It was just such a wrench. Like I say, he’s changed.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

I don’t know for sure if he’s saved or not, but he gives testimony. It’s a little garbled. It’s a little misunderstood, but he’s not trained. He’s not studied. And so. You know, I’m having to just, by their fruits, you shall know them. I’m having to let God deal with it and pray for him constantly and pray for all the time. But it’s just, in the deepest, darkest hour, God’s immense and eternal grace, he’s still, I’m in the face every day and he reaches out and he says, but I’m still here.

[MCG]

Right. And that pivot back into something I was going to say because the evolutionists, the atheists, has no foundation for good. They have no foundation. They cannot determine what’s good or what’s wrong outside of them. Even think about Judges 21, 25, the Bible saying those days there were no king in Israel. Every man did which was right in his own eyes.

[MD]

Yeah.

[MCG]

And if there’s no king of our heart, all of us going to do what is right in our own eyes. Are we not there today?

[MD]

And look at the chaos that result.

[MCG]

Yeah. Job 40 verse 2, shall he that contend with the Almighty instruct him? He that reprove God, let him answer it. And that’s basically what we’re doing in our society today. We’re reproving God, you know? Yep. I guess there’s a long way of saying, do we need God to be good? This is authority. It’s the definition of good. This is the definition of God. And I’ll say this, you know, as an immigrant to this country, you usually have to go through different stages of legal status, whether for me, it was going from a student to to having work authorization, to an H1B, to different EODs, and then green card holder, then to citizen. And there’s a question on there that always bugs me. He always says, are you a good moral person? And I’m like, no, none of us are. But what they’re asking me is according to the US laws and the US standard, are you a good moral person? A lot of people might fit that bill. You know, the FBI does a background on you. There’s nothing they jig up from you. You know, as you mentioned security clearance earlier, you know, they do whatever. They take your fingerprint, they take your pictures, they contact Interpol or whatever they contact and there’s nothing. Yep, this person is a good moral person. But again, it goes back to our comparison. If the government has said, according to what God standed, are you a good moral person? And the answer for all of us is no. So we use the word, again, if it’s not flowing from the character of God, it’s not good. If it’s not God in you, it’s not good.

[MD]

Strike me kind of funny thinking about, I know we’ve all been to a doctor and the doctor has asked on a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your pain level now?

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

Have you ever met anybody who actually knew how to answer that?

[MCG]

Yeah, no, that’s a dumb question.

[MD]

I haven’t. So I’ve had some discussions with my doctors about that.

[MCG]

Yeah, I haven’t been able to answer that question either.

[MD]

I found out I’m ADHD, and for me, pain can be really, really intense before it’ll even stop me from doing what I’m doing. It’s called hyperfocus. And so a doctor asked me that one time. I said, when I come back from being unconscious, when it has knocked me completely out, that was level 10. He said, normal people don’t say that. So I asked another doctor just recently that question, and she said, actually, there is no objective view of the number, and that’s not what we’re looking for. What we want to establish is, what do you feel right now? And if I ask you that two weeks from now, after I’ve treated you for a while, I want to know, is it better or is it worse? Well, it’s pure subjectivity, total subjectivity. And that’s where we are with Do you need God to be good? If the answer to that is no, I don’t need God to be good, then it’s pure subjective. You’re absolutely right, MCG. It’s whatever I think, but if it’s God, it’s objective, it’s crystal clear, it doesn’t change, and no, we can’t.

[MCG]

Yep. Do you have anything to add to that, Jay?

[Jay]

Well, I was going to talk about how we would practically work that out in society because society would say, okay, you say that God is the standard of good. Well, I don’t believe in God or God to me is this and your God is this and I think that God is this and you think that God is that. And you Christians don’t follow the Bible anyway and you all are hypocrites and so why should we listen to what you have to say because you don’t follow the Bible either. You don’t hold up to your own standard of goodness. So why do we have to listen to what you have to say? So clearly what What you have to say is not good. And so we need to do the best we can with what we have in our broken society right now. And right now that’s, you know, whatever they would fill in for good, whether it’s what they feel, majority feels, whatever they decide. Or in the case of what we see in a particular political group in the country today, whatever the majority says, whatever the agreed upon concern is, everyone has to nod and agree in order for you to be good the moment that you even show that you have a differing opinion. from the majority, you are cut out and you are shamed and you are canceled and whatever verbiage we use today. Well, I take all of that to say, we say that God is the objective standard for good. And whatever we are talking about when we’re evaluating whether or not it’s good has to flow from the character of God in order for it to be good. And that the church is supposed to be salt and light in the world today, showing the world, pointing the world to Christ, and calling out the sin in the world and being salt.

[MD]

Amen.

[Jay]

Okay, devil’s advocate here. You know, well, let’s look at it from an evolutionary standpoint. It’s not good to… kill indiscriminately because if you kill everybody, then, that’s the end of the race and we can’t survive and we can’t continue. Or we can label things good based on some sort of, like, the utility of it to us. Does it help us in our flourishing? Does it help us to progress as a race or a species or whatever you’d want to say? However evolutionists would look at it. And that’s what they would argue. They would still say, you don’t need God to be good.

[MCG]

But the evolutionist doesn’t have a foundation. If you’re going to the whole evolution theology and atheism, you don’t have a foundation for what’s good and what’s bad because it all come down to what you deem to be good. In order for the evolutionists and the atheists to have good and bad, they’re actually borrowing from the Christian worldview. They’re borrowing from the Christian foundation. They don’t have a foundation for good or bad because if we just, you know, spontaneously appear, whatever the case may be, as Ken I’m saying, from the goo to the zoo.

[Jay]

From the goo to you by way of the zoo.

[MCG]

They don’t have a foundation. So Where are they getting this from? If you take evolution to its logical end and atheism to its logical end, there’s absolutely nothing that’s called good because it’s all what I think and what I feel. Why is it I need to respect human life outside of the fact that human life is based upon the image of God? If you take it all the way back to the foundation, they don’t have one. They have to borrow from a Christian worldview or if some might even say a TS worldview. But again, we already described God as being the God of the Bible. All right, so Let’s wrap it up with this. What does it mean to be good? Emothy, let me give that to you.

[MD]

I’m going to have to take it from a Christian perspective, from a saved person’s perspective, with an understanding of who God said he is and what God said good is. So I’m ignoring all of the things we’ve discussed that are the kind of watered down versions of moral good that our society, the other societies to say is, Yeah, this is good, this is good, this is good. No. What it means to be good is to be deemed holy by the only being who has that ability.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

And that is God, who can look at me and cannot see my sin because it’s buried under the blood of Jesus Christ, my savior, who died on the cross to pay for my sins to make me good in God’s eyes. And yes, I’m still flawed. And Paul said, That that I would, I do not, because the sin is still in me. It is still in every one of us. It is not anything about my good. It is the blood of Jesus Christ covering all of it. So my good is only through God.

[MCG]

Right.

[MD]

You can’t be good by that definition. And to me, that’s the only definition that matters.

[MCG]

Yep.

[MD]

You can’t be good by that definition without God.

[MCG]

All right, MD, thank you so much for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. Amen.

[MD]

It was my pleasure. It’s been fun.

[Jay]

Thank you so much for listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. Make sure to rate us everywhere you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher. Removing Barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

Thank you for listening. To get ahold of us, to support this podcast, or to learn more about removing barriers, go to removingbarriers.net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.