*I'm posting this here instead of in General Theology because I'd like for non-Christians to be able to respond as well. Besides, it's a rather poignant ethical question. [EDIT: I meant to post this in Ethics, not Philosophy. The Powers That Be can decide whether to move it]
"Apart from personally wanting your god to be good, what justification do you have using the scriptures to believe he is actually good?"
This was a surprising study. It began as a response to a question from Dave Ellis, and become a longer project than I intended.
First, a clarification: A deity does not have to be "good" to be a deity. There are plenty of deities in other religions who are not good. The Greek gods rape, murder, bicker, envy, steal, etc. The people knew this, wrote this, but still considered them gods and worshiped them. They didn't bother trying to call them "good"; they were just gods, and gods could act that way if they wanted. Christianity is, while not unique, certainly in the minority of religions that insist on ascribing goodness to their deity. We do this, in spite of verses which make it very difficult to do so. Seriously. God does things that appear evil: commanding genocide, ordering the death penalty for minor infractions, permitting slavery, and (if He is all-powerful) allowing all of the unfathomable suffering that has occurred since the beginning of Creation.
Why would Christians insist on ascribing perfect goodness to a being who does those things? Is there any scriptural basis for us to do so?
This is what I have found.
Interestingly, scripture does not begin by declaring God's goodness. Scripture begins with God declaring that everything He has created is good (Gen 1:31).
Let's consider this "good" creation for a moment: there is no death, no pain, no sickness. There is no lack. There is no violence or cruelty or the inclination to inflict harm. There are creatures (humans) with a kind of creative freedom and potential that is limited only by their own desires and one recorded law. There is (I'm inferring a little, but I don't think I'm out of line) perfect relational harmony between everything: humans, animals, the earth, the universe, and God.
Notice that the scripture does not spend any time on God's goodness before Creation. What is "good", biblically, is God with His creation in peace.
[Clarification: yes, brothers and sisters, I believe the preexistence of the Trinity and the interrelation of love between the Persons is beautiful and good, but I'm trying to stick to the text for now.]
It is crucial that we realize what this means. The biblical narrative sets up an objective standard for "good" within its first pages, and that standard is situational and relational, not arbitrary or ontological. God is not inherently "good" according to the scriptures. The Bible never says that God is good simply because He is God. Creation and all of human existence, however, is declared to be very good in its proper functioning.
I dare say that if everything had continued as it was begun: free beings (human and angel) with their God in a perfect universe, there would be no wondering whether God was good. Everything was very good, and we would have simply loved our Creator.
An entire book could be written contemplating God's goodness and the existence of Satan, but allow me to offer a sketchy summary. This narrative is not recorded in Genesis, but has been assembled from various places in scripture and has been generally accepted by those who have claimed these scriptures since before Christ.
One angel, demented by pride, tried to establish himself as a rival power above God and was effortlessly repulsed. Rather than accepting defeat, this angel and those who followed him debased themselves still further by becoming puerile bullies: attacking God's Creation, and particularly Humans who were made in God's image and set as rulers of Creation. The angel took the form of a snake and deceived the humans into breaking the one law.
Nothing at this point has impugned God's goodness; we've had one free being exercise petty cruelty against other free beings out of spite. The results, however, are dramatic.
Humans, like flowers plucked from a vine, are dead - and will eventually crumble to dust. A parasite called Sin has infested the human race, strangling our ability to love and create; death and destruction fester in our souls. God is no longer imminently close. Pain and relational discord have entered the world. The Earth itself, and by extension the whole universe, no longer yields itself eagerly to Humanity's creative touch. Sickness, "natural disasters", and lack now characterize our interaction with the rest of Creation. It is no longer good.
God could have responded like an insecure, hasty control-freak, wildly deleting His creations from existence as the damage spread, undoing their choices, or restarting the whole system. But He never does.
In Genesis 3:14-19, God assesses the damage that has been done and lays out the first sketches of His plan - a plan which will unfold over millennia and frame what we know as "human history" - a plan to make things good again.
The plan, however, is difficult to see (and the effects of Sin are not), and God is no longer casually intimate with the ones made in His image. As the story unfolds and certain humans record the surprising and often bizarre encounters they do have with God, a puzzling (for me) pattern appears: They make no reference to God being good. In fact, the first time goodness is ascribed to God is not until 1 Chronicles 16:34 - "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!"
This phrase becomes a standard expression of worship, appearing in six separate psalms (100, 106, 107, 136, 145, and twice in 118). While there are a scattering of references to God doing good and quite a few proverbs about His commandments being good, that worship-phrase is almost the entire Old Testament basis for ascribing goodness to God.
This shocked me. Growing up in church, I was under the impression that God's goodness was explicitly declared on almost every page of the Bible. Why else would we sing about it so often? Indeed, the proclamation of God's goodness has drenched Christian worship from ancient Liturgy to Reformation-era hymns to modern praise songs. What is our basis for this when it's so rare in scripture?
The key insight comes from looking at the narrative context the few times God's goodness is proclaimed outside the book of Psalms.
The first time is in 1 Chronicles as King David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. The second is in 2 Chronicles at the establishment of Solomon's Temple. The third is in Ezra when the Second Temple is established after Israel returns from captivity in Babylon. The fourth is in Jeremiah 33 where God speaks of the ultimate restoration of His people. The circumstance every time which invokes a proclamation of God's goodness is a tangible increase of His imminence with humanity - things are right again! God is declared to be good, not arbitrarily or when the people receive some little blessing, but when they catch a glimpse of the flowering of God's plan to bring us back to true original good.
According to His followers, this plan finds its fullness in Jesus Christ. In Christ, according to the Church and its scriptures, God assumed the full devastation of Humanity's condition, and redeemed it. He defeated Death, freed and healed us from Sin and its toxic overflow, and reconciled Humanity with Himself. This victory was won with His resurrection and will be consummated at His return to reign and our resurrection. As the Apostle Paul puts it, "For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1Co 15:21-26).
To be sure, the defeated enemy is not yet destroyed; Death still flails about on the earth like a wounded beast. But Life is meant to be injected into the world through those whom God has rescued. We don't always live this out, but that is the intention. And, one day, declares the Church, Christ will finish making everything right. He only waits so that those still enslaved by the enemy might break free and join Him.
This is the reality Christians are living in when they declare that their God is good: We have been rescued, God is with us, goodness is being restored, it will one day be fully manifest, and in gratitude we sing, "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!" The declaration of God’s goodness is in fact a declaration of thanksgiving.
We do this not as a denial of the difficult facts recorded of God in the Bible, but in insistence that each of His actions and commands was in fact the most loving course and fully in line with bringing about world redemption -- goodness. We interpret God’s character, not through the Sin-distorted lens of our present pain, but through the circumstances which once were and will be again. We trust that He is completing His good work, and we partner with Him in illuminating the darkness.
I'm not saying that the end justifies the means, but the end does demand a reevaluation of what the means mean.
Let me explain. In the sixth Harry Potter novel [Spoiler Alert] Snape kills Dumbledore. "What an evil action!" gasps the shocked reader, "Snape is a villain!" In the seventh book, however, [Still Spoiling] it is revealed that Snape was in fact working for Dumbledore the entire time. Snape's actions remain a matter of record, but when interpreted through the revelation of the end, they are seen to be acts of love and loyalty, not betrayal.
The Church's insistence on God's goodness is an insistence on being mindful of the entire story. It is a declaration of thanksgiving for a reality which is not fully manifest yet, but which we trust is coming. It is the central proclamation of the Christian faith, for it is the proclamation that what was begun in the beginning has found its fulfillment in Christ. God is with us, and it is very good.
"Apart from personally wanting your god to be good, what justification do you have using the scriptures to believe he is actually good?"
This was a surprising study. It began as a response to a question from Dave Ellis, and become a longer project than I intended.
First, a clarification: A deity does not have to be "good" to be a deity. There are plenty of deities in other religions who are not good. The Greek gods rape, murder, bicker, envy, steal, etc. The people knew this, wrote this, but still considered them gods and worshiped them. They didn't bother trying to call them "good"; they were just gods, and gods could act that way if they wanted. Christianity is, while not unique, certainly in the minority of religions that insist on ascribing goodness to their deity. We do this, in spite of verses which make it very difficult to do so. Seriously. God does things that appear evil: commanding genocide, ordering the death penalty for minor infractions, permitting slavery, and (if He is all-powerful) allowing all of the unfathomable suffering that has occurred since the beginning of Creation.
Why would Christians insist on ascribing perfect goodness to a being who does those things? Is there any scriptural basis for us to do so?
This is what I have found.
Interestingly, scripture does not begin by declaring God's goodness. Scripture begins with God declaring that everything He has created is good (Gen 1:31).
Let's consider this "good" creation for a moment: there is no death, no pain, no sickness. There is no lack. There is no violence or cruelty or the inclination to inflict harm. There are creatures (humans) with a kind of creative freedom and potential that is limited only by their own desires and one recorded law. There is (I'm inferring a little, but I don't think I'm out of line) perfect relational harmony between everything: humans, animals, the earth, the universe, and God.
Notice that the scripture does not spend any time on God's goodness before Creation. What is "good", biblically, is God with His creation in peace.
[Clarification: yes, brothers and sisters, I believe the preexistence of the Trinity and the interrelation of love between the Persons is beautiful and good, but I'm trying to stick to the text for now.]
It is crucial that we realize what this means. The biblical narrative sets up an objective standard for "good" within its first pages, and that standard is situational and relational, not arbitrary or ontological. God is not inherently "good" according to the scriptures. The Bible never says that God is good simply because He is God. Creation and all of human existence, however, is declared to be very good in its proper functioning.
I dare say that if everything had continued as it was begun: free beings (human and angel) with their God in a perfect universe, there would be no wondering whether God was good. Everything was very good, and we would have simply loved our Creator.
An entire book could be written contemplating God's goodness and the existence of Satan, but allow me to offer a sketchy summary. This narrative is not recorded in Genesis, but has been assembled from various places in scripture and has been generally accepted by those who have claimed these scriptures since before Christ.
One angel, demented by pride, tried to establish himself as a rival power above God and was effortlessly repulsed. Rather than accepting defeat, this angel and those who followed him debased themselves still further by becoming puerile bullies: attacking God's Creation, and particularly Humans who were made in God's image and set as rulers of Creation. The angel took the form of a snake and deceived the humans into breaking the one law.
Nothing at this point has impugned God's goodness; we've had one free being exercise petty cruelty against other free beings out of spite. The results, however, are dramatic.
Humans, like flowers plucked from a vine, are dead - and will eventually crumble to dust. A parasite called Sin has infested the human race, strangling our ability to love and create; death and destruction fester in our souls. God is no longer imminently close. Pain and relational discord have entered the world. The Earth itself, and by extension the whole universe, no longer yields itself eagerly to Humanity's creative touch. Sickness, "natural disasters", and lack now characterize our interaction with the rest of Creation. It is no longer good.
God could have responded like an insecure, hasty control-freak, wildly deleting His creations from existence as the damage spread, undoing their choices, or restarting the whole system. But He never does.
In Genesis 3:14-19, God assesses the damage that has been done and lays out the first sketches of His plan - a plan which will unfold over millennia and frame what we know as "human history" - a plan to make things good again.
The plan, however, is difficult to see (and the effects of Sin are not), and God is no longer casually intimate with the ones made in His image. As the story unfolds and certain humans record the surprising and often bizarre encounters they do have with God, a puzzling (for me) pattern appears: They make no reference to God being good. In fact, the first time goodness is ascribed to God is not until 1 Chronicles 16:34 - "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!"
This phrase becomes a standard expression of worship, appearing in six separate psalms (100, 106, 107, 136, 145, and twice in 118). While there are a scattering of references to God doing good and quite a few proverbs about His commandments being good, that worship-phrase is almost the entire Old Testament basis for ascribing goodness to God.
This shocked me. Growing up in church, I was under the impression that God's goodness was explicitly declared on almost every page of the Bible. Why else would we sing about it so often? Indeed, the proclamation of God's goodness has drenched Christian worship from ancient Liturgy to Reformation-era hymns to modern praise songs. What is our basis for this when it's so rare in scripture?
The key insight comes from looking at the narrative context the few times God's goodness is proclaimed outside the book of Psalms.
The first time is in 1 Chronicles as King David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. The second is in 2 Chronicles at the establishment of Solomon's Temple. The third is in Ezra when the Second Temple is established after Israel returns from captivity in Babylon. The fourth is in Jeremiah 33 where God speaks of the ultimate restoration of His people. The circumstance every time which invokes a proclamation of God's goodness is a tangible increase of His imminence with humanity - things are right again! God is declared to be good, not arbitrarily or when the people receive some little blessing, but when they catch a glimpse of the flowering of God's plan to bring us back to true original good.
According to His followers, this plan finds its fullness in Jesus Christ. In Christ, according to the Church and its scriptures, God assumed the full devastation of Humanity's condition, and redeemed it. He defeated Death, freed and healed us from Sin and its toxic overflow, and reconciled Humanity with Himself. This victory was won with His resurrection and will be consummated at His return to reign and our resurrection. As the Apostle Paul puts it, "For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1Co 15:21-26).
To be sure, the defeated enemy is not yet destroyed; Death still flails about on the earth like a wounded beast. But Life is meant to be injected into the world through those whom God has rescued. We don't always live this out, but that is the intention. And, one day, declares the Church, Christ will finish making everything right. He only waits so that those still enslaved by the enemy might break free and join Him.
This is the reality Christians are living in when they declare that their God is good: We have been rescued, God is with us, goodness is being restored, it will one day be fully manifest, and in gratitude we sing, "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!" The declaration of God’s goodness is in fact a declaration of thanksgiving.
We do this not as a denial of the difficult facts recorded of God in the Bible, but in insistence that each of His actions and commands was in fact the most loving course and fully in line with bringing about world redemption -- goodness. We interpret God’s character, not through the Sin-distorted lens of our present pain, but through the circumstances which once were and will be again. We trust that He is completing His good work, and we partner with Him in illuminating the darkness.
I'm not saying that the end justifies the means, but the end does demand a reevaluation of what the means mean.
Let me explain. In the sixth Harry Potter novel [Spoiler Alert] Snape kills Dumbledore. "What an evil action!" gasps the shocked reader, "Snape is a villain!" In the seventh book, however, [Still Spoiling] it is revealed that Snape was in fact working for Dumbledore the entire time. Snape's actions remain a matter of record, but when interpreted through the revelation of the end, they are seen to be acts of love and loyalty, not betrayal.
The Church's insistence on God's goodness is an insistence on being mindful of the entire story. It is a declaration of thanksgiving for a reality which is not fully manifest yet, but which we trust is coming. It is the central proclamation of the Christian faith, for it is the proclamation that what was begun in the beginning has found its fulfillment in Christ. God is with us, and it is very good.
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