Jesus Submitted To The Father's (Moral) Will

What Did Jesus Do?

Jesus Submitted To The Father’s Will

“Yet not what I will, but what you (Father) will.”

                                                                        Mark 14:36

Moral authority, where does it lie?  In whose hands does the determination of good and evil, right and wrong, rest?  Can morality be arrived at by the agreement of good people as to just what is good and what is evil?   Might morality be the product of a plebiscite? Could a public referendum be relied upon to establish any moral standard?  And, if a ballot, if public opinion, can declare moral positions, is morality any more substantial than a sand dune, subject to constant sifting and shifting day by day, likely to undergo radical and repeated change, or, if winds and tides of society move strongly enough, even be altogether abolished by the next election?

Personally, I do not understand how anyone who claims to read, know, and believe the Bible, can consider any moral authority other than God.  Look to any other moral authority than God, and know that you are immediately moving to assert your will over His.  Yet no few Christians individually, and no few churches, and even denominations, corporately, give tacit or explicit moral authority to man.  What’s up with that?  I know that a lot of people, Christians not the least, give themselves and our culture credit for being far better informed than our ancestors, of being so much wiser, wiser even than God himself as they update His moral code to accommodate their mores.  Funny how we, who are so much better informed and wiser, can’t answer with our many college degrees questions that a hundred years ago were part of an exam to pass the Sixth Grade!  Funny how the understanding of morality has “advanced” over the years:

Moral: "Conformed to the divine law..." (From the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster.) "The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil, virtuous or vicious, and has reference to the law of God AS THE STANDARD by which their character is to be determined."

Morals: “Refers to generally accepted customs of conduct and right living in a society, and to the individual’s practice in relation to these.” From the 1984 Random House Collegiate Dictionary.)

Between 1828 and 1984 God, who alone is good, has been removed entirely from the discussion of morality, while we, though not even one of us is good (See Mark 10:18), have given ourselves all authority for determining what is “right” and what is “wrong!”  This is completely contrary to what Jesus had to say on the matter of morality, which he submitted to the Father’s will alone.

Morality is not subject to a vote, nor is it mutable. Change morality (And change it we have, and continue to do), and, regardless of how slight, or justified, we believe the change, we have moved from morality to immorality. Move far enough and we will arrive at the state of amorality, where "everyone does what is right in their own eyes," and anything goes.  We are already moving rapidly in this direction and are picking up speed continually.  I do not see any institution turning things around, not government, not schools, not even the Church today, much of which is a party to the deconstruction of morality.  Other than the Holy Spirit, convicting one heart at a time, and turning one life at a time to the Father, who, again, alone is good, I expect we will fall further into the moral abyss.

Jim

Marion, NC

PS 37.4