The Academy of Classical Christian Studies high school girls basketball team in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma won last season’s division championship game when they hit a buzzer-beater against Apache High School that ended the game. However, when head coach Brendan King went home that same night and watched the game tape, he was shocked.
It seems that at one point in the game, there had been some confusion about the scoreboard. So just to be sure about everything, he recounted every basket and discovered his team had actually lost. The game had ended with Academy winning 44 – 43, but King discovered the true score should have been 43 – 42, with Apache High coming out on top.
Technically, it didn’t matter because league rules state that once a game is done, the score is the score, there’s no changing it. In fact, if the coach had just kept his mouth shut, no one would have ever been the wiser. And most people would have just left it at that.
However, King, being the honest man that he was, decided to tell his team about what he had discovered. And when they heard what had happened, they did the unthinkable. They decided to appeal the decision and deliver the trophy to Apache High. But it wasn’t just the coach. When the team took the vote, it was unanimous. One of the players said, “It would have felt wrong, I think, to have taken the trophy, regardless.”
So why didn’t they just keep the trophy? The reason was that this was a Christian school, and the people involved, both coach and players, were actually intent on living out their Christian faith. WOW. What a great witness!
This story actually made national news. You can read about it at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oklahoma-city-girls-basketball-team-returns-championship-discovers-it-lost-title-game/.
The question is, why would this become a national story? I think the reason is because it is so unusual. American society these days is dominated by a naturalistic worldview – the belief that the natural universe, operating by natural laws, is all that exists. With that as a foundation, there is no such thing as God, and no such thing as objective morality. The existence of objective morality requires an objectively real moral law giver (a God). With a naturalistic belief that there is no God, all that exists is relative morality – a situation where people have to make up their own moral rules. And these rules can change whenever the societal situation changes.
So what happens in real life when morality is relative? There are several results.
- There is not, nor can there be, a universal moral standard – no common understanding of what is right and wrong.
- Law becomes a matter of majority opinion.
- Human rights are considered to be socially granted and can be revoked.
- Morality is changeable.
- Morality is determined by those who have power in society.
- There is no incentive to consider the thoughts or beliefs of other people.
- Virtually any belief or practice can be justified.
- Individuals have less internal restraint.
- Social cohesion breaks down.
And if we look at what is going on in modern society, these things are exactly what we see.
When we look at the bottom line, reality exists in some objectively real way. Either an objectively real God exists who has revealed to us what is right and wrong, or there is no God who has provided that and people have to make it up for themselves.
In a practical sense, everyone should desire that God does exist and has revealed right morality to us. Genuine order and stability in society is only possible if that is the case. So the question becomes, “Is that true, and, if so, who is this God.”
The fact is, God does exist and He has revealed Himself to us. And while He cannot be known using any kind of empirical methodology, the belief that He does not exist also can’t be demonstrated empirically. That, however, is not even relevant. The belief that God does not exist assumes that EVERYTHING is subject to empirical verification – that even if there is a God, He could be discovered and analyzed by science. But if that assumption is not true the demand for empirical proof is meaningless (which is demonstrated by the fact that Atheism can’t even prove its own beliefs by its own requirement).
There actually exists a part of reality that transcends the natural universe. Beyond that, human beings are connected to that because we were created by God as not only physical creatures, but as beings who have a spiritual part capable of interacting with Him.
People who reject God don’t do so based on any valid reason. What they have done is to simply ignore the spiritual part of their personhood and attempt to live life based only on their physical attributes. Human beings are capable of doing that to an extent, but by ignoring the spiritual, they cut themselves off from engaging an entire aspect of their personhood. God has provided a way to know Him. People only have to open themselves up to Him.