| Argumentative |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|11:07 am] |
*****Warning - slight ranting develops in the latter part of this otherwise fairly well structured journel entry (don't have time or the care to edit)****
Whilst searching for a Bible quote yesterday I came across an article which asks the question, 'Is God good?'. A valid question when you consider the darkness and corruption of the world and the people in it. However, I had a few problems with the argument in the essay, these are the summing up points:
- God is wise and powerful, OK. But no matter how wise and powerful a person becomes, they don't have the right to dictate another person's beliefs, so why should God?
Good point, if God was a person. Which he isn't. We're made in his image, not the other way round. I know, I know, its semantics. Also, consider this; God doesn't dictate our beliefs, otherwise everyone would be Christian. If God is God at all, then he must be all powerful, and yet he still allows our free will, the opportunity to NOT choose him.
- God is our Creator, so we should obey him. Hey, if I clone a human being in a laboratory, I don't have the right to do what I want with him (whether it's slavery, rape, or murder) and he has full rights. That should clarify that just because you create something doesn't mean you control it.
God gives us rules like any parent would. WE don't allow children to run across a busy road, or drink bleach - we set out rules because we want the best for those in our care. All the more so if we happen to have given birth to that person. If you create something, a work of art, a building, a bridge, whatever, you have ownership of it. It is yours to decide what to do with. You may choose to give your clone free will, or you can choose not to, as the creator/owner its up to you. God has decieded that even as creator, he lets us be truly free, even if that means we accept the consequences of that.
- God has done so much good for us, we should obey him. So, God does all sorts of good things for us, but only because he wants 100% obedience, not out of any desire to help people? Does that sound like an all good God to you? God will send us all to Hell if we don't accept his morals as the only true ones. I say this is the most logical, and most disturbing, reason I've heard for God being all good. However, this doesn't make God good, it just makes him too frightening to argue against. Our personal beliefs still won't define him as good.
This would be a good point, if it weren't for the bit about 'morals'. God doesn't simply except us to be 'good people'. Thats impossible, even the best person you know is still a sinner. God is less concerened with people being a good boy or girl, and more concerened with people accepting salvation. The word Salvation has its roots in the Greek work for healing. God wants to heal us from our disease - sin.
Let me clarify; Sin stops us being able to be in a relationship with God. God is holy, perfect, pure, if he is to be any kind of god at all. And perfection cannot abide with imperfection. Sin is that which destroys, it is pride, anger, theft, lies, greed...all those things we see that are 'wrong' with the world. It includes our thoughts, our actions, our inaction, our words and deeds. Every person falls short of the call to be perfect. We are sick. literally to death, with the disease of Sin and cannot hope to get ourselves well again by any amount of good works or adhereance to any moral code of behaviour.
So God gives us a soloution - Jesus. Jesus takes the sin out and replaces it with holiness. When we are judged (which the Bible and comon sense assures us, we will be) God will not see the sin that has held us back, but Jesus' righteousness instead. This is how God defines and demonstrates his goodness.
If we are going to honestly look at the world we have to ask whether God is good, we must ask questions about suffering and poverty and injustice. But if we truley want an answer to those questions we must examine what God has already told us. We must look at what God has done in the past, at what we know God is like and form our conclusions from there. I don't think the annonnymous person who wrote this article has had much experience of the Bible, it is impossible to read even the first five chapters of Genesis without seeing the overwhelming goodness of God. The flaw doesn't rest with them alone, one of the biggest reasons people have these lines of argument come from Christians not witnessing as they should. We as Christians need to dedicate our lives to knowing God so that we may faithfully tell others of him. And those who seek to demean Christian beliefs should probably do as much hard work, and good luck to them. They have a harder task of disproving God's goodness than those of us who can tell of his wonderous goodness each time we open our eyes or take a breath.
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