There’s Only One Moral Currency

The real value of the US dollar is reflected by the amount of goods and services you can purchase with it. It doesn’t get its value from the paper or what’s printed on it, but by the fact that it has the backing of the US government as legal tender. It is that difference that gives US paper currency purchasing power and makes Monopoly money worthless except for playing the game of Monopoly. No person or organization who prints their own currency can expect it to be honored when they go to a store in the US. But the currency backed by the US government, a higher authority having legal jurisdiction over US territory, will be accepted for payment.

Similarly, without God, ethics and morality (right and wrong, justice and injustice) are reduced to being the culturally subjective and purely relative opinions of mankind, rather than real values and ideals. Moral values are not moral and valuable simply because we recognize them and codify them as law. Whether we recognize and/or implement them as laws or not, their morality and value are ascribed by God, the Creator of the universe and everything in it, the only higher governing authority that has legal jurisdiction over all mankind.

Still not convinced? Imagine for a moment what life would be like if every few years the accepted currency was changed to some other interest groups idea of what money should be accepted? Likewise, apart from God, a moral value today could be denounced as abhorrent tomorrow. What the culture considers immoral behavior today may be considered freedom of expression tomorrow. Does this sound familiar? It’s where we are living.

This may seem foreign and even radical to many because of the postmodern humanistic (man centered and God rejecting) philosophy that has inundated and influenced every aspect of our culture, especially in the area of education. But this God centered mindset was the worldview of the founders of the United States as reflected in Declaration of Independence, the Constitution (and Bill of Rights).

God and the Bible in government and the public square weren’t a problem for them and should not be a problem for us. Quite the contrary, it was government injecting itself into religion that they were concerned with. It was their Biblical understanding of the God who created everything that caused them to see that laws are intended and necessary to protect citizens from the lawless, that laws must be just, and that God alone is the final arbiter of justice. That was their genius!