How one interprets the Bible is the critical question in Christian ethics, and it is a question which is not easily resolved. A bewildering array of questions faces the Christian ethicist: How do we go about finding the rules and values of scripture? How do we integrate the unity and the diversity of scripture - specifically, what role does salvation history play in developing our ethics? How do we discern what is cultural and what is trans-cultural? How binding are the applications of scriptural rules? What guidance does the Bible give for new applications of those rules? These questions are profound and can only be touched on in this paper.

If alcoholism is a disease, then it is one of the greatest epidemics of modern times. While no real consensus exists among experts in the field concerning how alcoholism should be defined, recent statistics indicate that 10 million Americans are classified as alcoholics (i.e., those with chronic, problematic drinking patterns). According to a recent Gallup Poll, one out of three persons reported that alcohol abuse had caused trouble in their families. Heavy drinking is involved in 60% of violent crimes, 30% of suicides, and 80% of fire and drowning accidents. Every 22 minutes a drunk driver kills someone. Alcoholism is involved in a quarter of all admissions to general hospitals, and its abuse years estimated to cost our society 50 billion dollars per year.

Christian spiritual experience is a very broad and rich biblical theme. We have been invited into a personal relationship with Christ--a relationship that can be experienced. We have been given the gift of the New Covenant--the Holy Spirit who personally communicates the life of Jesus Christ to us and through us to the world. For these and other biblical reasons, we are fully justified in both wanting and cultivating a rich experiential dimension in our relationships with Christ.

Love is a big word in everyone's vocabulary, but not everyone means the same thing when we use the word. Indeed, the modern world has adopted a notion of love that is completely different from the love taught and modeled by Jesus Christ.

The ethical rules stated in the Bible are all applicable today, because the God who gave them does not change. It is our responsibility to bring into expression as many of the biblical rules as possible, even if this requires restructuring society to do so.

There are three schools of principled ethics taken from Norman Geisler's Christian Apologetics: unqualified absolutism, conflicting absolutism and hierarchicalism.

The system of personality evaluation and counseling known as Love Therapy owes its definition to Dr. Ralph Ankenman.

The basis for love therapy is the biblical notion that a key to solving most emotional problems is the development of "victorious love output." According to this notion, learning to build deep, mature relationships will naturally bring to light our relational deficiencies and these in turn are usually the main problems we face in life. While love therapy is compatible with dynamic model approaches that focus on discovering deep causes for emotional and mental problems, it focuses mainly on a different question: Where do we go from here? Love therapy assumes that insight has accomplished little until we observe tangible improvement in the heart of human living: clients’ relational lives.

When two people join their lives together, how do they decide on direction? What if one has habits or tastes that annoy the other? What if their priorities are different? Secular marriages have no clear answer to these questions. Generally, counselors suggest couples should compromise or take turns in decision making. But these solutions don't always work. Spouses wind up saying, "We decided your way last time," and we open a new source of conflict. Then there's this one: "I think this would be a good compromise." "No, this would be a compromise!" Similarly, consider how you would feel in this scenario: "We decided my way about which movie to see last night, but now we have to decide your way on which house to buy!"

Christians’ relations to the world, money, position, and career involve judgment calls and gray areas. However, these are also areas where scripture teaches ethical content, either explicitly or by implication. Questions of ethics should be settled by biblical authority whenever possible, and by wise deliberation over possible dangers and options where scripture does not speak directly.

Any divorce poses a serious challenge to further marital success. Statistically, the divorce rate for marriages in which either or both partners have been divorced before is almost double that for first-time marriages. This is a very imposing statistic, because it means the vast majority of second attempts at marriage will fail. Those who have cohabited for some time also experience increased failure in marriage, as we have seen. Their figures are similar to divorcees' figures. In the church it is not uncommon to see cases of successful second marriages, especially when the first marriage was in a non Christian context. However, failures are also common, which should suggest the need for caution.