[The Return of the Demented Mind: número dos]

I mentioned something in last post about an interesting note to ponder about: Even if God was not good, people will not question why good things happen to them, only demanding an explanation for the bad things. I was very intrigued by this idea myself and thought it might be worth developing.

Have any of you paused to wonder before what if God was not good?

Let's not overwork our imagination and just start with the basic alternatives to the above question.

What if God was bad?

I think this is rather straight forward. We would all be doomed. In case some of you don't get the full picture, allow me to attempt to draw you a better perspective by using the method of human comparisons. A bad person is bad enough on himself. However, no matter how bad he is, it should not be an issue to me because he is the one that is bad, not me. However, as humans, we are affected and will be affected by other's "badness" because we are fundamentally relational creatures. Hence if something is bad about him, we will inevitably suffer the consequences, it is like the many parts one body example: when your hand is pain, the whole body feels it. The degree that we are affected will depend on two things. One of them will be the proximity of the relationship. It is like you having a abusive father has more lasting consequences then you having a lousy neighbor... etc. You get the meaning. The other factor would be the amount of power held by the bad person. Imagine you have a evil seven year-old brat that constantly tries to bombard your homework with water bombs and a dictator that is constantly trying to bombard your country with rogue airplanes. It can't get any clearer then this. Here's the bad new. God is always close to us (proximity) and God is Almighty (holds huge amounts of power). You can't escape, and due to His unlimited power, he can execute any form of torture on you. How neat.

Now then, let’s complicate things a bit.

What if God was not good?

Understand that this differs quite a bit from the above question. You need not be bad to be not good. You just need to be not good... enough. Humans are not good, but very few, in fact I believe hardly can be considered purely evil. Most are just good people that gone bad, followed the wrong ambition or beliefs leading to their bad or even atrocious deeds. They are deluded, not purely evil. In fact, they can most probably reason out their actions if given a chance, just that their brand of reason may not be approved by the general majority. When I was somewhere along my teenage years of 15 to 16, I was taught that complimenting someone to be good may be one of the worst insults you may give. Good is a general word with no particular meaning, covering a wide range of adjectives that are all favorable in nature. Thus to term someone as a good person is basically equivalent of saying "you are a nice chap although I do not know why". Hence I was taught to affirm characteristics specifically; you are persevering, you are faithful, you have integrity. I had sworn I would resurrect from my coffin to personally strangle the person who describe me as a good man in my eulogy (the testimony you give about someone who is deceased). Yet to depict God as good is the probably one of the only possible words we can use, as we attempt to adequately describe the one who is all of those favorable adjectives. Only recently have I got new understanding on the full meaning of good. Good is not used to describe nothing in particular; on the contrary, it should be used to describe everything in particular. When we say God is good, we mean he is faithful, loving, perseverance, joyful, peaceful etc... He is everything that is good. Think of it as a positive form of the "all of the above" option. It is the supreme complement, and one which can only be held by God Himself.

Hence back to the point. What if God was not good? What is defined as not good. Missing any one of the favorable adjectives would make him not good. To put this across more clearly, imagine that to be good, you need to have all the 9 parts of the fruit of the spirit. Miss out any of the parts and you will not be good. Just that instead of 9 adjectives that make up of the word good, in reality, the real good comprises an infinite number of adjectives which are favorable. If God is not good, and He misses out a part in the fruit of the spirit, it would make Him an absolute monster in any issues regarding that characteristic. If God is not good, and He missed out the characteristic of joy, He would be a sadist. If God is not good, and the characteristic He missed out was diligence, He would be a sloth. After all, we can be joyful and yet lazy at the same time can't we? Well, let's just imagine about this kind of a half past six type of being, in which has a combination of good and bad qualities. We didn’t just imagine about a god, we merely thought about a man. Even humans have a mixture of good and bad qualities.

So do you know exactly whom and what are you worshiping?






I worship a good God.