What is "Right"?
At lunch today, I had a deep conversation with a gentleman on my team. I couldn’t put him into a single theological view but I would probably “categorize” him most as an atheist. He and I started discussing marriage and quickly found ourselves discussing God and the confusion in the world. He made some interesting points that I wanted to share and see what others thoughts were on the topic…
The first major discussion point that we could never really get past was: what is “right”? His viewpoint is that the Christians think they are right, the Muslims think they are right, the Hindu’s, the Taoists, the Atheists, etc. All of these groups think they are right — so how can anyone know that they are right? I argued the point that evidence is a key point but that faith is the key. What was interesting, however, was to have a conversation around absolute right and wrong. He asked a philosophical question that raises tough questions for a Christian. If a person were born, stranded, on an island, would they not form their own religion? My perspective is that they absolutely would. God has revealed to us His general revelation which would impact this person’s life. Would they know Christ and accept Christ as their Savior? Not unless a Bible fell out of the sky, perhaps. At this point, I started down the path of depravity and that every person is a sinner and doesn’t deserve to go to heaven — it is only through Christ that we can find that gift. Well, of course, that became a whole different discussion unto itself.
What I really wanted to focus on, though, is the argument that people make around right and wrong. How does anyone know who is right and who is wrong? As we got back to the topic, I explained that only through God can we find the truth and believe the truth. He actually understood the point, but was unable to relate and therefore agree. We went from topic to topic, not focusing on any one point but covering the theological spectrum of why God wouldn’t simply create harmony around religion, if there was in fact a God. It is very hard to get a person who doesn’t believe in God to understand the concept that our Creator wants to be glorified. He deserves to be glorified. Making religion a check box for people to simply check isn’t glorifying to God. As we discussed this, I could tell that it wasn’t having an impact in his mind so we moved on again.
I am very curious if other people have had similar conversations and what direction the Spirit led them. I prayed several times trying to stay in tune with what the Spirit would lead me to say or do. In the end of the conversation, I was a bit frustrated with myself because I didn’t feel like I did a very good job. I was honest with the guy and told him just that. But I also added that it wasn’t my responsibility to bring him to Christ, God does that — I just plant seeds.