In our first article we explored the facade of false ideologies and showed that they wear shrouds of false newness woven from threads of false eschatology. The second article exposed the false valuation of men and women that lies at the heart of every every false ideology. 1 False newness, 2 false eschatology and 3 false valuation can only be seen as false when we shine His Word Psalms 119:105 upon the ideology. These are but the leaves of the weed. It is also by His Word that we know there are roots we must still demolish. As we proceed, you will observe more and more that His Word Challenges us concerning things unnoticably basic and yet vital as air. It is now that we should pay the most attention. For just like air, we will spiritually suffocate in the absence of these “tiny” things.

Lemma #1: Atoms of Morality

We begin by asking feminism a simple question, “Is it good for men and women to be equal?” As we said earlier, every false ideology, by false eschatology, claims to bring healing and make things better. They thereby imply that the current state is evil in comparison to the good of the future state they promise to usher in. So to ask feminism, “Are things better when men and women are equal?” is the same as asking racism, “Why are black people better than white people?” or asking fascism, “Why is it better for the state to be higher than the individual?” When you interrogating an ideology’s eschatology, take sometime to interrogate it’s valuations. For example, how can racism claim it is right to value men differently because of the color of their skin? Why does communism think it right to highly esteem a society where everything is shared?

Pursue answers to these questions and you will discover that every reason proffered by false ideologies about their eschatologies and valuations are easily dissolved by asking another why. Ultimately, there is no reason undergirding their eschatologies and valuations. There can be no reason the promised future is better than the present or the past. They cannot tell you why it is right to value humans beings differently or equally because of skin color or ethnicity or even any category at all. Even stoic scientifism, that claims to build its house on evidence, cannot tell you why evidence is the best means of arriving at truth. In fact, as Charles Darwin and any good physiognomist will tell you, scientifism and racism were once close allies.

The rationales behind every eschatology and valuation have no reasons behind them. Instead, at the bottom of every ideology, invariant with scale or form, is a belief about right and wrong. For this reason, despite the many killed under failed communist regimes, you still hear people saying, “Communism only failed because they didn’t do it right or didn’t give it a fair chance.” Water, whether solid as ice or ephemeral like steam, is always made of hydrogen and oxygen. So also, every ideology, at every level, is composed of arbitrary declarations about right and wrong, good and evil. Ideologies are made from atoms of morality which the Bible Calls “the knowledge of good and evil”.

Lemma #2: Genesis 1-3

It should be pointed out that we sinfully take morality for granted. Like fish swimming in the sea never knowing they are wet, you daily live your life mostly oblivious that you do so according to what you think is right and wrong. Rarely do you ever stop to ponder where your morality came from or if it is eating your life away. This is why the previous article strongly suggested that you repeatedly and incessantly read Genesis 1-3. Genesis 1 teaches us that things are only good because God Makes them good. Remember Genesis 1:3 where God Made light. Well, in Genesis 1:4 God Sees that the light is good. God Did NOT Say the light was good. Instead, when God Beheld light’s nature, composition and manner of being, He Saw goodness. This goodness, intrinsic to the nature of light, did not arise by accident. The goodness of the light must have come from Him Who Made it. Every thing Created by God, Genesis 1:9,12,17,21,25,31 is made of goodness because God Is Good Luke 18:19, Job 14:4. Pause and let this sink in: the floor beneath your feet and the stars adorning the heavens are not merely made of calcium carbonate and hydrogen respectively. Good or evil, morality is more intrinsic to the substance of everything in creation than quarks and gluons. How does an atom become evil? Better to ask, what makes an atom right or wrong? How should an atom be? No one knows other than He Who Created them. The notion of good (tob), and subsequently evil (ra), at the core of every morality, did not come from us. From the beginning, they are because of God Isaiah 45:7.

In Genesis 2, God Tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Using the knowledge of good and evil, one is able to make a distinction between what is good and what is evil. So in His Command, God Is Telling Adam, “Do not make a distinction between good and evil by yourself.” Yet, God Created Adam with a will and the ability to make choices. The exercise of will and choice fundamentally requires that we make distinction between good and evil. Every choice and act of will is a series of moral distinctions based on a knowledge of good and evil. Morality extends beyond what we call ethical choices. When a carpenter chooses a hammer instead of a sawzall, he is fundamentally saying that the hammer is good for the task while the sawzall is evil for the task. He is making a moral decision. Like a computer performing esoteric computations on massive amounts of data using kindergarten arithmetic and logic, men and women make decisions, whether concerning dinner or going to war, by compositing multiple declarations of good and evil. To use another analogy, if decisions are a song then each note is composed by the knowledge of good and evil. By Commanding Adam to refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God Says to Adam, “I Will Be your Knowledge of good and evil and through me, you will make all your decisions.” This dynamic is the means by which Adam decides what to name the animals Genesis 2:19 and the means by which he names Woman Genesis 2:23 Even later, when Adam names her Eve, he does so on the basis of God’s prophecy Genesis 3:15. Before disobeying God, Adam was a being whose morality flowed out of his relationship with God.

So if everything God Created is good and even very good, then how did evil enter into creation? Well, instead of following God’s Command, Adam and Eve sin against God by stealing and eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Remember, though, that every decision and action is the expression of a morality. Therefore, preceding/confluent with Adam’s sin was the “creation” of a knowledge of good and evil, a morality apart from God. Genesis 3:6 says that the woman saw three good things about the tree: 1Good for food, 2a delight to the eyes, 3desired to make one wise. Now we know the tree is very good because God Said everything in creation was very good. Although seeing the tree as good seems to be in agreement with God, in truth, her thoughts and perceptions are a declaration of goodness without God. In an attempt to be like God (sicut deus), she abandons her relationship with God in order to “create” her irrelational morality. Out of her morality, she makes a decision, a choice to eat from the tree. Adam, her husband, not pausing to ask God, does the exact same thing.

Look again at the woman’s thoughts about the tree in Genesis 3:6. 1Good for food, 2a delight to the eyes, 3desired to make one wise. See how every declaration of goodness is conditional to some selfish end. The tree is good because it fills my stomach, a delight because it fills my eyes and desired because it fills my mind. This is consistent with all man-made moralities. Something is good or evil depending on what it can do for us or to us. E.g. my wife is a good wife because she cooks for me or cares for my children. Although we stole the notions of good and evil from God, human moralities are frankenstein caricatures of God’s Morality. No matter their pleas of utility or necessity, they are grotesque in form and demonstrably demonic at heart. When God Says something is good, He Is Speaking about its intrinsic nature. In Genesis 1, God Says His creation is intrinsically good, not because of what it can do for Him, but because of what He Did, Does and Will Do for it. God’s Declares things good not out of selfishness but out of His Love, Truth and Goodness. God’s Morality Flows out of His Love and Goodness. Our morality oozes out of our selfishness and evil. Our morality is crippled because it is relative to us and subject to our perception. The good that God Gives James 1:17 is intrinsic through an absolute relationship with The Absolute.

In Summary

Since everything in creation and everything we “create” must contain atoms of morality, we can go anywhere based on what is written above. It would be wise to summarize before moving forward in future articles.

We have learned that every ideology is composed from atoms of morality. But this is no surprise since Genesis 1 tells us that all of creation is good by being related to God. All of creation, from physical to metaphysical, by being good, is intrinsically moral. From Genesis 2, we learn that every choice or act of will is a composition of moral declarations. God, through His Relationship with Adam, Is Adam’s Source of morality. Every choice Adam made was a composition of moral declarations expressing his relationship with God. In Genesis 3 Adam sins by cobbling together his own “morality” instead of knowing good by relating with God. As we observe, Adam’s morality sludges out of selfishness and evil while God’s Morality Flows out of His Love for His creation. Adam’s morality is relative to Adam’s perception while the good that God Gives is intrinsic through an absolute relationship with God, The Absolute.

Although every ideology, every bit of knowledge from abstract mathematics to molding concrete, is fundamentally moral, we must still ask, “Which morality?” When it comes to ideologies, we must ask, “Is the ideology made from atoms of man’s morality which arises from selfishness and evil or is the ideology good by submitting to and proclaiming God’s Word?” As 1 John 2:16, Genesis 3:6 show us, everything that is of the world values the sensual and creates morality based on the relative sensual experience. However, that which is of The Father and loves The Father derives absolute goodness from His Absolute Goodness.

The next time you make a decision or choice, think about the knowledge of good and evil that forms it. Are you making decisions based on what God Says or based on what you think? If you’re not sure, go back and read the Bible. Even if you seem to be doing good but not because of God then what you are doing is motivated by a morality rooted in selfishness and evil.