Over and over again in the Bible we are told that if we love God we will keep his commandments. And that is not just Old Testament stuff. It is repeated constantly in the New as well. Jesus made it clear that if we are to love him, we must keep his commandments. The idea that we must choose between loving God and obeying God is as dumb as saying we must choose between breathing in or breathing out. 

A false dilemma is a logical fallacy in which an either/or is being demanded, when a both/and is the way to go. One can get rather technical about all this, but let’s keep it really simple. An obvious and easy-to-understand example features a TV ad for tacos.
Adults are arguing and debating about which must be used: soft or hard taco shells. A little girl rightly asks, “Why not both?” Why not indeed! It is a false dilemma to demand one or the other when both can do. In this case it is a personal preference – a matter of choice. Thus there is no right or wrong answer.
When it comes to more important matters however, we must be a bit more careful. Some things clearly ARE a case of either/or. Let me offer just one quick example of this. You can either embrace and affirm the teachings of Islam or you embrace and affirm the teachings of Christianity, but you cannot do both.
The reason for this is quite clear – and quite logical. At the very heart of the Christian faith lies the affirmation that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that he died on a cross and rose again for our sins. Islam denies this. So if you accept the core beliefs of Christianity, then you cannot accept the main teachings of Islam. They are mutually exclusive.
But in many other areas we do have clear cases of both/and. We do NOT need to pick one while denying the other. Instead we can affirm both. But so often I find rather fuzzy thinking in this regard. When I find the need to emphasise a certain truth, that does NOT mean I am negating or minimising another truth. In many cases we can usually affirm both truths simultaneously. Let me offer a few examples of this (out of many).
1. Evangelism or social action – why not both?
This is something I likely have penned a few dozen articles on, but it keeps coming up. Some believers insist that we should only evangelise, and ignore any works in society around us. But it has always been both. Simply read some church history here.
Wherever Christians have gone with the gospel, they of course told people the good news that Christ died for their sins, but they also performed many good works. The early church could not do this quite as much because of all the intense persecution.
But as things quieted down, believers led the way in so many charitable works and causes, be it in education, caring for the sick, helping the poor and destitute, and so on. They set up schools (and eventually even universities, they built hospitals, they worked with the poor and helped those in prisons and in so many other areas.
The two went together, and that is how it should be. But as mentioned, I discuss all this in plenty of detail in other articles. Here is just one: https://billmuehlenberg.com/1997/10/10/the-case-for-christian-social-involvement/
2. Love or obedience – why not both?
This is another area where too many Christians can get things wrong. So many believers (often progressive or lefty or liberal or biblically illiterate types) will claim that all that matters is that we love.
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Once we understand the Great Commission as a function of kingship, we are in a better place to assess this agenda throughout the rest of the Old Testament. God’s reign is universal, and from the beginning, His plan of salvation aimed at all the families of the earth, never overlooking the fact that He “shall inherit all the nations” (Psalm 82:8).

Properly conceived as grounded in God’s own kingship, the Great Commission begins before humanity’s fall away from communion with God. On the sixth day, man was commissioned by God to fill and subdue the earth, and to rule over the creatures (Genesis 1:28). Accordingly, one might justly define the Great Commission as “ruling and subduing” the earth and its creatures—an understanding we will need to unpack.
To be sure, the phrase “ruling and subduing” has deeply negative connotations in our modern world, filled as it is with memories of horrific tyranny and the abuse of power. Nevertheless, we should note that this commission was given before the descent into sin and misery, precisely within the context of man in union with God—that is, given to man as bearer of the image of God (v. 26), created both to fellowship with God and to mediate the blessed reign of God over all the earth.
The theology here is twofold. First, Adam is to gather up all creation into the seventh-day praise and adoration of God—that is what it means to “rule and subdue.” He is charged to set apart (“sanctify”) creation increasingly until the whole earth is holy, filled with the abiding glory of God.
Second, there is no blessing to be enjoyed, be it ever so marginal, that does not derive from the reign of God—that is the joy of what it means to “be subdued,” especially so after the expulsion from life with God. For this reason, we gladly teach our children that Christ executes the office of a king “in subduing us to himself” (WSC Q&A 26).
The Great Commission bestowed upon Adam entailed that his kingship would be in the service of his priestly office, namely, that he would “rule and subdue” for the sake of gathering all creation to the Creator’s footstool in worship. The Sabbath consummation was the heart and goal of the sixth day’s commission.
Once we understand the Great Commission as a function of kingship, we are in a better place to assess this agenda throughout the rest of the Old Testament. God’s reign is universal, and from the beginning, His plan of salvation aimed at all the families of the earth, never overlooking the fact that He “shall inherit all the nations” (Psalm 82:8).
Here, the role of Genesis 1–11 as a prologue to Israel’s narrative cannot be overemphasized, for Israel’s own identity and sacred calling springs from this universal context and is ever determined by it. After the nations are scattered into exile from the tower of Babel, God calls Abram in Genesis 12, promising that through him “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). This promise is later reiterated to Abraham: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:18; see 18:18). It is then vouchsafed to Isaac (Genesis 26:4), and then onward to Jacob as the father of the twelve tribes of Israel (Genesis 28:14).
Coupled with this promise is the undercurrent of kingship. Abram had been promised that “kings will come from you” (Genesis 17:6), and a genealogy is followed that will blossom forth into the line of David. Eventually, through Israel, a king would arise to gather the nations back into the presence of God.
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The question of the goodness and dignity of human life is not in the end a matter of indifference. It’s not a matter of different possible and valid opinions that we should just tolerate in a secular pluralist inclusive society. Nor is it a matter of private religious conviction. I have offered Christian arguments, certainly. But I’ve done that because they’re the only arguments that can secure the dignity of every human life on solid foundations. And these are not private religious opinions. They are statements about reality—the reality we all inhabit as creatures who have our lives not from ourselves, but from God.

When you encounter another human being, what are you encountering?
Is an encounter with another human being different from an encounter with an AI chatbot? Is it different from an encounter with a mouse, or a goldfish, or your pet dog? Intuitively we think it probably is. But is there a metaphysical underpinning for that belief? In other words, is it grounded in reality? Or is it just a free-floating intuition that might be wrong, a set of preferences that bear no real relation to what is real?
Or consider another set of questions: How do you know if someone’s life is worth living? Or if it’s no longer worth living? As a society, how should we decide whose life has value? Can we know whether all human lives are equally valuable? Or are some lives less valuable than others? Are all human lives equally worth protecting and preserving? And if they’re not, how can we know when someone’s life isn’t valuable enough to protect and preserve?
What value should we ascribe to the life of an unborn child? Does it make a difference if the parents don’t want that child? What about the life of someone who is old and frail, or terminally ill? Does it make a difference if they don’t want to carry on living? If they feel they’re a burden to others? If they feel like is too painful and hard?
More personally: what about you? Is your life worth living? What are you worth? What do you do when you reach the point when it feels like your own life is no longer worth living?
My aim in this talk is not to address directly questions of the beginning and end of life—abortion, assisted suicide—or questions about intense suffering, or social and economic inequalities.
I’m aiming to be more ambitious than that. I’m aiming to provide a deep metaphysical grounding (if you want to impress your friends later, tell them you’ve been to a talk on metaphysics!)—a consideration of the fundamental nature of reality. What is reality? And how does that provide solid ground for the belief that all human life is unimaginably precious and every human life has indescribable dignity?
I’m going to try to make a very simple point—although my argument is going to unfold in several stages. The simple point is this: All human life is precious because it is the good gift of the good God. Whoever the person is, whatever their age and stage of development (from conception through to old age), whatever their abilities and capacities, regardless of illness or weakness or frailty or suffering, regardless of how much or how little other people value them—all human life—the life of every individual human being—your life—has inestimable value. Because it is the very good gift of the very good God.
We live in a time when that is contested. When many people believe that some lives just have less value than others: the lives of the unborn, or the old and frail or terminally ill. The lives of those who are dying. Physician-assisted suicide is now legal in Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Columbia, Canada, Spain, New Zealand. That’s a fairly predictable list of countries, and in the next few years it will get longer.
Peter Singer is an extreme example, but as he likes to point out, he’s been described as ‘the world’s most influential philosopher’. He’s certainly one of the most influential ethicists alive today. His book, Practical Ethics was first published in 1983. My copy, dated 2005, is the twentieth printing—so this is a widely read book! He states the issue with admirable clarity (NB: he’s speaking here about infants after they have been born):
[I]t is…characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore cannot be equated with killing normal human beings…No infant—disabled or not—has as strong a claim to life as beings capable of seeing themselves as distinct entities, existing over time.[1]
At the other end of life, consider Canada’s ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ scheme (MAID—a deeply sinister acronym). According to an article in the New Atlantis, 10,064 people used MAID to die in 2021.[2] The article describes how:
A number of recent news articles have reported on Canadians who, driven by poverty and a lack of access to adequate health care, housing, and social services, have turned to the country’s euthanasia system. In multiple cases, veterans requesting help from Veterans Affairs Canada — at least one asked for PTSD treatment, another for a ramp for her wheelchair — were asked by case workers if they would like to apply for euthanasia.
It quotes a man, called Les: ‘“Even at 65, I don’t want to die,” he says. He says it again and again. “I really don’t want to die. I just can’t afford to live.”’
You might think that’s sad, but understandable and okay. You might be horrified by it and think it’s wrong. But why is it wrong? Why is it wrong to protect the lives of some people, and willingly end the lives of others?
In what follows, I want to give a Christian theological grounding for belief in the sheer goodness of human life, and extraordinary dignity of all human beings.
When God created the heavens and the earth, the Bible tells us that ‘God saw that the light was good’ (Gen 1:4). Then, God saw that the earth and seas were good (v. 10). Then that the plants and trees were good (v. 12). Six times in the opening chapter of Genesis, God sees what he has made and says that it is good. He then he makes man in his image, male and female, blesses us to be fruitful, and gives us dominion over the rest of creation (vv. 27-28). And then, he declares that his creation is very good. The whole creation is very good. Human life in particular is very good. And God wants more of it: much more. An earth filled with human beings is a blessing from God, and it is very good. God loves human life, and he wants more and more of it.
But let’s press pause, because before we get to humans, we won’t understand human life if we don’t understand God.
That repeated ‘good’ in Genesis 1 doesn’t just teach us about creation. First of all, it teaches us about the Creator. Creation is good because its Creator is good.
1. The Good God
In Mark 10, a young man comes up to Jesus and addresses him as ‘good teacher’. Jesus’ response is startling: ‘Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone…”’ (Mk 10:18). It seems likely that Jesus is making a startling claim to his own deity here. But he does so by making a startling claim about God—a claim that’s particularly startling in the light of Genesis 1: ‘No one is good except God alone.’
To call God good is not to put him alongside good things in creation and to say: he just is the biggest and best good in a series of goods. Even if you were to take the whole of creation, you could not put it alongside God and compare the amount of goodness in each.
There’s not this thing called, ‘The Good’ that God has the biggest share in. He’s not the biggest slice of the goodness pie.
Compared to God, nothing and no one is good. The only true God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is good, and he alone is absolutely good. The philosopher Robert Sokolowski captures it well:
(God plus the world) cannot be conceived as better than God alone…That is, no perfection would be lost if God had not created the world. The world and God must be so understood that nothing but God could be all that there is, and there would be no diminution of greatness or goodness or perfection. God is not better or greater because of creation, nor is ‘there’ more goodness or greatness because God did create.[3]
God the Holy Trinity, is good in and of himself. His is good by his own goodness, not by a good imparted from somewhere else. And therefore God—the Christian God—is the absolute standard and source of all goodness. He is a vast ocean of goodness. And compared to him, the good of things in this creation, the good of the entirety of creation, is just a drop in a bucket.
And it’s worth us lingering for a moment to contemplate and delight in the God who is goodness.
God’s goodness is his utter perfection. He is the sum of all perfection.
He is good with a holy goodness: ‘God is Light and in him there is no darkness at all.’ (1 Jn 1:5). He is good with a noble goodness: entirely worthy of all worship and honour (Rev 4:11).
He is good with a desirable goodness: there is nothing desirable apart from him (Ps 73:25). He is good with an eternal goodness: his goodness will never end. He is good with an unchanging goodness: it is impossible for him to be better than he already is; and he will never be less good than he is.
He is good with a delightful goodness: he is a vast ocean of satisfaction and joy, so that all good, all delight, all rest, all joy consists in knowing and enjoying and communing with him forever. ‘Oh taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.’ (Ps 34:8)
In the happy fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is good in himself with a perfect goodness. He has no need of anything or anyone else. But precisely because he is good, he is not locked up in his own goodness. His goodness is not self-revolving. God is good, and therefore, he also does good. (Ps 119:68). The good God does good works.
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