Forgiveness and the Freedom of Moral Law

There you are! Welcome, everyone! It's great to see all of you tuning in tonight. I am super excited to be back in this arena, in this area, with this story, with this book, and all that we've got planned for this year.

I love that you guys are tuning in from all over the place. We've got people from, let me just look here for a second, from the 405, which I believe is Oklahoma City in that area. Tell me if I'm wrong, David, on that one, but I'm pretty sure I got that right. And then Washington State, Monroe, Louisiana—that's fascinating! And then I know last week we had people from, I just watched from Washington State to Florida. We had a few that were international that tuned in after.

I'm always amazed at the beauty of technology and the ability to connect from all across the world through social media. As someone who has lived abroad for a lot of my life, I have friends all over the world, and being able to reconnect with them and stay close with them is truly wonderful.

And so I do see, yes, I was correct! All right, so I was correct about the 405. And then also, Judy Hayes is with us from Dalton, Georgia. So great to have her with us too!

All of you that are studying as groups too, I've been made aware this past week that there are others who are joining us from different ministries and others that are actually participating in this or doing this together as a class on Sunday mornings, which I didn't know was a thing, but fascinating! Welcome! I love it! I'm very, very excited about that.

And excited for those who are doing this as a campus ministry. I've heard a couple that are doing that and walking through this book with us. Just so excited to have you all with us on this beautiful journey during this time that we have.

And we have people all the way from China! There it is! Yeah, so that is fantastic! I love that, Angela. It's great to have you with us too. All over the world, God is truly good, and He works in amazing ways. I'm grateful to be able to be with you tonight.

So I don't want to drag on too much. Just give some time for people to come in. Last week, I learned one of the things when you go live from a system that I have set up the way that I do is that it made it to where it was only my friends who could see it originally. So now I've gone in and made it public, so a lot of people who you may not be friends with me on Facebook but are in the group and are following. My apologies for that; that should all be taken care of now.

So you should have no problems even sharing it out, letting people know, and the rest. As you noted, many of you have noticed last week I also made my slides available in the group. If you're watching this outside of the group and you'd like to, you can always join the Rabbit Hole group and come and join us. You can have the slides, and also a recording of this is then placed on YouTube if you want to watch it later. Also, share it out, because I do know that there are individuals who are not necessarily on Facebook who might want to join in with us on the study.

With that in mind, I'm so grateful for your presence tonight and for being here. One of the things that you will learn about going through this is that it's not always going to be 45 minutes; it's not always going to be an hour and a half; it's not always going to be 20 minutes. I don't know yet; it just depends on what we're covering each week and how we're kind of going to go through it.

But the goal is to make sure we get something out of it, to grab some of the meat out of what's being set forth. Some of the stuff can be very technical, and some of it can be tough to digest at times. Lewis has a very specific writing style. I enjoy it; it's humorous to me because I catch his British humor at times, and I blame my father for that. I grew up being exposed to a lot of British humor growing up in Italy.

From Fawlty Towers to John Cleese to Mr. Bean and others, I guess it just resonates with me at times more, and some of my favorite old comedies in those ways. I will do my best to bring that to life, but at the same time, if you're watching this and you have questions or you have things that you either want to follow up with or you want to put in the chat live, or if you're watching this after, then you have questions, you can even in live time while you're watching it after the fact put those questions in. They will send me notifications, let me know what's going on, and I can come in there and hopefully answer some of those questions or at least point you in the right direction.

One of the key things I will always tell you is I do not promise to have all the answers in the moment, but I will always do my best to point you in the right direction or to do some research and find out together. That's consistently, I guess, would be my goal is to do such a thing.

And so, yes! All right, Jerry Elder is here with us, and so he is in Spring Meadows, Tennessee. Yes, Spring Meadows, Tennessee, I believe is where you're at, Jerry. I love that you're here! If you don't know Jerry Elder, you need to. He is one of the finest men in the world, truly one of my great heroes of the faith.

I also like to refer to him as the "schizophrenic squirrel" because the man has more energy than anybody I know. Just a fantastic man! If you want to get together with him, let me just also shout out to him. He has a fantastic garage Bible study that goes live on Facebook. You should check it out; it's really cool, and you get to see some of the teenagers and others that he works with there in Tennessee. Definitely highly recommend that, so you can hit up Jerry on that one too.

So it's fantastic! And yes, David, if you're not pounding it, expired parent exactly! Great British humor from the 1970s—just some great stuff there.

So with that in mind, with everything that we've said so far, let us dive into Book One, Chapters One and Two. I've got some slides I'll pull up here, and you can follow along.

Awesome! We have somebody from Orlando, Florida! That's fantastic! I got some great friends down there in the Orlando area. My grandmother used to live in Tallahassee, so we used to go down there not just to visit that area but to go to Disney World and different places. But really, I've really enjoyed the churches there, and David Farr, I think, is down there too. He is a fantastic preacher! I'm so excited to have you guys with us too.

So with that in mind, we will dive into the slides tonight. I'm going to do my best to stay out of the way of the slides. In these early ones, you might see me floating around in some different places, but I'm here. So feel free; I'll do my best to keep up with the comments and what you guys have. I truly appreciate that.

So questions, thoughts? We're going to dive straight into this.

So, Mere Christianity, Book One, Chapters One and Two, we dive into really kind of the meat and potatoes of some of the really, you know, starting point of his thesis as he's setting forth this idea. Mere Christianity is laying out, and it starts off with the law of human nature and some objections to the law of human nature.

He does his best to propose two different sides of the coin, in essence. And with that, I just kind of want to give you a broad significance of these two. You see, Chapters One and Two of Mere Christianity lay the foundation for the entire book because they introduce the law of human nature and address objections to its existence, providing also a framework for understanding morality, ethics, and the problem of evil.

So before I go any further, this is a key thing because so much of this can become academic. So much of this can feel like it's, you know, more than what—it can just kind of devolve away from the humanity of the individuals. And that is a downside at times of academic works or even of writing, is that writing can become, you know, oftentimes when I would say people use the word "boring" or "the book's boring," it's because it's lost its humanity. It's lost its ability to connect to the reader.

Now, there are moments in which I understand the fact that some topics are just—you have to get through, and you have to struggle through even some of the concepts and the rest. But overall, the humanity of a concept especially is what will tie into an individual. It's what will bring it back and make it real for them.

And so as we talk about the law of human nature, and we'll talk about even the objections to the law of human nature that Lewis sets forth, ultimately what we're talking about is right and wrong, and it's the problem of evil. If there is no right and wrong, then how do we know when? How do we justify and deal with suffering? How do we deal with things that don't go our way, especially if something bad has happened? How do we—what's the terminologies we use? How do we deal with this?

And so I don't want to lose the humanity of this entire thing because, as we talk about it, like I said, it can get very academic in some ways. So I want to make sure we remember we're talking about the ethics and the problem of evil.

So with that in mind, let me just do some basic definitions. You see, he kind of sets them forth here. The law of human nature, also known as the moral law, he does use a couple of different terminologies. He refers to a universal moral code that governs human behavior.

So this is kind of the moral consensus. Lewis argues that people from different cultures share a common understanding of basic moral principles—basic right and wrong. The implications of this is the existence of this moral law suggests a higher, transcendent source that goes far beyond individual or societal preferences.

So let me put that in real speak: it suggests that there is someone, a moral lawgiver. There is a God. There is someone beyond this law that has given and set forth that which is right and that which is wrong.

So that is kind of the basic overview here going into that. A few different quotes from this opening chapter particularly that I just wanted to kind of highlight real quick. We're not going to spend a lot of time on these, but just kind of highlight. You may have noticed that if you—the readings, the way they're set up, it's about eight to ten pages each week, so it's not heavy. In fact, it took me about ten minutes to read these each week, so I hope it's not a heavy burden on you to do that.

And so I just want to take little snippets out and kind of look at how Lewis plays off of these. Lewis here in Book One, Chapter One says, "There is a real law, a law of nature, which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey—not merely a man-made code that we chose to set up."

So it's very clear that it's part of his Mere Christianity that he is setting up a very specific notion that there was a law out there that tells us what is right and what is wrong, and it is inherently known by humanity. We know this.

One of the arguments that I've seen play itself out at times when it comes to this is the very notion of killing. Is it okay to kill a person? Is it okay to murder a person? In fact, I'm using those two different terminologies because those two terminologies mean something very different to us.

Murder is different than killing because there are moral implications to the concept of murder. There is an aspect where that which you're doing is ascribing something that is bad, but not only that, but there's an innocence ascribed to the person who has been murdered.

Whereas if you're killing someone, there may be a different context, whether it's war or whether it is in self-defense, whatever it may be in those things. There are parameters, and the question ultimately is what gives us the idea of these parameters? Where does that come from? That there is a difference between killing someone to take their stuff and killing someone because they are attempting to kill you.

How do we justify the differences in these things? And so Lewis is setting forth that there is a real law, a law of nature, which we did not invent and did not come from human minds. It did not come from human hearts or human logic, but instead, it was brought forth by something beyond ourselves—in this case, God.

So another quote that he says is, "Secondly, they do not in fact behave in that way." So they know the law of nature; they break it. The two facts of the foundations are of all clear thinking about ourselves in the universe we live in.

So in essence, there is a law, but we also break it. And even though we know that there is a law, we break it. And in fact, in breaking it, it's what often tells us that we feel that we have done something that we weren't supposed to do. And so where does that feeling come from? Where does that notion come from that actually tells us that what we did was actually wrong?

And so he kind of plays off of that early on in this chapter. He also says this: "When you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either."

So this is a fascinating notion that he sets forth, mainly in that when you're making a comparison between two things, you are saying this thing is better than another. And let's just take a movie, for example, if you would. You can put in what's your top favorite movie of all time—without a doubt, this is your go-to.

Now, I know I'm a person like me; I have genres of movies I like and different styles. I like sometimes there's great artistic movies that I enjoy, but there are some movies that just kind of stand out as like, "This is my top movie! I love this movie! This is fantastic! I'd watch this every day!"

What would it be? So put that in the chat; let me know what your favorite movie is because I want you to sit there and think through the very notion of what you do to justify whether or not it's better than something else. Because you are making a claim, in essence, that that movie is something different or better than another one, and the why is a standard that you're ascribing to it.

And you're making a claim based off of a standard that others may not agree with necessarily or others may find different. So I've got one: Lawrence of Arabia—fantastic film! Truly a great one!

"It's a Wonderful Life" absolutely is also a great film. Boy, that one will get you, especially when you know some of the backstories to that film and the rest. So you've got two very different things.

So if I were to say to David and to Kelly, "Argue it out! Tell me which one is better!" Some of you may be coming at it from a standpoint of, "Well, just cinema, you know, from the cinematography from Lawrence of Arabia is fantastic!" Or "It's a Wonderful Life," it's the storyline that makes it so much better! Or "Forrest Gump," "Pride and Prejudice," some of these other ones—yes, definitely the BBC one!

So all of these different films, you would make different arguments for this, and you would make a claim for one that is better than the other. And the standard, though, ultimately is so—and this is just kind of one of those weird moments—what if I were to throw out there and go, "Like some people do, actually, I prefer the book!"

And then you might go, "Well, we weren't talking about the book; we were talking about the movie!" And the movie is, you know, it's a moving picture, and it's those types of things. "Yeah, yeah, but I want to talk about the book!" You're like, "Well, no, that's not the standard we're arguing; we're arguing the differences between these two things and which one is better."

And then you come in, so how do you know that necessarily the—like when you're trying to argue about a movie and somebody else throws out a book, where are you getting the idea that those things are different? Where are you getting the idea that you're no longer judging it by the same standard?

This is the argument that even this existing outside of the argument—there is something, there is a law that basically states this is right, this is wrong, this is better, this is not. That's the argument that is made.

Also, I love this quote here: "Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong, and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what right and wrong are."

And so this is a fascinating notion when you stop and think about it. Just the idea of disagreeing on something inherently means that you both have a standard by which you think something is better than the other. Well, where did that standard come from? That's Lewis's argument.

You can't say that the standard exists upon itself; that has to have come from somewhere that intrinsically tells us that there is something better than what we currently have or better than what the other person is setting forth.

This last one from this first section says this: "These then are the two points I wanted to make: first, that human beings all over the Earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. And the second one, by the way, is that we fail at it."

That we know that there's something that we should do, but we fail at it pretty consistently. And so that's the argument he sets forth. It's a fairly basic argument that there's something intrinsically within us that tells us there's something more about what's going on than what we can actually feel in the moment—that there's something that tells us right and wrong, and it's more than just a construct of what's happened around us.

And so just a kind of a real, real quick recap. So the implications of morality and ethics—so in essence, Lewis is on the law of human nature provides a foundation for understanding morality and ethics. The law of human nature suggests that there is a universal standard of right and wrong that applies to all people, and the existence of the law of human nature implies that morality is not simply a matter of personal opinion or cultural relativism.

The law of human nature, or the moral law, challenges the idea that morality is purely a social construct, and it also helps us understand that the law of human nature can help guide ethical decision-making and promote more moral behavior. So these are some of his major arguments and the implications of this idea off of that.

So what I've set forth is some arguments from some of my atheist friends. I had some conversations over this past week and over these past years and the rest with some friends from lots of different backgrounds. And so I wanted to spend some time just kind of looking at some of the arguments against some of these things, and in fact, Lewis does this in his objections.

And so we'll look at some objections. In fact, it's one of my favorite things about this book is that he doesn't just kind of dismiss outright; he does actually seem to dive into or try to deal with what is being set forth.

So a couple of quotes from this second chapter: "The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are in fact measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms more closely to real morality or real righteousness than the other."

So this is something that he's setting forth already as the objection, is that even in objecting, you're saying something very particular because you're using a standard in your objecting to this morality. Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is wrong, so he's kind of doubling down on this aspect of even disagreeing with the idea that there is a standard.

You're making an argument from a standard, and the question is not that there are—you know, not that there is a standard; the question is where did it come from? How do you know to argue or disagree with this? Where does that come from that you actually disagree with the standard?

And then I do love this little note: "You cannot go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."

And so sometimes there's this aspect of just dismissing this idea of the standard and the rest and just kind of throwing it aside, and he's going to argue and kind of keep going doing this. Eventually, the whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it—that you need to see what it actually is; you can't just dismiss it; you need to see where it's coming from.

And then also this concept of human reasoning: "We have no reason to trust human reasoning if it is merely a product of irrational, unreasoned processes." And that is what it would be if it had come to us entirely through irrational and reasoning processes—the process of evolution.

So in fact, his basic argument here is that if we—if all of our thought processes and everything that we have, and even the concept of morality, came just through evolutionary processes, which is an irrational, unreasoned process, we should never have come to that conclusion, and we shouldn't actually trust that it is real, and that would be completely irrational.

So he's kind of making a rational argument about irrationality. So even the idea of evolution bringing about this premise would be problematic.

So he does spend some time arguing back and forth in this constant objective and subjective morality. Objective morality being Lewis defending the idea of objective morality rooted in the law of nature, or that there is a moral law, and subjective morality he contrasts this with subjective morality based on individual preferences—what I like, what I don't like, and I get to decide what morality is based off of that.

Now, the problem with this is that you and I know this: we all make terrible gods—just horrible gods! Mainly because you don't realize that I am God, and so my subjective morality and what I want you to do for me is subjective to my own needs and my own desires. And when you don't actually do anything with this and help me out with this, it becomes highly problematic.

You don't listen to what I want you to do, and if you don't do it, then I have the moral authority, if I believe in subjective morality, to do whatever I want to do to make you do what I want you to do, and it becomes highly problematic from there.

So moral law and religion—and this is an interesting thing. Lewis explains that the law of human nature is not the same as specific religious beliefs, but it can be seen as a bridge to the idea of God.

So he is saying this exists outside that it is created; it comes from God, but it is not necessarily coming from religion. Now, he is referencing organized religion; that's what he is specifically noting. If you remember back to last week, we talked a little bit about the different aspects of Christianity and some of the arguments he was and was not making—that he was very particular about he was not trying to push forth one denominational thought process and the rest, but instead just Mere Christianity.

And with that in mind, he views this moral law as something that exists outside of religion—in fact, that it's inherent within all. And so from there, Lewis actually notes ethical atheists—that even atheists who argue against God's existence often appeal to a moral law.

So we just go back to some of the quotes we had a minute ago. So off of that, I want to dive into five different concepts, five different objections that kind of come up through this argument and discussion.

The first one would come from friends of mine that I would term as evolutionary ethics. The argument they often make is atheists often assert that moral behaviors and values can be explained by evolutionary processes. They argue that certain moral tendencies, such as cooperation and empathy, could have evolved as advantageous traits for survival and social cohesion.

In just kind of an explanation here, atheists suggest that moral principles are not derived from universal moral law but rather the evolutionary history and social dynamics of human beings.

So what I wanted to try to do is then say how would Lewis have answered this through this work? And so this is Lewis's response to evolutionary ethics. Lewis might have acknowledged the role of evolution in shaping human behavior.

Now, we do need to categorize the concept of evolution, whether we're referencing macroevolution or microevolution. Macroevolution is species-to-species changes—major changes, what we would have to often quantify as the billion years and so forth within that. Microevolution is the small changes over time in individuals.

Human beings have grown taller over time; we tend to live longer now in the last hundred years because of medicine and things of that nature than we did in the past when you had a lot more illnesses and sicknesses that didn't have modern medicine.

So there are micro changes that happen to the genetics of individuals, things of that nature. But macroevolution, in essence, is the larger concept, especially from an atheist perspective—that's what's being said.

So Lewis might acknowledge the role of evolution in shaping human behavior and instincts but argue that evolution alone cannot account for the existence of a shared moral law. He probably would contend that evolutionary explanations can only account for why certain moral tendencies exist, but they do not address the source of the moral law itself, which is ultimately his point.

Lewis would likely emphasize that the consistency and universality of moral values across cultures suggest a deeper objective standard. And so just the idea that something could have come about doesn't necessarily really mean that it did. And even the "could have come about," you have to ask, "Well, not just why, but where did it come about from, and how did it come about in every single culture and every single difference?"

And that there all seems to be this moral standard amongst them all.

So the second one would be cultural relativism. This argument is that atheists may argue that what appears to be a universal moral law is actually a result of shared cultural values and norms. They contend that moral beliefs are shaped by the specific cultural context in which individuals are raised.

So this is kind of the, "Well, you grew up in that culture; thus, this is what you believe is right and wrong. You grew up in that church; that's the way you believe on all that."

So there is an aspect where you might say even yourself, "Well, yes, we are shaped by the things that we grow up with." I talk with my hands a lot; you know why? I grew up watching Italians! I grew up in Italy! I tend to talk with my hands quite a bit. People laugh and joke about that all the time, but for me, it's actually very normal.

That kind of thing. I also grew up loving soccer, and those are cultural and moral-shaped things. All on Sundays, you know, Sunday after Sunday mornings, we'd be in worship, and Sunday afternoons we'd be at the soccer games because that was kind of the cultural norm of where everybody would go.

So an explanation of this, according to this perspective, moral values are relative and vary across different societies. What is considered morally right or wrong is determined by cultural consensus, not by objective moral law—that's the argument that would be made.

So they might point to North Korea, who has a very different perspective on moral law as opposed to what we might have in our culture today.

So how would Lewis respond? Lewis would acknowledge cultural differences, as we just did, in how moral values are expressed but argue that the presence of shared moral institutions indicates the existence of a higher moral law that transcends cultural variations.

You might contend that cultural relativism doesn't explain why these common moral principles exist across cultures despite differing customs and norms. And so in the same way that you could say, "Well, this was a positive because it's happening in all these places, and every culture has its own morality," he would argue, "But every culture has had its morality. How did that come about? Where did that come from?"

And so that would be his response to cultural relativism.

So rational ethics—here's the argument. Atheists may propose that moral principles can be derived from rational thinking and philosophical reasoning rather than relying on a universal moral law. They advocate for ethical systems based on reason and the well-being of individuals in society.

In some ways, this kind of goes back to the first one, the very concept of it. So as an explanation from this viewpoint, moral values are not imposed by an external law but are developed through human reasoning and critical thought.

So in essence, if you look at what we do right now, we have laws in our culture and time that are very specific that come about because of choices that our culture has made and the rest. Laws change. We have some that are good, some that are silly, some that are great, some that are not. And so that's the concept that rational ethics has created such a thing.

Lewis's response would be this: Lewis might agree that rational ethics play a role in understanding moral principles but would assert that reason alone cannot account for the universal moral law. He would contend that rational ethics require a foundational source for moral values, and that source, according to Lewis, is the moral law inscribed within human nature by a higher authority.

So as an example, how do we know inherently it's wrong to kill? How do we know? Well, you could say, "Well, we've decided it's wrong to kill." Well, there's something more than that because you actually see that, and you can even feel it intrinsically when you were to go to strike someone.

In fact, when somebody doesn't or somebody does not have that feeling, and it's a—you know, I'm thinking of serial killers or people of that nature, where their conscience has been seared to a point, they are outliers. In fact, it's almost like, "How dare this be the case?"

You see this when it even comes to moments of saving someone's life. Someone is yelling, "Help! Help!" and they're about to drown. You feel within you two things: one could be a draw towards running towards the water to save them; the other could be self-preservation and going, "I could drown if I go out there myself," so instead, I will run the opposite direction.

But the whole premise is not the fact that you have a choice to make; the premise is where does that feeling come from? And the idea is a higher authority.

So social contract theory is the fourth one, and it says this: Atheists often refer to social contract theories, which propose that moral principles are the result of agreements made among individuals in a society to promote cooperation and mutual benefit.

Now, if you ever notice, a lot of these sound very similar in other ways. So in this framework, moral rules are seen as social constructs established for practical reasons without the need for a transcendent moral law.

Lewis's response would say this: Lewis might acknowledge the idea of social contracts as a way to understand moral behavior within societies, but he would emphasize that social contracts themselves need a basis in a higher moral law.

He might argue that a purely human-generated social contract lacks the authority and universality required for an objective moral standard. Where does it all come from? How do you know that that's what it is? How do we know that that's really what is at hand here?

And the last one is altruism and empathy. The argument says some atheists point to inherent human qualities such as altruism, empathy, and the capacity for moral emotions as natural sources for moral behavior. They argue that these qualities are rooted in human nature and psychology rather than being dictated by an external moral law.

Lewis might agree that human qualities like altruism and empathy contribute to moral behavior, but he would assert that those qualities are evidence of the moral law's influence on human nature. He might argue that these qualities point to the presence of an external moral law that aligns with the deep moral inclination within individuals—that it's ingrained within all of us, that all of us feel right and wrong, that we know that which we should do and then still fail at it along the way.

That this is, in essence, what's being set forth.

So just as a quick recap in this chapter, Lewis introduces the concept of the law of nature, also known as the moral law. He asserts that human beings, regardless of their cultural background, share a common sense of right and wrong, and this shared moral code indicates the existence of an objective and universal standard of morality that transcends individual preferences and societal norms.

Lewis likens the law of nature to physical laws and suggests that it points to a transcendent source beyond human creation—to God.

And so Chapter Two, in the objection, Lewis addresses objections to the idea of the universal moral law. He responds to arguments such as cultural relativism, evolutionary ethics, and conflicting moralities. Lewis acknowledges that cultures may have differences in specific moral practices, but he emphasizes the existence of a common moral framework that underlies these differences.

So one of the things that I would definitely say is powerful to think through in this moment is what was happening when he was going through all of this. And so I don't want us to miss this.

And so I'm going to zoom out for a second because we are in the midst of World War II. He is setting forth these things. Evil has a face in the notion of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. It is very real. In fact, he uses this as an example in this book where he actually notes how do we know that what Germany is doing is wrong? How do we know that what Adolf Hitler is setting forth is evil? How do we know that?

And the inclination can't just be, "Well, they're our enemy," or "they're the other side of the coin." It has to be something more than just that—that the inclination that what is being done is wrong. Where does that come from? How do we know that we're on the right side of history? How do we know that we're on the right side of these things?

And his argument tends to go back to, "Well, it's ingrained in all of us." We see when we see these things, we know right and wrong. We know when we should be treating someone well and when we should be treating—when we don't treat someone well, that we see these differences.

And so off of this, this last couple of slides here, I just want to say overall in both chapters, Lewis builds a case for the existence of a universal moral law by highlighting the consistency of moral institutions across cultures and the limitations of alternative explanations.

He argues that this moral law points to a higher source beyond the natural world and is a significant aspect of human existence that raises important philosophical and theological questions.

So this is what he sets forth. So let's go back real quick just to the notion of pain and suffering. So this moral law, this right and wrong—if there is no moral law or if it's been something that has just been passed down and intrinsically, then there is no authority for moral law.

Then right and wrong is subjective to the individual, and this is part of our problem in our culture today. We live in a time and place where all of this has become just, well, kind of normalized as just this is where we—what's happening, and I get to decide what is right and wrong, and you can't tell me one way or the other.

And this is highly problematic because this subjective nature of morality—we're seeing it play itself out in our culture, and especially the United States today. We're seeing it play itself out in our school systems; we're seeing it play itself out in our politics; we're seeing it play itself out in all these different arenas.

And we miss what Lewis is calling us all to remember, which is that God has given us a standard by which all of us are meant to live. And Jesus says it even obviously most beautifully when we are called to love our neighbor and to love our neighbor as ourselves and to love our enemies.

And one of my favorite quotes actually is noted: "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

And so without this outlet for understanding, without a moral law that there is right and wrong, then we don't have a place for pain and suffering. We don't have a place for it; we don't know what to do with it because everything is subjective.

And in fact, I think that's what gives so much meaning to life is a moral law that says this is right and this is wrong—that it allows us then to actually find a place for pain and suffering, that there is a space for what is going wrong in this world when we know that there is such a thing as wrong—that it wasn't meant to be this way.

And also, we have bought into this notion that pain and suffering are inherently or intrinsically evil as opposed to it being at times in ways in which we might grow.

So a little while ago, I wrote something that I'll share with you here in closing out tonight that says this: This is a quote from Lewis: "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."

You see, oftentimes the journey that life is filled with bumps and bruises and sometimes journey-defining moments—moments that can cause great despair and anguish to the traveler—and they're real, and they're often lasting and life-altering.

But it is the truly wise traveler that understands that pain—that understands that that pain is not inherently evil. You see, some moments are self-inflicted when our own actions and choices spring forth great trials and pain to us all.

And this is what Lewis is getting at when we fail in those things, when we don't do that which we know is right because the moral law tells us that there is something out there that we know we should be doing differently, and those are what I call self-inflicted wounds.

But other moments are at the hands of others—truly painful moments that take on their own living reality as walking and talking monuments, often hard to forget, lest to forgive, because there they are in front of us—those people that have harmed us, that have done us some type of pain.

And these moments, monuments, they often define us, even though they are in the midst of the reality of that time in life. And as I noted, sure, that person be truly wise when moments of great pain come about—whether self-inflicted or at the hand of others, which is often the case—they should welcome the pain, even if just for a moment, to allow its lesson to be learned.

You see, pain will come; it's not a matter of if, but of when it will come and knock at your door. And I'm of the belief that now that we welcome it, especially if it's self-inflicted, you see, so that we may learn from our own mistakes and learn from these things.

Because the more we understand and have a deeper understanding of moral right and wrong, and we lean into the moments when we mess up, then the next time it comes around, we've learned that lesson. And that pain, that is a reminder of when we missed it the first time, helps us walk that road a little bit more.

You see, when it knocks on your door at the hand of another, I still think you should open the door and let it in and treat it and that person knocking as a guest. For it will be easy to slam the door and sit idly by inside in their own self-pity at times, for the pain will always insist upon itself.

However, should one truly be wise, they might just invite the person who inflicted the pain alongside of the pain into their life. This is where forgiving the enemy and loving your neighbor and the rest comes into play because then you can seek to ease this painful lesson by introducing it to your dearest friend that we all have in this life, which is mercy, mercy and grace, and its beautiful cousin of forgiveness.

You see, pain and forgiveness, they teach such beautiful lessons. And Lewis is known to say, "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

And so without this outlet for understanding, without a moral law that there is right and wrong, then we don't have a place for pain and suffering. We don't have a place for it; we don't know what to do with it because everything is subjective.

And in fact, I think that's why our world screams out in so much pain all the time, because they don't know how to deal with pain and suffering. They don't know how to deal with the issues that are at hand.

But if you help provide the parameters, the beautiful parameters of what it means to walk in a moral law, that those parameters are not restrictive; they're actually freeing. They're unbelievably freeing to be able to let go and to find a place for when things go wrong in this life.

And that's a beautiful thing that sets forth that I would, I guess, I was able to glean out of these wonderful chapters—these two chapters at the beginning of this journey.

So let me just say thanks for joining tonight! I saw someone, Tucker, joined us from Mississippi! I absolutely love that! Another person, another state! I'm so grateful for each and every one of you who has tuned in tonight and those that will tune in on other nights.

If you have any comments, thoughts, please send them to me. Send me questions. I'm on Facebook; you're welcome, obviously, you can find me any way you want through there. But even in the chat on these videos, please feel free to share the videos, let others know.

I will be—I've got them working on right now, actually doing some outlines for study guides if you want to take these videos and the rest and study with others as an outreach at different times. Would be more than happy to make that available.

I love you all! I'm so grateful for your presence. I'm grateful for your love for not just this book and this study, but also I know your love for God. And I hope if you're seeking, if you're out there looking for God and the rest, I know myself and those others in this group would be more than happy to support you in whatever way we can.

My prayer is tonight and until we meet again next week is that you have a fantastic week. Let everything in your life be about purpose to God and that you may glorify Him in all things.

And until then, I appreciate you. Stay curious in all the things. Look forward to next week and get to reading the next couple of chapters. They're fantastic ones! I know I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you are too!

Till then, have a wonderful night, and we'll see you next week. Thank you!