By Who's Authority?

Last night I watched a great movie called Time Changer. It was about a Bible professor from the 1890's who was about to publish a thesis on how to preach morals and ethics to the world, but without using the name of Jesus, or God, to give authority to them. He contended that many people of the world may be "put off" from accepting the Gospel because they hear the name of Jesus. They may have had a "bad experience" with a church or a not-so-moral Christian, that by hearing the name of Jesus may be offensive to them and thus automatically close their ears to hearing the truth about morality and ethics. Lucky for this professor, he had a colleague who disagreed with him.

The colleague contended, that without the divine authority of Jesus, who is God, teaching morals and ethics becomes relative to the individual, rather than the absolute Truth that it is. Without the authority of Jesus to answer the question of, "Who says it's wrong to do _____________?", the answer will become, "I say it's wrong." If I say something is wrong, then another person can say, "Well I don't think it is." Then who is correct in their beliefs? The colleague stated that Christians must be able to say, "________________ is wrong, because God/Jesus says it is wrong in His Word, the Bible."

This issue of acknowledging the authority of Jesus, is also addressed in a book called Right From Wrong, by Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler. In this book McDowell and Hostetler contend that the present generation of teenagers (and adults), "has lost its belief in objective right and wrong. To them, the truth is a matter of taste; morality of individual preference." Without the authority of Jesus to teach right from wrong, then Christian families loose the ability to pass on moral absolutes and core values to our children.

In his book A Man After God's Own Heart, Jim George presents a list of Ten Commandments for Child raising. The first two are: "Teach them, using God's Word and Tell them what's right and wrong." In order to teach them what is right from wrong, we must first teach them the absolute authority of the Word of God. Then we will be able to answer the question of, "Why is this wrong?", with the absolute truth of, "Because God says it is!" And if God says its wrong then that is good enough!

At the end of the movie, the professor changed his original premise of presenting morals to the world. He realized that without Jesus and His absolute truth, then morality is relevant and the authority of Jesus is put into question. Just what Satan has always wanted.