Moral Confusion?

I recently had a very civil online conversation with a fellow who describes himself as a quasi-atheist. I could say that many of my online conversations with atheists have been less than civil but would quickly have to add that many of my online conversations with believers have also been non-civil. It’s apparently a human thing. Anyway – among other things, this fellow sees himself as ‘not a sinner’ because he feels that ‘sin’ requires an offense against a divine law and he cannot see why he should trust that the Bible (or any other holy book) contains an actual law communicated from God. From his point of view I think breaking human laws would qualify one to be a ‘criminal’ rather than a ‘sinner’. I understand this point – Jesus was convicted as a criminal but the Bible says and I believe – was not a sinner. I spoke to him of how the Bible describes the law of God written in our very being and so the man who knows right and wrong and does wrong is convicted by his own conscience as a sinner quite apart from his status as a criminal/non-criminal. I allowed that some call this ‘natural law’ rather than ‘divine law’ but it seems to me that the universal nature of basic moral precepts can’t be fit into a godless universe. He replied that, to the contrary, there are far too many disagreements and divisions to believe in a universal divine law as part of our creation. He cited disagreements among believers on matters like Sabbath observance and dietary matters (eat pork or not eat pork as a religious issue.)
While I understand what he is saying I think he’s missing a few key points.

1. The examples he cited were all from the ceremonial rather than moral side of the Mosaic covenant. These ceremonial regulations are specific to the covenant with the Jews and regard ceremonial purity for worship rather than morality. On moral precepts, there is nearly complete agreement over time and cultures that murder, theft, rape, etc. are wrong. The variations generally hang on definitions (in our setting distinguishing between murder and manslaughter, qualifiers like self-defense, and so forth). Jesus busted the Pharisees chops for (among other things) failing to make this distinction between the moral and ceremonial aspects of the law that did apply specifically to God’s covenant with them.
2. Any serious reading of either Testament makes it clear that the Mosaic Covenant was a temporary measure – a bandage on a gaping moral wound – because we had strayed so far from the law written in our being. As Jesus would have it – the whole of the law and the prophets is contained in two propositions – love God and love your fellow man. The more we cultivate the love of God in our hearts, the less we need a system of external rules.
3. Jesus, Paul and John and the whole of the New Testament make it clear that it has to be one or the other. You can’t have the covenant of grace and love AND the covenant of the law. We must choose. And if we choose the covenant of the law, we end up condemned by the law because as much as our conscience informs us that murder, theft, et al are wrong (even if we manage to dull our sense of guilt over doing such things we almost never dull our sense of outrage when they are done to us) we do them anyway and stand convicted!
4. Further, the law always divides us. As we are unable to keep it we become aggressors and victims, holders of grievances, plaintiffs and defendants, judges and judged – until ultimately we are all united as judged. This situation is complicated as we repeat and magnify mistakes like the one referenced above – turning ceremonial purity regulations into the same kind of civil and moral considerations as murder and theft, expanding laws meant for a specific context into separate contexts, etc.
5. But I have already made the main point – the law divides us until it unites us by condemning us all. Only the grace and love of God can bring us together on the other side of the divide. The point of my rambling is this. My online acquaintance sees the moral divisions among mankind as evidence against the message of the Bible. I see it as evidence for that same message – exactly what we should expect if the Bible is true.