One last thought on this series on suffering and God's Sovereignty. Well, okay, one last thought for now. There is a bottom line thing going on here that should help illuminate the problem.
First, remember the problem. God claims to be Sovereign and God claims to be good. To disprove, therefore, that all that happens is ordained by God for His good purposes, you would need to disprove either His Sovereignty (which too many Christians try to accomplish when they try to absolve Him) or His goodness (which is generally the aim of the skeptic in these questions). It isn't really possible to disprove His Sovereignty, so what about His goodness? The question, then, is "Is God good?" I've tried to explain that He is, at least for believers.
So, here is the situation. Do you recognize it before I point it out? What we have here is the standard, age-old question, "Did God say ...?" We're looking, once again, at Satan's standard attack on God. "Did God say He was Sovereign?" "Yes! Undeniably, yes!" "Did God say He was good?" "Absolutely! No doubt about it!" "Oh, yeah? Well, God is not surely good. He knows that if you consider His standards against your own He'll be found wanting." Isn't this exactly the process that Satan went through with Eve? Question what God said and then question God's goodness. Eve listened and decided that God wasn't being fair. He was trying to keep them down. He didn't want them to be like Him. The fruit, she decided, was "good to make one wise." Mean ol' God.
When you examine the question of suffering and the goodness of God, keep in mind that you're playing in Satan's yard. He wants us to apply our own limited and derived standards to Him and find Him wanting. He wants us to elevate the creature over the Creator. It's his plan. We generally ask God "why" because of rebellion. You see, God did claim to be the only Sovereign. He is good. He has His own plan in mind and it is good and it is not primarily about us. Oh, sure, we're intimately involved, but it isn't, ultimately, about us. And He did say, "My ways are not your ways" (Isa 55:8). So, while it is perfectly acceptable to ask "why" of God for enlightenment, when we ask because He fails to meet our standards, you can be quite sure that the source of the question is not God. Care to guess who?
5 comments:
Excellent words! God is good not because He does or did X or Y but because God is good. It's about Him, and I can testify that He is not only good but we cannot describe in words how good He is. Isaiah struggled to describe it, as did every other biblical witness through John. Good work.
"Our standards" often include a burden of proof that is unreasonable by logical measures, yet somehow it is never thought out to logical measures. More evidence of "I'm smart enough to decide", which is a very childish viewpoint to take, in my humble opinion. Is it any wonder that God refers to Himself as our Father, when we act like such children? Not knowing all the facts, unable to understand the details, but "We know! We can decide!".
Right, Jim. A circle is a circle by definition, not because it does something or conforms to definition. God is good by definition.
Science PhD Mom, something that has always baffled me is this whole "empirical proof" concept. "Science can't measure God, so He must not exist." That's like saying "A voltmeter can't measure light, so light must not exist" or "CE can't detect sound, so it must not exist" (inside joke, eh?). Trying to use natural means to measure the supernatural makes no sense.
The other thing I thought of in your comment was "act like children". I know from my experience I NEVER learned as much about God as I did when I became a father and saw how my children acted toward me. "Oh," I thought, "that's what I look like to God."
"Act like children". More often than not, adults continue to act like children in many ways. They simply have voting rights, can drink legally and enter into contracts. But how many eat brussels sprouts once they become adults if they didn't already like them as kids? The point here is that adults use their adulthood to avoid doing things mature people should be doing in many phases of their lives. Delaying gratification covers just about all of it and adults are not immune from ignoring this trait. It's how they get into financial trouble, "unwanted" pregnancies, addictions, etc. Kinda off topic, but the phrase caught my attention.
Actually, my point exactly. We think we've "matured" and "don't do childish things" anymore, but you'll find, in the ways that we relate to God, that we're still children.
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