Commandment 8: Make More Than Matter Matter
This commandment’s significance is impossible to cover in a brief post. So here is an introduction to the subject’s range.
The first “Matter” refers to the material world around us: atoms, rocks, birds, and and everything else that takes up space for a period of time. The second “Matter” refers to whatever is important.
The level of second “Matter” (value) we apply to the first “Matter” (stuff) is represented with money. Hence, materialism (the belief that only material objects exist) becomes materialism (an obsession with money and the things which can be purchased with it). There. Now the vocabulary is all clear!
The love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6) because it indicates both an obsession with the material world and a disregard for the spiritual.
A Christian outlook on life includes everything excluded by materialism: personal character and responsibility, volition, spirituality, eternal life, and God. Believe it or not, consistent thinkers “know” (ironically) that even consciousness itself is not compatible with materialism (the kind that says only matter exists) since a brain and a mind are not the same thing.
The extent to which science can speak accurately is entirely determined by the extent to which it limits itself to the material domain. Science speaks powerfully to the way material things operate, but it cannot speak at all to the value or meaning of anything. So it is particularly important for those with a Christian worldview, a worldview very much governed by value and meaning, not to be limited by the same myopic obsession with matter.
