Christian ethics and moral decision-making—applying biblical principles to complex issues.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12015 Birth control is one of those subjects on which Christians have grown noticeably quieter, and I think that silence has left couples to work it out alone with very little help. The Bible does not address the modern question directly. That is not the end of the matter, but it does mean anyone…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12013 Cremation and burial is one of those questions that arrives at the worst possible moment. A family is grieving, a decision is needed within days, and somebody asks whether God minds. I have sat in those front rooms more times than I can count, and the last thing anyone needs is a lecture….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12012 Christian landlords are asked to justify themselves far more often than they used to be. In a country where housing costs cause real hardship, the suggestion that profiting from someone’s need for shelter is inherently exploitative has moved from the fringe to the dinner table. It deserves a proper answer rather than a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12011 Charging interest has a long and awkward history in Christian ethics. For centuries the church treated it as sin outright, and Christians who lent at interest could find themselves excluded from communion. Today most believers hold a mortgage, a pension and a savings account without a flicker of conscience. Something has clearly shifted,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12010 Biblical marriage is not a religious variation on a general human institution. It is the institution, given by God before there were nations, laws, courts or churches, and every later arrangement is a departure from it or an approximation to it. That is a bold claim, so let me show you where it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12009 White lies are so woven into ordinary life that most of us have never stopped to examine them. “You look wonderful in that.” “The meal was lovely.” “I am fine, thanks.” Nobody is harmed, everyone feels better, and the social machinery keeps turning. That is the theory, at any rate. The question for…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12008 The sin of lying looks like the easiest ethical question in the Bible. God says do not lie, so do not lie. Case closed. Then somebody asks about the Hebrew midwives, or about hiding a family from a death squad, and the simple answer starts to wobble. I want to take both parts…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 12007 Biblical self-defence stops being an abstract question the moment you hear glass breaking downstairs at two in the morning. I have been asked about this by fathers, by women living alone, by shopkeepers who have been robbed twice. It is not a seminar topic for them, and it should not be treated as…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12006 Just war thinking has been the settled position of most Christians for something like sixteen centuries, and yet I find that very few believers could tell you what it actually claims. War is one of the most painful realities in human history, and the Christian conscience has never been comfortable with it. Nor…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12005 Capital punishment is one of those questions where sincere believers land in different places, and I want to say that plainly before I say anything else. Nobody should be treated as a heretic for wrestling with it. But this is not a question Scripture leaves untouched, and my concern is that we listen…