Everyone, Including You, Is an Intolerant Hypocrite

YOU DON’T NEED GOD TO BE GOOD

This shift toward a new tolerance started in the mid-sixties but only now dominates public thinking to the point that it tops the list of objections to Christianity. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl trace this change back to the values-clarification curriculum introduced in many public and some private schools. Beckwith and Koukl quote the curriculum developers boasting that this approach imparts no specific set of values: “There is no sermonizing or moralizing. The goal is to involve the students in practical experiences, make them aware of their own feelings, their own ideas, their own beliefs, so that the choices and decisions they make are conscious and deliberate, based on their own value systems [emphasis in the original].”(3)

This approach says we should establish our own personal standard of morality based not on objective absolutes but on subjective values. It dethrones God and his universal standard of morality that is apart from us and in authority over us and in his place enthrones our own personal standards of morality. It denies that we are fallen and sinful but instead trains us to trust our own “feelings,” “ideas,” “beliefs,” and “values.” The bottom line is that many people think that you do not need God to be good.

This is exactly how I thought before I became a Christian. I assumed I was a pretty good person with a decent idea of right and wrong who lived a good life by my own instincts, conscience, and perspective. My life worked. I was happy. As a college student, I enjoyed picking up bits and pieces from sociology, psychology, theology, anthropology, history, and philosophy that I relied on to make choices.

When I started reading the Bible, every page pulled me into a fight. God was intolerant of some of my behaviors. He took exception to some of my beliefs. He stood in authority over me, judging me and telling me I needed to change. I resisted that. I could not agree with that. It was like I was a cat and the Bible was a hose. But I eventually had a change of heart and mind that caused me stop straining against God and start surrendering to God.