The Search for Values

Overview

A Newsweek cover story said that after a 30-year spree, our entire society is waking up with a monstrous hangover, facing a values vacuum. It said that we realize unlimited personal freedom is not the way to build a society, but now we face the question of whose values we should use.

If you think the Bible’s answer to the values vacuum is simply “Let’s get back to traditional values,” you don’t understand how penetrating and nuanced and sophisticated the biblical answer is.

What is the biblical answer to the search for values? Psalm 19 tells us three things: 1) so-called “moral values” must be based on universal moral absolutes, 2) submission to God’s moral absolutes do not enslave—they liberate, and 3) God’s moral absolutes will destroy you unless they have assumed the right role in your life.