By Michael C Sherrard

It is good to acknowledge the appropriateness of ones anger in the midst of evil and pain. It is right to be angry over injustice. It is right to be sick at crimes against children. It is good for you to feel a hole in your stomach as you look upon the devastation and loss of life caused by a natural disaster. It is right to think, “This is not how life is supposed to be.” The key is for anger to be directed rightly whereupon your steps follow the right path of action.

Acknowledging an individual’s sense of justice can lead them to repentance. When we are angry at evil, we are acknowledging that life has purpose. We are recognizing that there is a difference between good and bad. We are affirming that bad should be punished. But what does that mean for my bad actions? And from where did my sense of justice come in the first place?

If life is the result of an accident, how can life have a purpose? And if life has no purpose, why am I angry at what I think is unfair? My sense of oughtness is an indication that I believe in a standard of life. But what standard, an arbitrary one set by changing cultures driven by natural selection or a transcendent one that never changes even though societies might? Mankind’s sense of justice can point them to the good Judge. Affirm their outrage and direct it properly.

If you take people down this road, you will see how mankind’s universal sense of justice is to the gospel’s advantage. There is only one worldview that provides a justification for belief in inherent human value and thereby true morality. It is theism. A transcendent creator is needed for our sense of justice to have any value. Existence must have been intentional for life to have intrinsic and objective worth. And simply, when we look at the world and say, “That is wrong!” there has to be an eternally fixed “right” for our moral indignation to have any value. Leverage this understanding that all naturally possess and direct them toward the One who is not only the standard of life, but its very essence.

This blog was originally published at MichaelCSherrard.com