"WHO SAYS WHAT IS RIGHT OR WRONG?"

       "You shall not covet your neighor's house. You shall not cover

         Your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his

            ox or donkey, or anything that belong to your neighbor.

                                       EXODUS 20 : 17

WHO IS TO SAY that sleeping with your neigbor's wife is moral or immoral? Who is to say that buying answer to the final exam from a student who swiped a copy of last year's final is not OK?

       For centuries patterns of human behavior have been clearly categorized. The earliest recorded writings go back to the city-states in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, with laws that determined commerce, relationships, and boundaries providing property rights for individual and city-states or nations. Even four centuries before Moses went up Mt. Sanai to meet God, Hamurabbi's law code spelled out in great detail issues of right and wrong.

      Yet there was a period in ancient Israel when laws were set aside and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes. Back then, it was unsafe for a woman to be alone and a child could become the victim of someone's lust. They were living the reality that if God does not exist, everything is permissible.

       So does God exist? If He does,then humankind becomes accountable, and it is upon the knowledge of right and wrong that you have that you will be judged. The scales of justice show that all have fallen short of God's expectations. As Paul put it in Romans 3:23. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." This explains why Jesus---who came from heaven, lived among us for 33 years, died at the hands of Roman soldiers, and left the tomb three days later-- had to pay the price of human failure. Because we're wrong. He died to make us right.