On Right and Wrong

The existence of morality is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God. CS Lewis argues this brilliantly in his book Mere Christianity under the subtitle Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.

Some theologian once postulated that things weren’t right or wrong because they were intrinsically right or wrong, they were only right or wrong because God said they were. This raises the alarming possibility that things could be very different in our moral universe: that God could just as easily have decided that it was perfectly acceptable to steal, for example. Take just a minute to ponder all the ramifications of such an alternate vision. Horrifying, isn’t it?

We are left with only one sane conclusion: that right and wrong are absolutes or Forms in the Platonic sense. They exist apart from our perception of them as independent, though abstract, entities. But let’s not get carried away. Before we are tempted to personify or deify the ideas of right and wrong, we need to consider that these too have their source beyond our universe. Right and wrong have existed outside of the universe, or "before" it began, in the sense that right, or goodness, exists as a characteristic of God. Wrong, or evil, is anything that opposes or does not support God and his vision of how the universe should operate. Evil exists only as a necessary result of the fact that God has given his creatures free will. Wrong is only the absence of right. Evil is only the absence of goodness.

Accepting the transcendence of right and wrong in no way implies a kind of moral dualism at the heart of the universe. God has built a very powerful object lesson into the fabric of the cosmos to make this indisputably clear. This is the notion that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Darkness only exists as the absence of light. We cannot bring darkness into a sunlit room. We can only shut the sun out. There is no such thing as projecting darkness in the same way that we can project light into a dark place. Light exists, in a way that darkness does not.

The only example in nature that gives any indication of darkness having any power at all over light is the concept of a black hole. In this astronomical construct, a black hole is envisaged as a point of such gravity that everything gets sucked into its center. Even light cannot escape, and hence the designation: black hole. Even in this picture however, we never find the idea of the darkness reaching out to overcome the light. The operative force is gravity, not the darkness itself. The tremendous mass of the dark hole produces a strong gravitational field, whereby the light is relocated to the center of the vortex, which renders it invisible. The message for you and me: don’t get sucked in by the forces of spiritual darkness.

In this constructing this amazing picture of light as a representation of his goodness, God has provided us with a tremendous source of insight into who he is and the importance of right and wrong. It keeps us from imagining that the universe is a level playing field where good and evil are warring, with our souls as the prize to the victor. There might be spiritual warfare, but the outcome is a foregone conclusion.