Origins, Ethics, & Tetherball

Many people today, particularly celebrities and influencers, talk about being good. For example, Taylor Swift, the famous pop singer, once stated, “No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.” Although Swift’s worldview is vastly different from a biblical worldview, wouldn’t we who hold to a biblical worldview agree with her statement? Doesn’t Jesus tell us that loving our neighbor as ourselves is one of the greatest commandments (Matthew 22:39), and doesn’t he command that “as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them” (Luke 6:31)?

At first, it really does appear that we who have a biblical worldview might agree with Taylor Swift’s statement. But let’s consider her first sentence: “No matter what happens in life, be good to people.” What does she mean by this statement? In other words, what does she mean by the word good? For instance, does she include in the word good an obligation to approve of, support, or affirm LGBTQ+ identities? We might assume this, seeing that Swift has been quite public about her pro-LGBTQ+ stance.

Certainly, a person with a biblical worldview would be commanded to love people who identify as LGBTQ+. However, Romans 1:32 clearly says we are never to approve, support, or affirm sin. So to be good to LGBTQ+ individuals, according to Scripture, means lovingly calling them to repent and turn to Christ—the ultimate good we could wish for anyone. Conversely, Taylor Swift and others would tell those who share this truth with LGBTQ+ communities that they are hateful and unkind.

How can a simple word like good have such vastly different definitions? It all depends on the starting point for our ethics—God’s Word or man’s word. A generic definition of ethics is to align our decisions with a given set of principles. The question is whose principles, God’s or man’s?

When someone makes a statement, we must discern the meaning, as we did with Swift’s statement. When we are trying to understand the meaning, we’re really looking for how this statement is justified. In other words, it’s not enough for us just to make a statement; we must also justify or show how our statement is traced back to truth, the source of our statement’s value. This skill of justifying a statement will help us point unbelievers to the source of truth—God’s Word.

Why Tetherball Matters

For some younger readers, tetherball might seem like an ancient playground activity. Essentially, tetherball is a game in which a pole is cemented into the ground. A long rope is attached to the top of the pole, and a ball is tied to the end of the rope. Two people hit the ball in opposite directions until the rope wraps all the way around the pole.

Let’s imagine the tetherball as a model for how we come to know things. Picture the ball as a belief we might have. We hold to a belief because we believe it’s true. A belief might be, “We should be good to people.” But how do we know that this belief is true?

What part of the tetherball model would represent truth? We expect truth not to change but to be firmly planted in the reality that grounds us to itself. On the tetherball model, the grounding part is the pole. Let’s imagine that the pole represents truth since it is cemented into the earth. The ultimate authoritative truth is God’s Word. Christians must interpret all things by God’s Word so we might know the truth about anything.

However, we cannot merely say, “I know my belief is true.” How do we show that our belief is true? By explaining how our belief is grounded in truth. This kind of explanation is the rope from our tetherball model.

For instance, we believe God is a Trinity (three persons and one God). But the Bible never uses the word Trinity. Yet, we believe God is a Trinity (ball). We know it’s true from the Bible (pole). But we must explain (rope) how it is possible that our belief is grounded in the Bible. We must point to verses that refer to each person of the Trinity as individual persons and verses that refer to each person as God. We must then explain how these verses go together and how Scripture is clear, harmonious, and logical. The rope requires work.

The tetherball model gives us a way to illustrate how we come to properly know something. We live in a world in which everyone has beliefs and opinions, but we have lost the skill of tracing our beliefs back to a source of grounded reality. In philosophy, this way of knowing is called a justified-true-belief. This means that for knowledge to be knowledge, properly understood, it is not enough just to have a belief. It’s not enough to merely say that a particular belief is true. One must explain (or justify) how it is possible that a belief is tethered to a grounding source of objective truth.

We have lost the skill of tracing our beliefs back to a source of grounded reality.

Origins and Ethics

Looking back at the Taylor Swift example, we must ask, If two people seem to agree on a statement but have vastly different worldviews, are they really agreeing at all? No, the agreement is superficial and based on different understandings of terms. Usually, when we talk about worldviews, we are not talking about slight deviations in the way we see the world. We’re talking about the pole on the tetherball. A disagreement about reality (the source of truth) is ultimately a disagreement about beliefs, no matter how similar they seem.

For those who reject a literal six-day creation as laid out in Genesis 1, their source of truth is the man-made rationale of evolution.

Melanie Challenger is an evolutionist who wrote the book How to Be Animal. She opens her book by saying, “The world is now dominated by an animal that doesn’t think it’s an animal.” According to her, just because humans have evolved in a way that seems superior to other animals, this does not mean that humans are special. Humans are merely more highly evolved animals, the product of millions of years of evolution rather than the special creation of God (Genesis 1:26–27). Viewing human origins in this way, humans have the right over themselves since they ultimately belong to themselves. Even if they feel obligated to the norms and traditions of their culture, they are not accountable to a higher being.

One of Challenger’s great disappointments with humanity is that “at present, we still assume that human interests lie outside of nature.” She means that humans limit themselves by believing the delusion that they should find their ultimate meaning in something supernatural, like God. Nature is her pole of truth. Nothing created it. Nothing is beyond it. For her, humans should not be limited by laws, character traits, or judgments from a supernatural God.

Challenger addresses the notion of people being good to each other. She states, “Whether soul or rationality or consciousness, these are spiritual or quasi-spiritual ideas that give a foundation for being good to one another. The basis of the protection and care of human beings still relies on a worldview that reinforces this assumption.” But, whatever one’s worldview that reinforces this assumption, she concludes, “Humans, contrary to the hopes of many, aren’t shaped by moral logic but by an internal competition of possible choices. Our moral lives are an ad hoc mix of bias, intuition, conflicting histories of thought, and biological imperative.”

In other words, Challenger says that, yes, she believes that we should be good to each other. But her grounding truth is evolutionary theory. Her explanation (justification) is that our evolutionary moral obligations come from a chance mix of biological dispositions, thoughts, and emotions. Our rationale for our moral behavior is just as influenced by chance as is our biological evolution.

Christians, on the other hand, also believe we should be good to each other. But our grounding truth is Scripture, beginning in Genesis. Our explanation (justification) is found in our literal interpretation of Genesis 1:26. We have been made in the image of God. He is the authority who not only determines our being but has also determined how we should treat each other. Our value and definition stem from the One who created us and purposed us (Genesis 1:28).

Clarifying Terms

You will most likely never have to play a tetherball game of ethics with Taylor Swift, but you will likely face conversations in which terms are unclear.

When we engage unbelievers about ethical issues, most of the time we are talking past each other. Because we often begin the conversation using similar statements, we think we are starting on common ground. But if the unbeliever’s grounding source of reality is anything other than God’s Word, then we are not starting on common ground. We begin our conversations with unbelievers always negotiating the pole.

When we start a conversation about ethics with an unbeliever, we should be asking more questions than making statements. If an unbeliever fundamentally believes we should be good to people, we might say, “I agree.” Because certainly, though we would not agree with her beliefs regarding other issues, we would agree that to be good to people also encompasses being respectful and compassionate and charitable—virtues espoused in Scripture. But the conversation should not end by assuming the points on which we agree. We should ask questions such as, “How do you define what good means?” “What do you base your belief on?” “How does your belief relate to our purpose on this earth?” “Who says what our purpose is?”

When we engage unbelievers about ethical issues, most of the time we are talking past each other.

Questions accomplish several things. They demonstrate to unbelievers that we are listening to them. They also allow us to see the root issues that make the unbeliever’s statements possible, instead of arguing over the symptoms of the root issues. Since unbelief is impossible to justify, seeing that it is not tethered to ultimate truth, allowing the unbeliever to trace out his system of belief exposes the logical conflicts therein. In exposing those inconsistencies, we are attempting to help the unbeliever recognize his ultimate problem. He has not been ignorant of the truth, but rather has suppressed the truth in his unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).

By asking questions that lead an unbeliever back to his ultimate authority, we can focus on our most powerful weapon against untruth—God’s Word. It is through God’s Word that the Holy Spirit works in the heart.