Disclaimer: This post is rather lengthy so I've decided to try something new...I've recorded an audio file of this post so that you can choose to listen to the whole thing rather than sit and read it. A word of warning though...this audio file is over a half hour long. So feel free to read or sit back and listen.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in regards to the idea of God’s goodness. The reason for this recent bout of consideration has largely to do with some recent arguments that I’ve encountered which postulate that God’s existence is either made up or completely irrational when considered in the light of texts such as the Bible. A common argument of the skeptic relates to God’s goodness. You’ve heard this statement a thousand times, “No GOOD God would ever do the things that we see God doing in the Bible!” By this they mean that no GOOD God would ever pour out wrath on His creation. Another common, and rather arrogant, idea is that if God does anything that contradicts or runs contrary to modern morality, reasoning, wisdom or intelligence, then it must not truly be from God because God would never do anything that contradicts human understanding. Both of these viewpoints, which seem to be about the only thing that skeptics can consistently draw up, are fundamentally flawed. The assumptions that one must make to arrive at such conclusions can only be derived from a certain kind of mindset, namely, the mindset that humans are qualified to properly express and define the very nature of God based solely upon their grasp of their own humanity. If at this point you find yourself scratching your head going, “Wha…umm…HUH!!??”, join the club. I can’t make sense of it either. The skeptic might say, “You can’t make it sense of it because you lack the capacity to use your higher reasoning skills.” I think, perhaps, it might be the other way around. I believe this for a reason.
In order to arrive at the common objections of the critic you must do the following:
(1) You must assume that your wisdom, knowledge, and general understanding about all things in the universe are, in no way, lacking in their sufficiency to properly express the being that created the whole universe.
(2) You must assume that every human being exists in a vacuum of relative innocence and, at no point in their lives, do they deserve any particular kind of God based wrath. But remember, it’s okay if they are subject to the laws of the land. If they kill someone, depending on where you stand on capital punishment, you find it okay to take the position that they should either spend the remainder of their lives in prison or receive the death penalty. But God’s not allowed to judge or punish…that power lies in the hands of humans.
(3) You must assume that if God does exist, He is bound by all things human. Therefore, God cannot do anything that contradicts your personal set of values. If God does such a thing then He must not truly be God.
At this juncture skeptics might be howling, “You’re drastically over simplifying the argument!” But in truth, I think their argument boils down to something that simple. I’ve read many criticisms and critiques about God lately. I’ve found each one to be desperately lacking in basic understandings about the gospel. Many authors who put forward these arguments think they’re clever when they use the Bible to “make their point”, but it actually makes them look even more foolish because they use the Bible so poorly. They pick a few sentences out of the Bible and say, “You see, look how foolish this all is.” Let me ask you this question…at what point in your life were you taught to get a book, pick a few sentences out of it, and write a book report? I, personally, feel left out. I never got this lesson when I was in school. All sarcasm aside, I find it completely insane that when it comes to God people find it perfectly acceptable to make arguments in completely irrational ways. They use the kind of thinking and logic that they would never tell anyone else to use in any other setting in life.
Let’s put the three points above under the light of a little humble common sense.
Our Wisdom and Understanding: In Proverbs 3 we are told not to lean too heavily on our own wisdom or understanding. To the critic, this is what I like to call a “red flag” statement. The critic might read Proverbs 3:5 and take this point of view:
“This statement is encouraging you to maintain a functioning level of ignorance. It is telling you to not trust yourself. It is advising you to think less of your own abilities to reason. It is telling you that there are things that you simply can’t understand because your mind is too feeble. Beware of such talk because it is the kind of talk that merely produces slaves. After all, that’s what Christians really want you to be…a mindless mouth of ridiculous rhetoric.”
However, I think there is good reasoning why Proverbs tells us to not lean too heavily on our own wisdom and understanding. Think about it rationally. How many times throughout the course of history has human wisdom and intelligence been proven off the mark, slightly incomplete, or downright wrong. How many times has our own understanding been proven to be so desperately and laughably incomplete? In the modern era we think we’ve come a long way in our understanding. We look back on some of the foolish things that have been believed throughout history and we just laugh. Not only do we laugh, we marvel at the magnificence of our own advancement. We take delight in the knowledge that we have now. A side effect of all this is that we often inherit a sense of superiority in these things. This makes us a part of an age old fraternity of “intelligent people”…you know who I’m talking about…the same people who said the world is flat…the same people who said it was impossible to travel to the moon…the same people who said cigarettes are actually good for you…the same people who said that the earth was the center of the universe! It’s hard for us to imagine or consider ourselves like these people. Yet the beliefs that I’ve listed in this little paragraph were once perpetuated by the cutting edge minds of the times. These beliefs were once held by people who were considered to be intellectual giants. What does that say about us? What does that say about our conventional wisdom and understanding?
In the light of our own history I think it becomes harder and harder to justify our wisdom and understanding as sufficient to properly determine anything concrete about the entirety of God. If it proves anything it proves that when it comes to God, all of our collective wisdom counts for very little in the light of one capable of creating a universe. We can’t do anything near that magnificent. We can’t do anything nearly that awe-inspiring. Many of us have enough trouble keeping a small garden alive let alone overseeing an entire universal creation. Could it be that what Proverbs 3 is really saying is this:
You are nothing compared to God. God is so much greater, so much more vast, so much more immense than you could ever hope to be. All of your understanding pales under the light of God. You are the created and God is your creator. Therefore, the best ways are his ways. Therefore, your life is not yours but His. You belong to a perfectly righteous God. You are the property of a perfectly sovereign God. To lean on your own wisdom is to lean away from God’s greater wisdom. Seek after righteousness. To do this is to seek after something above yourself. To do this is to seek out things that serve God and His will. To do this is to realize that your life is not about you, it is all about God.
Are Any Innocent?
Of all the questions that arise from critics about God’s wrath, the question of innocence is curiously missing. Are any innocent? Are any undeserving of God’s wrath? Who in this life can claim that they have committed no sin against God? This is a rather pointless question if you have no proper concept of the effect of sinfulness. I find that most people don’t have a very good or biblical conception of the effect of sinfulness. Most people have probably heard the famous Romans 6:23 statement, “The wages of sin is death.” But I wonder how many people have truly digested the implications of that statement. We also learn from Romans that not only are there none who are righteous but there are none who seek righteousness, for we have all sinned. Most critics simply don’t think of themselves as deserving of any kind of punishment. They ask, “What have I done to deserve the wrath of God?” This only illustrates how little they know of the gospel. It also illustrates how highly they think of themselves. For some the question arises, “Why is it that the wages of sin is death?” To help us understand and illustrate this concept I need you to pretend something with me.
Imagine that you have a 15-year-old daughter. Imagine that she’s walking home from school one day and she’s kidnapped right off the street. Imagine that she’s then taken away to some remote location, perhaps a home somewhat in the middle of nowhere. Imagine that once she’s there her kidnapper begins to brutalize and rape her. Let’s continue to pretend that she’s bound for several days and each day she continues to get beat and rapped by her kidnapper. Over the course of these few days she’s come to realize that even though she’s out in the middle of nowhere, there is a working phone in the home. She knows this because she has seen her assailant using it. Eventually, she manages to get free from her restraints. She believes that she might be alone in the house so she searches desperately for this phone that she’s seen. She finds it! She gets on the phone and immediately dials you (her mother or father). You, the concerned parent, answer the phone and breathe a huge sigh of relief to hear that your daughter is alive. She can’t tell you where she is so you, in desperation, tell her to call 911 so they can try and trace the call to her current location. Just as she’s getting ready to hang up the phone her kidnapper returns to the house and discovers her on the phone. The kidnapper, in a rage, grabs her and begins beating her. From the other end of the phone line you hear all this in angry desperation. Your daughter is calling out to you for help but you’re powerless to do anything. Eventually you hear a chilling silence on the other end of the line. You hear this silence because the kidnapper has strangled your daughter to death. The last thing you hear on the phone is the sound of heavy breathing and then a disconnect tone.
To commit a sin of any kind is to be like the kidnapper in our imaginary example. In fact, it is far, far worse. That’s how severe sin is. People say, “No, that’s not true. I’m not killing anyone when I sin. I’m just watching porn, what’s the harm in that?” The severity of the consequences of sin is not based on any specific circumstance. Sin is what it is. Sin is not conditional. It is the most comprehensively awful, disgusting, vile thing that we can do in our lives. Every single living human is guilty of the crime of sin. Often times when people think of sin they don’t think of it like a crime. They don’t think of it as something punishable, at least not in the same sense that they would most crimes. It is helpful for you to think of your sin as something akin to murder or rape. This does two things simultaneously:
(1) It helps you properly conceive just how wretched all sinfulness truly is.
(2) It instills within you a desire to try and die to that particular sinfulness on a daily basis.
Here’s the next thing to consider: If you had been the parent of the kidnapped girl in our story, what punishment would you desire to see the kidnaper get. Some people would undoubtedly want to see the kidnapper receive the death penalty while others would prefer to see a life imprisonment. Either way, you desire to see judgment and punishment. I know of no reasonable people who would say, “This person deserves no punishment!” If you agree that the kidnapper in our imaginary example deserves some kind of punishment then you acknowledge that when a crime has been committed some kind of punishment is to be expected. If you think that the kidnapper in our story should get off without any consequence then you would probably be a very unpopular person with most of the rational world. So I think it’s fair to say that rational people believe that those who commit crimes should be subject to punishment. Why should this idea be any different when applied to sin? After all, sin is like a crime against God. What gives any of us the right to think that God has no reason to pour out wrath against ungodliness and unrighteousness? Saying that God isn’t allowed to bring judgment against those who sin against Him is the same as saying that no judge or court of law has any right to prosecute criminals. If I said to you, “There is no court, judge, or lawyer in this country that has sufficient right to judge and sentence criminals,” you would probably say to me, “You’re out of your mind.” Why would you say that? Because you know that I’m making a completely irrational statement.
God is perfectly justified in doing whatever He desires. In the case of us, all God owes us is death. The wages of sin is death. Therefore, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, there is not one living human being that is worthy to stand before God and claim they are sufficiently righteous to receive salvation. All we can claim is that we are worthy of death because we have all sinned against our creator. But what does God do, even though he doesn’t have to? He offers salvation in Christ.
Ask yourself this question: What’s more loving?
(1) That God would offer salvation to some
(2) That God would offer salvation to none
Technically God doesn’t have to extend the hand of grace to anyone. The law is clear. Sin equals death. We have sinned therefore we should receive death. However, because God is loving, he extends imputed righteousness through faith in Christ so that those who believe in the Son of God would not perish but have eternal life. Yet, even if God didn’t do this He would still be perfectly loving. By now some people might be standing on their chairs screaming about how stupid that all sounds but it’s not stupid. It’s merely what we should expect from a sovereign creator. It’s only when you begin to see how insignificant and unimportant you are that you can begin to see the great significance and importance of God. From that lens you can truly begin to see God as God, not as God as you think He ought to be.
God is fundamentally God not fundamentally Human
This section will be short because there is very little that needs to be said. Most people try to humanize God. They try to take the actions of God and convert them and filter them through channels of human understanding. After that process is over people might find that they don’t happen to agree with this particular word or teaching of God. So they reject the idea utterly because it doesn’t fit with their version of how the world works. The basic concept is like what I’ve already said:
God is bound by all things human. Therefore, God cannot do anything that contradicts one’s personal set of values. If God does such a thing then He must not truly be God.
Here’s a basic example of how asinine this point of view is:
Let’s say you’re studying fish. You get yourself an aquarium and you fill it with a fish. You name the fish Bob and then you watch Bob for a period of several weeks. You’re analyzing Bob’s behavior, trying to figure out why Bob does the things that Bob does. But there’s one fatal flaw in your thinking. You are trying to judge Bob’s actions based on the way that a human might react to things. If Bob does something that seems irrational to you, you get confused because you think that Bob should act like a human would act when faced with a similar situation. Your frustration mounts as Bob continues to exhibit very un-human like behavior. In the end you give up entirely on Bob because he just doesn’t do things in a manner that you can understand even though you think that he should. So you forget all about Bob. You maybe even flush Bob down the toilet or give Bob away. Then you go and tell your friends how ridiculous all the things about Bob were.
Does that completely stupid story make any sense? Of course not! No person in their right mind would look at a fish and expect them to act like a human. Why? Because a fish is fundamentally a fish, ergo, you can expect the fish to behave like a fish. How, then, can we look at God and expect God to act like a human when God is not fundamentally human but rather fundamentally God? The simple answer is that we can’t. It’s simply an irrational way to think. But because we are one of the most highly evolved species on the planet earth, it’s difficult for us to think about something more evolved than us. It’s difficult for us to imagine a higher being that might just possibly be greater than us. When “higher thinking” individuals come across this notion in their postulations, their reaction is sometimes to dismiss it entirely because it just doesn’t fit with their trends of thinking. Yet we know this is a dangerous way to think. We know that not all things are false simply because we don’t like or accept them as fact. There are many basic truths in the world that many people turn their backs on just because they would rather not think about or embrace such things. How stubborn and foolish we “highly evolved beings” can sometimes be!
When we look at humans and the human condition I believe it rapidly becomes evident that there is not much within ourselves that we can depend upon. We truly are incredibly flawed beings. This doesn't mean that we're not capable of great things. Nor does it mean that we're not capable of many creative things. Humans have the capacity to create such beauty and such wonder but the difficult truth is that no matter how far we come in our advancement we will never be able to create like God creates. We will never be able to think like God thinks. We will never be able to judge as God judges. We will always be fundamentally human and because we will always be fundamentally human we will always be fundamentally flawed and in great need of the grace and power and might and majesty of God the King. This kind of thinking is bound to be far from popular in a society that greatly values self-sufficiency. This kind of thinking is also likely to be tossed out by people who feel that they are superior enough for themselves. Perhaps one day humans will look in the mirror and they will see themselves as they truly are, as created beings, as servants, as children of the most-high God. However, at the present moment, I fear that too many people look in the mirror and see themselves as they are not, as people in need of no God.
Chad, this is a very good essay, one that should probably be printed and distributed. Good thoughts, good argument.
Posted by: Chris Stewart | May 01, 2008 at 10:54 AM
Great thoughts, Chad. Truly a fully realized picture of the psot-modern pocket-theology/psyche of most americans at least. Our sense of God and His justice is contextualized not in the Bible and something apart from us, but it comes from our experiences unfortunately, and not from a transcendent source.
It seems that there has been much discussion of what comes after post-modern thought:
Is it post-post-modern? Most label it post-christian. I think that is most accurate.
To the modern, there are facts, empirical evidence and measurables to defend a central thesis.
To the post-modern, one's own experience defines existence, and many paths aren't neccessarily going to cancel contradicting themes to get to truth. But still, there is the ability of choice, and that choice is respected; even if choosing God is a choice.
It seems, that the next phase of thinking is going that of how Europe fell in its pursuit of truth, where fact nor experience much matters. God is merely an afterthought. Its a non-conversation.
Humankind is starting to move on from the silliness of the fairytale of God. We see it in our own inner diatribe with Pop-culture when we think of opposing arguments or teachings for our gatherings. We're moving in the direction of "God is dead."
How fitting a subject with what we're studying in relation to the person of Satan and his mentality. Isn't that his focus? He would be tickled if we didn't know a thing about him (Satan) or Him (God our Author).
His mission is for you to dismiss the idea and relationship of and to God, whether it is to NOT choose him based upon some percieved evidence or "facts", or to dismiss him through total ignorance.
mission accomplished.
Sorry for the sub-ramble. I guess the God is imaginary post kind of got us all in this direction, so I guess its all related. =)
Posted by: Josh Lynch | May 02, 2008 at 04:55 PM