El Salvador, Fear and Loathing, and the Body of Christ

I’m finally back home after an extremely busy couple of weeks.    I spent time in La Libertad, El Salvador and Las Vegas, Nevada.  Two places that could not be more of a contrast in lifestyle.  For those who are interested here is a brief summary of my thoughts on both trips.

El Salvador was a successful trip.   It was different from Ethiopia in many ways.  For one, the country as a whole is nowhere near as poor as Ethiopia and it’s obvious.  Some sections of the country looked like they were right out of suburbia here in the states.  NOTHING about Ethiopia is even close to the states (except the obnoxiously pristine US Embassy/fortress).  All that said, there are still many people in extreme poverty in El Salvador.

Movement as a group took on three separate projects while we were in La Libertad.  First, the team of women and I visited Remar Orphanage and painted the inside of one of the boys dorms.   The children of Remar were fantastic.  We loved every moment we were there.   Second, the men on the team spent the week building ramps for a brand new skate park for the city.  Third, the whole group helped a pastor in San Diego, who runs a feeding program out of his own pocket, for the poorest of the poor children in his area.   The week we were there, he had run out of food and would have had nothing to give had we not shown up.  He is an amazing man.  Truly a man going all out for Christ.  Check out a short video of what we did there here.

More about the trip later.  When I got back I had one day in NYC to recover with my wife, and then I was immediately off to Las Vegas where my office was celebrating our business success in the second half of 2011.

Vegas bills itself as Sin City, and this is true.  But really its not really about sin in general, its specifically about  glorifying yourself.   It’s about living like a king, if only for a short time.  Money in Vegas can literally buy you anything fairly easily: rooms like palaces, women, entertainment, the highest of quality in food, clothes and art.  All the things the Preacher in Ecclesiastes tried until he could try no more and eventually found no pleasure in.  Seriously read Ecclesiastes…you’ll be surprised its in the Bible.

The thing about Vegas is that the activities  that you do there seem fun and even harmless while you are there.   This is also my experience as a person who lived the Vegas lifestyle for most of my life.  Try living that way for extended period.  Try never being able to experience the difference between a stripper being all over your for a tip, and the touch of woman who truly loves you.  Try never being able to tell the difference between your friends, and those who like you because you’re rich.   Or worst of all, try training yourself to drink to contentment long enough, until you see your life as figuring out how to pass the time between nights of drunkenness that you only partially remember.  

These are all the paths I was on before I met Christ.   If you would have asked me before, I would have told you I was having fun.   When I got a chance to look back on that lifestyle now, it broke my heart.   It all seemed so silly.  People in deep fear and loathing.  People all around who refuse to  face life as it truly is and would rather pretend they live in Caesar’s Palace, or in a land of Pirates.  It’s a childish existence, ironically called “Adult Entertainment”.  This lifestyle is vanity, it’s a striving after wind.   In other words, if this is how you live, you will constantly be chasing something that you will never, ever get in this way.  Whether that something is contentment in sex, money, alcohol or drugs is irrelevant.    Its hopeless for you if you keep trying like this.

Life is better than what most 20 something’s in NYC think it is.   As a Christian, my job is to get that message out, and show people how much more rich, pleasurable and fun life really is.  Getting wasted on the weekends, when you really step back and think about it, is not fun.  Its childish.

Lastly, I wanted to just give a quick shout to my brothers and sisters who went to El Salvador with me.  I have honestly never met a group of people like this before.  Everyone was just so humble, encouraging, loving and just flat out hilarious.   I’ve never seen a group so ready to spend themselves for others.  

The men on the team all fought off an awful stomach bug, while working in 90 degree, super humid heat for a whole week to eventually deliver, what we were told, were the best ramps in the entire country.   I didn’t hear a single complaint the entire time, except that we wished we had more time to build even more.   The results of the skate park build?   God used our work, and he saved dozens of young El Salvadorean skateboarders.  My brothers are solid men, it was awesome working with them.

I spent most of my time with our team of women. I cannot put into words how amazing this group of ladies is.  People these days try to caricature Christian women in two ways.  1) The GCB woman, pretty much a hypocritical woman, more promiscuous than average, while at the same time leveling harsh judgments on everyone else.  Or 2) The uptight, old fashioned nerd, who thinks holding hands is dirty.

The women that were on our team are nothing like either of these ridiculous caricatures.   They are beautiful, stylish, funny and warm.   Most importantly, they too were willing to work hard, in intense heat, fighting stomach problems and with no complaints.  Not a SINGLE one.

In a time where many women choose to  emulate the outlandish and  unattractive behavior showcased on reality shows or Chelsea Handler, these women courageously stand apart.  Each of them truly personifies the  Proverbs 31 woman.  Especially my lovely wife Brittany.   (No offense ladies)  I have grown to love my sisters.  All them are special and I was honored to get to know them better over the course of this trip.

Where in the world did these people come from?   Why are they willing to spend their time, their money and their bodies for people they’ve never met.  The Lord taught me what the church is on this trip.   The bible teaches that we (believers) are the body of Christ.   That’s what these people have in common.   That’s why they act the way they do.  They come at life from a different perspective than unbelievers.   Left to our own, the men and women of our team would be just like everyone I saw in Vegas. They would be chasing contentment in various worthless things, just like I did. 

Instead, they have Jesus.  Through them, Jesus works to meet the needs of the poor and widowed and the orphans.  Through them Jesus works to draw others to himself.  Through him they get to participate in Jesus’ mission to change hearts.

Thank you so much to my Movement family.  Thanks for making me feel at home and for teaching me so much on this trip.

Thoughts on Death

I have been meaning to write a post for just about two weeks but I have been putting it off.  Even though my delays have been unintentional, it is a really good illustration of the attitude I hope to explore about my topic today.  My topic is death.  This topic is one that most refuse to dwell on for very long.  This is a topic that most people try not to think about, even though its reality cannot be denied.  I came face to face with this reality a few weeks ago.   My grandmother died after a long period of suffering various illnesses.

We are all born into an impossible predicament.  When we are first conceived, we are conceived with a built-in terminal illness.   Every single day that passes, is a day we come closer to succumbing to that illness.  The weirdest part of this is that we don’t know if we have a few years, a few days, or a few minutes left.  The best scientists and doctors are absolutely helpless to do anything about this universal death sentence.  Death cannot be avoided.

Yet somehow, for the majority of my life, I did a great job avoiding death as an issue.   I rarely thought about it.  My friends as far as I know never thought about it, and I never really knew anyone close who had died.  I think most of you, if you’re honest, rarely think about the implications of death, and what death really is.  But the truth is, that what we think or don’t think about the reality of death has a profound impact on the way we conduct our lives day to day.

There are really only two basic choices about what happens when we die:

1.       Nothing.   This is the view of someone who believes that there is no self, besides the physical self.   (This view, in my opinion, is obviously false.  Though this is a debate for another time)

2.       The soul lives on in some other capacity.  (I think that the existence of a soul is obvious upon careful self-reflection, but see a good argument for dualism here. )

If there is no “self” separate from the body, then when we die we are gone.  This may seem obvious, but I challenge you to do some careful reflection on this fact.   What does this mean?   Honestly, it’s hard to wrap your head around this idea.  The last scene of the Soprano’s, debatably, tried to capture the essence of this.   One moment, you’re with your family, about to order some onion rings, listening to Journey, the next minute… silence and black.   Only silence and black doesn’t explain it at all.  You have to be able to perceive silence and black.  Dead flesh doesn’t perceive anything.   Again, I challenge you to reflect on this.  It’s a mind bending concept to imagine what oblivion is like. 

It’s also really depressing.  If oblivion is what awaits us, what in the world are we doing here?  Why do we feel the need to do anything?  Why are you going to work, going to the gym, loving our families, trying to eat right?   What’s the point?   The atheist says, “There is no point!”, then simultaneously tries to convince us to stand up against evil, or to care about global warming, or some cause.  Why should I?

I love that scene in Seinfeld.   The group is reflecting on death, after Jerry’s infamous “Pony Remark” kills his aunt Manya:

GEORGE: [Funerals] always make me take stock of my life and how I've pretty much wasted all of it, and how I plan to continue wasting it.

JERRY: I know, and then you say to yourself, "From this moment on, I'm not going to waste any more of it." But then you go, "How? What can I do that's not wasting it?"
ELAINE: Is this a waste of time? What should we be doing? Can't you have coffee with people?

They then go on with their conversation, but this is so true.  If death is just death, then we’re all just killing time.   If death is meaningless, life is meaningless.  Most atheists don’t live like this though and most people in general do believe in an immaterial “self”/soul, and life after death.   Most people are willing to trust their instincts that life does have meaning.

As I have stated before, I have good reason to believe that Christianity is true.  So what does the Bible say about the prospect of death?

The Bible teaches that the human soul, once created, never dies.  There are very good reasons to believe that this is true.  But it has a lot to say about carnal death.   There is a lot of this in the Bible.   I won’t go into too much detail but I have noticed an interesting feature in the stories.

When major players in the Bible story die, besides Jesus, it really just moves the story along right away.  There is no pomp, there is no circumstance.  It’s just over, and the story continues.  I think this is intentional.  God wants us to know, no matter how great and powerful we think we are, when we die on this earth, the earthly power and wealth we have, utterly meaningless and totally worthless.  Check out some classic biblical eulogies:

Abraham, father of the Israelites:

Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people.

Samuel the Prophet: 

Then Samuel died; and all Israel gathered together and mourned for him, and buried him at his house in Ramah.

And the famous King David:

Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David.

These guys were majors.  They got a sentence each.  The bible teaches that our life on this earth, while meaningful, is fleeting.  It comes and it goes like the snap of a finger.  We are often compared to grass.  Here today gone tomorrow.  But the Bible also teaches that we were created for a home that is NOT this earth.   We were created for heaven.

Many of you who are reading this probably believe that the Bible teaches that good people go to heaven.   Most believe that in the end if your good deeds outweigh the bad deeds, a good God will have to let you in.  This doesn’t really make any sense.   How would you gauge it?  Would you have to be a 51%er,  in the top 50% of goodness?  How could you possibly know that you would make that cut?   Furthermore, would it be “good” of God to turn someone away in the 49%ers (49% good deeds and 51% bad)?  And what would he do for the 50%ers, with equal amounts of good and bad?

The truth is that the qualification for heaven is not about being good, it’s about being perfect.   You get in through perfection.  This is really really good news.  The perfection of Jesus is good enough for all of us.    The 90%ers, the 50%ers, even the 10%ers can all tap into the free gift of God that is Jesus.    Believe on Jesus, and your soul (the real “you”) will spend forever with him in heaven.

As I stood in front of my grandmother’s lifeless body a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic about her.  I knew her through that body.  It was how I recognized her as child, but was it that body that I loved?   Impossible.  The love I had for my grandmother had nothing to do with her physical body….it was her soul that I loved…the real her. 

But the real “her” is still very much alive.   She was a powerful woman of God, with a strong faith in the Lord.  She held on to the reality of his promises until the very end, and faced her own death with courage, fearlessness and confidence.  She prayed to God unceasingly for me, that He would soften my hard heart.  That he would remove whatever it was that kept me rebelling so hard against him.  I found this out at the funeral.   I thank God that he answered that prayer. 

My prayer is the same for you.  I pray for whoever is reading this… come to Christ.  If you don’t know what this means or how to do this, email me, or I’d be glad to talk this out over the phone.   I will leave you with this.  You are not going to die.  I mean the real you, the you that is separate from your body.  You will go on living forever.  I urge you to accept the gift of heaven.    Living forever with God is going to be better than we can possibly imagine.

Lessons From Ethiopia

I have been back in the United States for about a week.    I miss Ethiopia but its always good to be home.    Here are some initial thoughts about my trip.

Materialistically, Ethiopia is one the poorest nations in the world.  You need only browse Google for a few minutes to see the low marks on per capita income, GDP, and the other statistics that we Americans deem important.

I’m sure many of you have heard about the orphan problem in Ethiopia, the AIDS crisis, the poverty, the corruption and so on.  I have known about these things for a number of years, and I thought I was prepared to encounter them on this trip.

I was not prepared.   Orphans, AIDS crisis, poverty…..these were all just ideas to me.    Maybe I am exposing my own naiveté, or hardness of heart, but I didn’t realize that these ideas only mean something because the people they effect are real life people.  People with all the same emotions, feelings, needs and desires as you and me.   The hundreds of orphans that I met over the last two weeks, each one is real.  Each one is precious.    Each one has personality.    Before this trip, I never thought of it that way.   Call me ignorant, call me heartless, call me stupid…..they are probably all true. 
   

In America, our whole society is set up so that you can avoid encountering  the seriousness of real life problems if you want to.  Personally, over the 29 years of my life I had successfully avoided meeting people with HIV, people in extreme poverty,  abandoned children, sick people and even death for the most part.  These are all issues that for most of my life I chose to ignore, the same way many of you choose to ignore.   I am not judging.  I am stating fact.

One thing I learned in Ethiopia is how deeply sinful I can be.  Eric Ludy (youtube him) calls it “depraved indifference”.  In other words, the indifference I show to lives of the poor around the world is a symptom of my sinful nature.  For 28 years I knew that the majority of the world lives on less per day than what I spend on a Snickers  bar.   For 28 years I slept just fine and didn’t care at all.  
  

Another thing I learned is how far gone human beings as a group are.  The Bible teaches over and over again, that no one is innocent.   All of us are wicked.  We think wicked thoughts and do wicked deeds.   In America we go through great lengths to  try to keep our sin hidden.  In Africa its more obvious in some ways but it’s the same sinful nature that we all share.  In Africa there are abandoned children everywhere.  Some of them were abandoned by parents who were too cowardly to take responsibility for them, so they made them leave to fend for themselves.   In America, we think that our solution is cleaner but its just as bad, probably worse.    Here, we simply eliminate our unwanted children before they are born.   The evidence of our sin is gone before we see it.  We keep it locked away in sterile clinics, and call it our choice.  We are so humane here in the United States  aren’t we?   In truth, I don’t know how much more selfish a person can be than to abandon their own child.  Yet this sin is rampant in each culture, just manifested slightly differently.  We are all sinners  that deserve nothing but punishment.    Africa has helped me understand how deeply lost we are.

Sounds depressing huh?   If you have seen any of our pictures from our trip, you will see me look happier than I have ever looked in my entire life.     How does that make sense?

Jesus has changed my life, and he is changing lives in Ethiopia every day.   The people of Ethiopia deserve nothing.  We Americans deserve nothing.   I deserve less than nothing.   Yet God is reaching out to us all and offering us a gift so special its hard to even fathom.  I met some amazing brothers and sisters in Ethiopia.  People who love Jesus, and people who have been radically changed by Jesus.

I met boys who a few months prior were living on the streets, in gangs, addicted to drugs and marginalized in every way.   Now, they were going to school and had a safe place to stay.   More importantly though they knew how valuable they were to God .   We all watched them sing songs to Jesus, and we all nearly broke down crying because of the joy they brought to our hearts.

I met fatherless toddlers.    Some probably had fathers who had died.  Mostly, their fathers were cowards and just left.    They would see me and come running, screaming “Abba! Abba!”, lifting their hands so I would pick them up.   They call any male they see paying attention to them “Daddy.”    Many of these kids were starting to learn the stories about Jesus.    In the Psalms, God promises to be a father to the fatherless.   They need Jesus  bad.  They crave a loving father.

I met women who two weeks prior, were prostitutes on the streets of Addis Ababa.    These  were real women, just like the ones you see everyday.   They were sweet, funny, and deeply broken.   We were told that many of them are raped repeatedly doing what they do.   Even those who are not go through trauma.  Now they were learning a trade, getting counseling, and learning about Jesus.

Lastly we met Meron.  Meron was maybe 17 years old.  She’s a thin little girl with a sweet demeanor.   She was quiet but not shy.  She came right up to us and introduced herself.   Meron’s parents had kicked her out of their house years ago.  She lived with a relative who essentially enslaved her.   When she ran away, she lived in hiding on the street for a little while, desperately trying to stay awake at night to avoid being hurt by street boys.  She failed and was gang raped on the 4^th night.    We watched  a video of her telling her story when we got back where she explained that she had wanted to kill herself.   She had been found by Hope for the Hopeless 4 years ago and she is now going to school and has a safe place to stay.   But better than that, she knows the Lord, and she knows how valuable she is to Him.  This thin little girl probably doesn’t even weight 100 lbs.  She’s not even an adult yet but she has tremendous power.   Its obvious when you meet her,  and its obvious in how God is using her now.

My point in writing all this is just to give you a snap shot of what my takeaways from the trip were.    God is working on my heart and changing it.   He is doing the same to countless people in Ethiopia and to people all over.   My advice to you is this:

If you are not a believer, I urge you to examine yourself.  Why don’t you believe?  What do you believe?  Have you looked into the evidence?   Have you considered how well your own worldview matches up to the way the world really is?   Jesus is real my friends.  He is the truth.   He is what the world is all about.  Look into it for yourself.   I would love to talk with any of you about why I think the way I do.

If you are a believer then I have a challenge for you.  The problems in the world seem big and unfixable.   If you are like me, you mostly either ignore the many issues, or throw money at the problems.  But look at what it says in James: (Chapter 1, Verse 27)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,  and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (ESV)

I love the way The Message translation puts it:

Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

Jesus came to the world to stand against hypocritical religion.  Religion as most people practice it is utterly worthless.   But Jesus’ brother is telling us what kinds of behavior result when you truly love Jesus.  Is it telling us that we can ignore these issues or is it asking for our money?  Visit the orphans, reach out to the homeless.  We can do this every day.  This is how we show love for our God. 

Don’t ignore the beggar on the way home from work today.  Maybe you can spare a dollar, or maybe at least say hello.  Don’t just ignore the marginalized any longer.   These people are created in the image of God.   They are valuable.  They need Jesus as bad as you or I do.  Take a small step of obedience today.  God can use even a small step, for tremendous good.

Whats the Point of Going to Africa?

I’ve been asked a few times,   “Why exactly are you going to Africa?”  I thought it might be good to give an answer here, and when I return I promise we will get back to the evidence for the resurrection.

One of the first things I did when I became a Christian, was to read the Bible cover to cover.   I wanted to know what God was like, and what he wanted from me.  To me, there were three things that jumped out at me about God from the Bible.

-He wanted me to get over myself.
-He is very interested in orphans, widows, poor people  and others who are disenfranchised.
-Jesus is what life is all about, and He wants me to be his representative here on earth.

1. This is difficult, but I think one of the hardest things about trusting in God is getting over myself.   Here in America we have a tendency to believe that with enough hard work we can accomplish anything.    That people who have a lot, have earned it and those who don’t have, just haven’t put in the effort.  That God helps those who help themselves.   All of these are false.    That last line especially is a devious lie, and could not be further from the true message of Jesus.  

The facts are that I personally have not earned my position at all and neither have you.    You or I could just as easily have been born in Ethiopia, orphaned from birth with HIV, no access to medicine, education or even parents.  Do you really think that child is in that position because he didn’t work as hard as you?   The truth is that everything I have I owe to God, all the way down to my very life.    I need to get over myself, because without God, I have no power over my present situation.  He sustains our lives day to day and until I embraced that fact, I would never really know him. 

“He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”  - Matthew 10:39

2.  There are countless verses about how God loves orphans and widows and how we are to treat them.     If Christianity is about God taking the heart of Jesus and transplanting that into me (being born again), then suddenly I should find myself hurting for the things God hurts for, and loving the people God loves.  

Part of this just takes obedience.  When I became a Christian a year ago I didn’t find that I immediately started feeling like I needed to help orphans and poor people.   Instead, I just decided as an act of obedience, that I would start sponsoring children through compassion.com.   This was a tiny step of obedience to be sure…(only $39/month) but God was faithful.

When  I got my first letter from Jony, my new eleven year old pen pal from India, that’s when I knew my heart really had changed.   I felt a compassion and love that didn’t exists inside me before.   Supernatural, is the only way to describe it.  In a matter of months I had been changed from a selfish, hedonistic and bitter person, into someone who was deeply moved by words of encouragement from an  eleven year old on the other side of the world.   The Lord gave me my faith, the ability to be obedient, and he changed my heart to be more like his own.  He is faithful to his promises.   When he says you will be conformed to the image of Christ, that’s exactly what he means.

“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”   Isaiah 1:17-18

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. ²⁹ For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; ³⁰ and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified” Romans 88:28-30

3.   God wants me to represent him here on Earth.  So when I go to Ethiopia to play with these orphans and show them that they matter, really I am just representing Jesus.  Jesus shows me love, and so I show him love back by spending my money, my time and my emotion on these children and widows whom he loves.   I show my love to the Lord by showing love to his people.

“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,  you did it to me.”  – Matthew 25:40

God is absolutely everything that I could  ever need.   That said, he has decided for whatever reason to bless me with a sound mind, the ability to make a good salary, and to put me in a context where I can advocate for him to many people.    I can do none of these things on my own accord.  All of this is a free gift.

I am going to Ethiopia as an act of worshipful obedience to God.  I am going  to show some love to the types of people that again and again the Bible reminds us that God loves.    Finally, I am going to preach Jesus to the poor, the one thing that they need more than anything I could ever give of myself.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me.” - John 10:27-28

Good vs. Evil

I just wanted to take a quick break from the resurrection to drop a truth bomb on anyone who cares to read my blog.  One reason I came to believe in God is the question of "Good and Evil" or "Right and Wrong. The question is simple.  What is the difference between good and evil? How do we know which things are right, and which are wrong?

Consider this  the next time you look at a situation and say "That’s not right." or "That man is a good person". What are you basing that determination on? What is good? What is Evil? Honestly, it is really hard to define when someone asks you, but you know the answer intuitively when you are presented with a situation to judge.

The dictionary provides vague definitions that don’t really mean much of anything.

Bad:

1. not good in any manner or degree.

2. having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible:

Right. So you're saying that bad..... is not good? Okay fine, lets try to define good.

Good:

1. morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious

Thanks for the help dictionary.com. So like I said, it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it. Or do we?

It is my thesis (and many others) that there is no such thing as right and wrong, if God does not exist.

Notice what I did not say. I DID NOT say that you have to believe in God in order to do good things. Quite the contrary. Many atheists do good things every day. What I AM saying is that the whole concept of good and evil is an illusion and is not real, if there is no God.

If you take an atheist worldview then you are also forced to take the view that right and wrong are simply constructs of our brains. Nothing is objectively wrong, it is only wrong to the person perceiving it to be wrong. The concept of wrong is just something that humans invented. Atheists, who don’t believe in anything but the natural world CANNOT rationally believe in objective good or evil.

But no one, not even the atheist, lives this way. Indeed, there is such a thing as right and wrong. Everyone knows this fact instinctively. For example, we all instinctively know that torturing a child for fun, is wrong.  You say - well Adam, that’s an extreme example, obviously that’s wrong, hardly anyone in the world would disagree with that. Well yeah, that’s kind of my point, but lets try something a little less obvious in today’s modern world.

It is objectively true that discriminating against someone based on race or gender is wrong, true or false? I would say that is true, as I am sure many of you would. Try going to Iran or any other nation under Sharia law and saying the same thing.  In Iran, millions of people agree that women should not have the same rights as men. Are they wrong to believe this? Again, I say yes! Of course yes! But how do you explain this to them if right and wrong are just made-up constructs, and not real?

As a Christian theist I have a very good reason why they are wrong to believe this:

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them"

In other words, God created both men AND women in his own image, and they have the same worth, because their worth is derived from the same place, namely, God.  Men have no more or less value than women and therefore women should not be discriminated against because of the fact that they are women.

How does an atheist explain to the Iranian law makers why discriminating against women is objectively wrong? I'm not sure how they can.  After all, we don’t get mad at adult male gorillas for killing any other male gorilla in their territory just for being male.   If humans are just animals, how much sense does it make to call a man who does this kind of thing "evil" or "wrong"?

The fact is that if we know some things are good/right and other things are bad/wrong, we need to also be able to determine where the idea of good and evil comes from.      This is called the axiological argument for the existence of God, and its one of my favorites.   Comments, challenges, suggested readings?