More on God's Goodness

I was recently asked to expound on the nature of the goodness of God in a manner that describes what is meant by goodness, rather than what is not meant.

There is nothing one can point to other than God to illustrate what is absolutely good.  The reason stating what is not meant is easier than stating what is meant, is that we can point to things that are not God for an example, but to speak of what is meant, I can only point to God. 

Many would dismiss this as circular reasoning. What is good? God.  How do we know God is good? God.  To be true, it is something that cannot be proven by another measure. If God were not the supreme good, then if there is such a thing, something else would have to be that self-referencing standard. 

Humans certainly aren’t absolute references for ultimate good. This is a fact we know too well. And yet, if we know it, how do we explain that we know it? How do we have a sense that we aren’t doing what is right all the time? And yet, we do know this. We know we fail to be good even though most of us want to be good and beat ourselves up internally when we are not.  If we reject the Biblical reason for this conflict between our desire to be good and our failure to be thus, what are we left with?

Of course, there are many postulations by many different belief systems, but all religion puts forth the need for striving to be more moral, better people.  Prayers, petitions, penance, and priest are all a part of our attempt to be better than we are and to somehow qualify for something greater than we deserve.  Christianity is not exempt. In many people, churches, and cultures, Christianity is about doing the same thing – striving to be better on their own merit to earn God’s acceptance. 

It’s not really debatable any longer that across the board we know we fail to be what we feel we ought to be.  But where is this invisible standard that makes it impossible to do whatever we want without any guilt? Why are we guilt ridden?  Why do we call those who cannot distinguish right from wrong, insane?

The Bible says the truth of God is written all around us in nature so that we are without excuse. We all know we have fallen short. We all know there is a good that we do not measure up to.  Jesus came to show us the way out of our sins and guilt.  He came not to condemn us for we were in that place of condemnation already. We knew full well the guilt and He came not to heap more rules and condemnation upon us, but to remove it. He came to do all the “work” to qualify for us, because work would never get us there.  But He can get us there and He who was pure because impure (became sin) for us and took the wages of sin upon Himself.  He took it all to the grave and He rose again leaving it all buried so that we no longer have to strive to burry our sins, for He came to bring life to whosoever will step into Him and experience His life. 

The reason we fail to be good, is because we are separated from the good God.  Jesus dealt with the sin so that we could be transformed in Him and know the Father just as we know Him. For if we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father.  The good life is not something we can work for, but something we can be given by the good Father. 

This is the essence of the goodness of God.  His heart is turned towards us while we were yet sinners. We were unable to make ourselves good, because goodness was not something that is separate from God. So the only way to become good is for God to take us into Himself again and He did this through Jesus.  There is no other name, no other way, and no other life that will do it for us.  We have a full history from the beginning of time of man trying and failing to be good on their own.  We know this full well. 

Goodness is not definable because a definition denotes limitation and His goodness knows no bounds.  Goodness can only be known by personal experiential connection with God directly or indirectly. Sometimes the indirect experience precedes the direct. We see the goodness of God by seeing a supernatural love demonstrated by a follower of Jesus, or we hear testimony of a miracle that opens our heart towards Him.  Sometimes it is a direct experience where God covers us in His presence and we feel and know His amazing goodness and love.  There are many ways to witness the goodness of God, and once our eyes are open to recognize Him we see that He was there all along and His goodness never failed us.  

What is meant by our saying "God is Good"

Trace the etymology of the word “good” back far enough and one will find “God” at its root.  When one says that God is good, it is not to say that humanity has judged and determined He fits the bill for the standard of goodness. Often times, it is forgotten that man does not apply that term to God, but God reveals the reality of goodness to man.  

To Read the rest of this article please click here to go to Helium.com where the original article is published. 

Goodness of God Revisited Again

From the time I started this blog, discussions on the question of God’s goodness have been of primary prevalence. Therefore I find myself thinking and writing on this topic far more often than any other topic.

The most common objections to God’s goodness are the actions recorded in the Old Testament, the existence of evil, and the doctrine of hell. The problem anyone encounters with the first two is that one has to have a different point of reference for good outside of God in order support an argument that God’s actions are not good. Not to mention, if God does not exist, and is not available as the point of reference for goodness, then there is nothing to contend in the first place, for there were no such actions by the hand of God.

To argue against His goodness rather than His existence allows, for the sake of argument, for Him to indeed exist. Now if the Bible God exists, the Bible God has certain attributes that describe His nature. God, being one, rather than a sum of parts, is not a collection of His attributes. We speak of His attributes separately at times, but they are one, just as He is one.

As discussed in the previous post, God is not just in one situation and merciful in another. He at all times is doing or saying the just and merciful thing. At the same time, His goodness is one with His justice and mercy. His actions come from His nature. They cannot be different than who He is. God is not like us in that He chooses to respond differently than He wants to. He always does that which He wants for His will is one with His nature. To use His doing all that He wants as a refutation that He is good is illogical. For His want is one with His nature which is good. Doing whatever He wants, is precisely doing that which is good. In contrast, we have a duplicitous nature and we often do the things we ought not to do because we want to do that rather than what we know is good and at times we do the good thing by choice even when we want something we ought not want. This is not so with God. He always does according to His nature which is good. There is nothing external governing Him. There is no authority greater than Him.

To move from the philosophical to the illustrative, the next common contention against the goodness of God is to point out particular actions of God as evidence that He is not really good for a good being would never do such and such. The problem in this is that we ourselves are not infinitely good and so we cannot be the point of reference for goodness. Thus we have nothing outside of God to declare something He did as wrong. If the Bible God is real, and the Old Testament records are true, we were created by this God. Thus our idea of what is good cannot supercede His.

Now as to the question of evil, if there is evil then there must be good. And if there is both good and evil then there must be a way to differentiate between the two. That way cannot come from those who are doing the evil and the good; it has to come from a good source that is not corrupted by evil. A source that is good infinitely or eternally. The evil then is that which is different from that good and the only way anyone can call something evil is to have some idea of something else being good and knowing that this evil thing is not that good thing. Hence, a point of reference outside of us is required. Now, that point of reference does not need a point of reference. Nor can that point of reference be an abstract theory of man or an abstract form in the cosmos, it needs being to have realness. A supernatural eternal being that is absolutely good and gains His existence from none outside of Himself is necessary to support a worldview that says there is good and evil.

However, if one is not maintaining such a worldview and there is no evil and no good, things only are amorally then this view would not need such a foundation. Naturalism will do nicely to support this view of things, but few are willing to abandon certain actions as being amoral rather than down right wrong, unjust, or evil. Such a worldview is difficult to live out for as soon as someone does something “wrong” to you the view ought to be quickly abandoned and a call of injustice issued.

Lastly, there is the doctrine of hell. The argument is that a good God with such infinite power and love ought to have come up with something less revolting than an eternity in torment for those who do not have relationship with Him. However, God is the source of eternal life. Being outside of Him is being outside of that eternal good life. That is a tormenting existence when all is said and done and one has passed on into eternity. It cannot be otherwise, God’s life isn’t in that existence. His Presence is not manifested there. Therefore, it is tormenting, it is destructive, it is horrid. This is not a place where God wants any of us. He sent Jesus so that all would have the opportunity to be pulled out of the existence that leads to such perishing. The door to the good eternal life—the heavenly reality—is Jesus. It is in Jesus therefore He is the only way. Hell is then not something God is doing to us, but something He has made the way for us to avoid for it was never a place meant for mankind, but a place created for Satan and his demons to be bound for eternity. God does not send anyone to hell. He opens His to us to find life in Him as we are designed to, but gives us the freedom to continue in our own ways apart from Him which will sadly separate us forever from His life.

God’s goodness cannot be proven by weighing God’s actions and commands and finding them to fall short of Himself. There is not another standard worthy of being an instrument of measurement against God. He is the good authority. There is no authority greater than Him. God is always Himself. If He is, then He is good. If He is not, then the entire discussion is irrelevant for there is no one to judge.

Justice & Mercy: Philosophical & Practical

God's attributes are not parts of Him, they are each the whole of Him. He is all His attributes at all times. He is one, thus His attributes are one. We speak of them individually, but we err when we extract one without reference to the others. For instance, God is just and He is merciful. He does not choose to be merciful in one situation and just in another, He is equally just and merciful in every situation. To us we might see His response as more of an action of justice rather than mercy, but in reality it is just as merciful as it is just. This is why King David, when given a choice between being punished by being given to His enemies or being punished by God, he chose God for he knew that God's punishment would be exactly right, good, and merciful.

In the same way, our actions ought to be that which lines up with His goodness. Therefore, when our mercy does not include justice or our justice is not constrained by mercy then we are not in line with what is good. God is also love. Love is not unrestrained mercy. In fact, justice and mercy are not at odds with each other or with love. Perfect love is perfectly just and merciful at the same time for God is all of these attributes eternally. They all are anchored together in Him as one.

Any of these attributes lived out apart from the rest would be harmful and not a true representation of the attribute. Love without justice is not real love. Justice without mercy is not really just. Mercy without justice is not really being merciful. True love is not just a balance of justice and mercy, but is a full composite of both for the two cannot be rightly separated.

People who are recipients of constant mercy devoid of justice are not helped, but hindered from attaining personal responsibility. They cannot mature into the people they ought to be if they are saved from every just consequence of their choices.

People ought to be allowed the freedom to be irresponsible, but at the same time it is good to not remove the consequences of the actions. In Danny Silk's book, Loving Your Kids on Purpose, he explains that we all have choices. He encourages parents to give their children the freedom to make those choices while they are in the safety of the parent's home so that their lessons are learned early in life and do not become perpetual problems into adulthood. A child forgets her lunch at home, and Mom does not drive it to her, for she would now experience a lesson in consequences as she decides how to acquire lunch for herself due to her forgetfulness. The action was both one of mercy and one of justice. It was just for the child to not have the lunch she forgot, and merciful for the mom to provide her the opportunity to learn this lesson.

Today's society has elevated tolerance as a virtue and personal irresponsibility as a public problem rather than a private one. This nation was founded to be a place where people are free to make their way in the world with their property and life protected by the enforcement of laws enacted for this purpose. However, it was never intended to be a place where the poor and unhealthy are enjoined from being thus. It was never to be a place where the those who are responsible are forced to surrender their hard earned goods to those who are not. Today freedom has been encroached upon to aid the whole by requiring the few to not only be responsible for themselves, but for those who are irresponsible as well.

In a world where personal irresponsibility is protected by a removal of due consequences, people are apt to become more irresponsible rather than less. It is human nature not to take care of oneself when someone is willing and able to do it for you. Why would a child learn to tie his shoe if mom and dad never stop doing it for him? Why would a child learn to feed herself, if mom never expects them to do it and does it for her? Why would someone who knows how to fish, choose to fish when fish are abundantly handed to him?

I once had a professor who said, if he had enough money in his estate to enable his children to never have to work again, he would bequeath it all to charity rather than to his children. He said he did not want to create lazy children by giving them what it ought to take hard work to acquire.

I used to struggle to understand why the Bible says that if someone in a community is not working they ought not to be able to eat the food. The same Bible says to give to the poor. Then I realized that the “poor” being spoken of are not those who choose not to work or who squander their earnings, but those who are physically incapable of providing for themselves. The “poor” were not those who didn't have money because they were not working, but those who couldn't work and thus justly needed provision. Still this was a voluntary giving out of love and compassion and not a giving out of compulsion of a national law. One is giving, the other is legalized stealing.

While it is good to be a cheerful giver, it is not good to produce ravenous takers. Giving when there is genuine need will produce the fruit of a grateful receiver. Becoming a provider of a person who is able to provide for themselves creates an unhealthy dependency the sucks the life out of the relationship making one the master and the other the slave regardless of the best of intentions. This steals the integrity of the person receiving such aid and makes them feel lousy and unable to be productive keeping them in bondage. The way of freedom is the way of responsibility and the way of irresponsible people experiencing their consequences. This way the consequences act as a motivator to correct ones course.

If we are to live according to justice and mercy there must be a justice and mercy by which we conform. If there is no supreme Justice then there is no injustice. In closing, consider the following popular quote by C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.

Severity of God

My thoughts have been focused for some time on the topic of the goodness of God. Any perusal of my blog will lend itself to seeing this theme coming up again and again. There seems to be a way of thinking both in and outside of Christianity that ascribes ultimate goodness as something that would never, in any way, cause suffering, harm, destruction, or death. While Christians often avoid any seemingly awkward discussion of the severity of God, it is something that is an indispensable attribute of The Most Holy. Consider the following passage.

Romans 11:22 (New American Standard Version)

“Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God's kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”

God invites us to partake of His kindness, but that does not mean He is not also severe and that some meet justly with His severity.

God’s goodness and His justness are not at odds. He is one and He is always Himself. He is fully good and fully just at the same time. His omnipotence – His power—is also aligned with His goodness as well as with His holiness, and justness, and all His other attributes. Thus there are things God cannot do. He cannot lie for He is Truth and the Truth cannot also be non-truth. He cannot do something that is not good for that would be contrary to His nature. His mercy and His justness are not at odds, but are perfectly expressed rightly. (See the previous post which is an excerpt from A.W. Tozer for more on this).

Some argue that if He is the standard for good that goodness becomes whatever He wants. This is true because His actions are in line with His nature. There is no wrestling between what He wills and what He does for both are equally and ultimately good. Thus all that He wants is good. A good tree bears good fruit. God is the ultimate good Tree. He always bears good fruit. His actions always line up with His nature.

In light of the conversation at hand, I recall one of my favorite passages from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In The Silver Chair, Jill and Scrubb are whisked off into an adventure in Narnia. Scrubb, otherwise known as Eustace, had been there before, but for Jill this was a new experience.

To set the stage for the passage quoted below, Scrubb and Jill become separated and Jill encounters Aslan for the first time. Jill was very thirsty and saw a stream where she could drink, but next to the stream lay the Great Lion.

“If you're thirsty, you may drink.”

They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man's. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I'm dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting,

nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.

"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.

"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."

"There is no other stream," said the Lion.

(Passage from The Silver Chair – Chapter 2)

God does not answer to us. We answer to Him. We do not judge Him; He is the good Judge of us. He will not move out of the way for He is The Way. He will truthfully tell us “there is no other stream.” We can drink of His life, or we can die in our thirst. But this life He offers is found no where other than in Himself and He invites us in. But to be on the outside of that goodness, is to live in an alternate non-good state of being that has consequences that are right and just despite their unpleasantness.

Modern culture has embraced the idea that tolerance is the highest virtue. That good cannot allow for suffering or harm. Part of this view is true in the context of a world without sin. Good then would not have suffering, destruction, and death. But this world is not the good world that was first created. It has been altered by sin when we allowed the enemy to have power here. A day is coming where there will be no more tears, no more death, no more suffering. But sin is a reality and it does come with consequences. Evil must be reckoned with. At the heart of almost every story ever told is the battle between good and evil and the triumph of good over evil. But in that triumph comes much cost and those who are on the side of evil do not fair well. God is not a tolerant God; He is very much a good God.

Tolkien eloquently depicts this universal battle when evil enters the peaceful happy village of the Shire through the greed of a Hobbit who took a ring for himself that did not belong to him. Consequences ensued as evil showed up at the doorstep of the shire commencing a great journey for a little Hobbit who inherited the ring and his fellowship to see evil overcome. The costs were great, but good fought back the evil and the evil forces were overcome. Pain and suffering including death happened also to those in service to good, but it was the costs in overcoming the evil that had infiltrated the land.

Good must be understood to not trifle with evil. God does not play around when it comes to evil. We ought not to expect Him to be a Lamb in the face of evil, but a Lion. The fullness of His gentle kind persona is still in the Lion, but He acts in severity when it is good to do so and in mercy and kindness when that is the good response. Even His justice is merciful for He never ceases to be merciful when He is just and never ceases to be just when He is merciful.

When John encounters the glorified Christ, he fell at His feet as though dead because of the Holiness that stood before Him in full unveiled glory. We must not consider God without His Holiness. That word holds little meaning for most. Many a scholar will define “holiness” as the absence of sin, when in reality the Eternal God was Holy before any sin ever existed. Holiness has a mysterious triumphant glory that is greater than we could possibly imagine. God invites us to come and be holy as He is holy. He wants to clothe us in His righteousness, but we cannot tame Him, He will not fit our boxes. He will not be judged by us, but He will give us all that is His if we come and drink. There is no other stream.

The First Knight

To continue on the theme of chivalry, when I read Lewis’s essay on the topic, I couldn’t help but see beyond what he was saying. I am not sure whether he was thinking in this direction for he did not take his essay there, but I instantly saw something more.

There did not seem to be any disagreements on the point from my previous post that, “A soldier without gentleness would be apt to be barbaric, but a gentleperson without valor may be cowardice.”

Nor was there disagreement that “chivalry is a combination of the hero of great valor on the battle field and the mild mannered noble. For example, Aragorn of Lord of the Rings was both a valiant warrior and a kind gentleman. He was both severe in battle and kind hearted in life.”

We all seemed to agree that chivalry as described is a good and honorable thing. A thing that is neither a brute nor a coward, but a well rounded, just, and good attribute artfully maintained.

The thing that instantly came to mind when reading Lewis’s essay is that chivalrous is a good descriptive word for God. The picture he painted as ideal was that which describes the God of the Bible; the valiant warrior justly upholding all goodness while at the same time kindly and mercifully bringing the way of salvation to all sinners. God is the ultimate King with full qualities of Knighthood.

The reason we admire and have honored the chivalrous is because we see and are drawn by the goodness therein of such a character. We see such people as deserving of honor and knighthood. These people are shining an attribute of God. Chivalry is good, not just because it benefits survival of civilization, but because it mirrors the One who is Good.

Eternal Love Effectuates Eternal Good

God’s love is the foundation of which flows His goodness. Jesus said that loving God and loving people as we love ourselves are the greatest commandments that keep all others. When we are properly related to God and in proper loving relationships with people we treat them the way they ought to be treated. We live the way we ought to, because we love. When one person loves another properly they are good to them. A loving Father is good to his children. Even in rendering punishment upon a child, he is good for he punishes because He loves the child. Real love includes being able to render correction, rebuke, or punishment.


God is good, because God loves. His goodness is an extension of His love. God’s attributes are eternal. Were they not eternal, He would not be God for God’s nature must be complete in and of Himself: self evidently. If God depended upon anything outside of Himself, He would not be God. Love is actualized through relationships not in isolation. We don’t actualize loving someone when we are not in relationship with that person. To know the love of a parent for a child, you must have a child in which you love as a parent loves a child. To know romantic love you must have an object of that love. Therefore for Him to love, He had to love before He created. He didn’t begin to love once He created the world. He always loved. He always was a personal God. That’s why the doctrine of the Trinity is so essential. For God to love mankind, He had to first love interpersonally the Son of God. Who is begotten of God versus created by God. For God to be a personal God, He had to be interpersonal eternally versus gaining His personal nature with reference to creation. Once again, every attribute of God must be eternal. God loves because He eternally loves the Son and the Son eternally loves the Father. God is the ultimate Father to mankind because He gains His fatherly identity through His relationship with the Son. The Holy Spirit is the agent of His love which binds the Father and the Son and who is given to each person who is in relationship with the Father through Jesus. Jesus said that the greatest act of love is to lay down your life for your friend. Jesus, while we were yet sinners, laid down His life for man. Jesus was purposed to do this before the creation of the world. Before we sinned, He was still going to lay down His life to bring mankind into holiness that is only found in God. Man was made dependent upon God. But the only way we could attain holiness is through God providing that to us by an extension of His grace to us which comes through His greatest act of love and that is sacrificing Himself for us. We were not made equal to God for the created cannot be equal to the Creator, thus to be brought into His holiness He had to elevate us by grace through His supreme act of love which is in Christ work on the cross. Jesus coming to give His life for man was not God’s back up plan because mankind messed everything up. It was still purposed to be. However, when man sinned, Jesus’ sacrifice included His forgiving us our sins.


The doctrine of the Trinity is essential to the existence of God. If God were not a Trinitarian Being He could not be, for a being to have an identity, he has it relationally to another. If God was this cosmic static entity with no persons of the Trinity He could not be self-evident. He gains identity from Himself because He is a personal being. Thus any religion that posits a non-Trinitarian God cannot theologically support the existence of that God. Moreover polytheism fails to be a foundational system of belief for each of the many gods would have to be finite for you cannot have more than one all powerful God. It isn’t logically possible. Thus multiplicity of gods lends itself to finiteness of gods and that is not an adequate foundation for they would not be eternal.


In conclusion, God, being perfect, loves perfectly and eternally and all ethics and morality derive from the goodness that flows from His love. This is why Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor and that the second hinges on the first. When we learn how to love God and to experience His love and compassion for us we are enabled to love our neighbor the way we ought. This is why I have repeatedly advocated that morality is not about following the letter of the law, but about the fulfillment of the law which is love. When we are filled up with God’s love we can love others the way we ought to and we do good by them as a byproduct of that relationship with God.


God loves mankind and His love is actualized and experienced through the Holy Spirit who draws all men unto Himself. God is loving us even when we rebel against Him. All the consequences for sin is to bring about our restoration unto Him. It is all for our good even when it doesn’t feel so good at the time. Hebrews 12:11 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Even when God is allowing us to reap the consequences of our unrighteousness it is for our redemption.


The end product of a community of people who live lives of love is a beautiful picture. John Lenon asked the world to imagine a world with no religion. In reality, we need to imagine a world where God’s love is known by people and lived out through people. A world of people who live like Jesus lived would indeed produce a utopia. Imagine just a city of people who are living like Jesus. There would be no crime. The jails would be empty. There would be no hate. People would treat each other with kindness. They would always do good for their fellow man. God is calling us to such a way of living and it is possible through Christ.


However, there will always be those who will refuse to live as a part of the Kingdom of God. So even as this community of believers matures into this society built on love those outside of this society will be living lives in opposition to this reality. Hence the world will become darker and darker (more vile and destructive) and the church community brighter and brighter (more pure and glorified) until the day Christ comes for His Bride the Church.

Worldview Challenge Question

Let's put worldviews to the test. How does a human life gain value? If we are simply evolved animals, is a human life worth no more than the life of a cow? Or do our cognitive abilities rank us as more valuable? If so, is a dolphin then more valuable than a lamb? How about an insect, it’s a living thing. Does it have rights to life? How is it that squashing an insect does not invoke the same moral outrage as ending the life of a human? If the life of a human is priceless and valuable above all other living things, then how did this come about?

The Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The United Nations manifesto grants that mankind has certain intrinsic rights, but omits any reference to them being God given.

If one rejects the Christian worldview that man is created in the image of God and is thus valuable and ought to be treated with dignity and respect then on what principal and standard do we maintain that humans have value?

Please think about this question and comment as to how your worldview answers the question of human value and rights.

Justice of God

I have posited that there can be no justice without the existence of a Just God. To provide argument to support this claim let us look at what “justice” means. According to the American Heritage Dictionary:

Justice (n.)

1. The quality of being just; fairness
1. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
2. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
4. Law The administration and procedure of law.
5. A judge.
6. A justice of the peace.
1. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
2. Law The administration and procedure of law.
3. A judge.
4. A justice of the peace.
3. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason: The overcharged customer was angry, and with justice.
4. Abbr. J. Law
1. A judge. A justice of the peace.

The very employment of justice presumes a standard of rightness to which governs the actions of humanity. If justice is a “conformity to moral rightness” or “righteousness” there must be a standard by which conformity is judged.

If there is no objective righteousness there is no justice. There is no judgment of actions to a standard of righteousness. There is no upholding of a law any higher than man’s subjective laws of society. There is nothing concrete to justice. A victim is no longer a victim because there is no standard to determine violation of personal value or rights. The victimizer is off the hook for there is no standard. The only way that both the victim and the victimizer are brought justice is for there to be an objective moral standard.

The only way there can be an objective moral standard, is if there is an objective moral law giver who is in His character by His nature the self-existing standard of righteousness. Righteousness equates to goodness. If this righteous good God meets out justice according to the holy righteous standard of His character which results in punishment for some and mercy for others. God has decreed that He provided the sacrifice to enable Justice to justify us in Christ. If we are not under the grace of the gift of Christ blood, we are under Justice with no grace. This does not make God less good. We only find goodness in Him; apart from Him we are not good. His character is the standard of goodness and no one gains righteousness apart from His deeming us righteous through Christ.

We cannot judge Him as not good for we have no standard of goodness outside of Him by which to cast judgment upon Him. He gives meaning to the victim that would be lost without Him. He became a victim for us, experiencing our life on earth, experiencing human suffering first hand, and giving His own blood for our sins. What greater goodness could there be than Jesus sacrificing Himself for finite immoral man who rejected Him and rejects Him still? Christ didn’t die for good people; He died for unworthy sinners to make us worthy. He doesn’t ask for us to be good to earn salvation. He asks us to receive salvation from the only one who can give us eternal life.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Euthyphro Problem

Socrates asked “Is what is good good because God wills it or does He will it because it is good?”

If the answer is the former then God can make anything good by His decree at will. He could have easily have reversed the 10 Commandments. For instance, commanding us to murder instead of not to murder.


If the answer to this question is the latter then God is held to some standard outside of Himself that makes Him will good versus evil. This would suggest a moral standard outside of God, which determines objective morality. This would also mean God is not perfect in and of Himself.


The answer is neither. God Himself by His nature is the standard and He is always Himself. All that He does is according to His nature.


To quote Paul Copan, “Indeed, the final resolution to the Euthyphro dilemma is that God’s good character/nature sufficiently grounds objective morality. So we don’t need to look elsewhere for such a standard. We have been made in the divine image, without which we would neither (a) be moral beings nor (b) have the capacity to recognize objective moral values. The ultimate solution to the Euthyphro dilemma shifts the grounding of morality from the commands of God to something more basic—that is, the nature or character of God. Thus, we human beings (who have been made to resemble God in certain ways) have the capacity to recognize them, and thus his commands—far from being arbitrary—are in accordance with that nature.”


Now one can push the age old question further and ask “Is God good because it is God’s character, or it is God’s character because it is good.”


However, to quote Paul Copan again, “if a good God does not exist, why think that morally responsible, intrinsically valuable, rights-bearing beings would exist at all? Without God, moral properties would never be instantiated or realized.”


He continues, “God, who is essentially perfect, does not have obligations to some external moral standard; God simply acts, and what he naturally does is good . . . God’s action and will operate according to the divine nature. So God’s goodness should not be viewed as His fulfilling moral obligations but as expressing the way he is.”


Moreover, the dilemma goes both ways as the atheists must consider, “Are moral values good simply because they are good, or is there some independent standard of good to which they conform?”


One either has to maintain a standard of objective goodness or digress to no goodness at all. Richard Dawkins writes in River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”


If there is no objective good and evil we have “nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” Yet we live in a world where everyone has a concept of good and evil. Are these merely terms made up by man with no inherent meaning? Is morality a myth and our ethics merely derived from what is best for survival or fitness to this nature we live in? We really aren’t left with satisfying answers to the need to be good.


I read a book review of a biography of Albert Einstein where it quoted Einstein as saying that he did not believe in objective morality, but had to live as if it existed to get along in the world. Why must we conform to a standard of goodness even if we disbelief in the very nature of good and evil? Why do we struggle between good and evil in our souls if it’s simply an idea produced by man? If man produced it, why is it so difficult for man to dispense with it? Why do we keep asking why? Maybe it’s because there is something real behind it all and our hearts yearn to be freed from this struggle because we were meant for something more. We try and find it through philanthropic acts of kindness, community service, religious activity, worship of man, worship of gods, worship of spirituality, etc. What is man searching for? Why the search if there is nothing to find at the end of the journey?


Could it be there is a real good God behind it all and our search is prompted by His image impressed upon us and our indispensable need to be rejoined to our Creator? Could it be that we have been fighting against our only hope and we need to stop fighting and surrender to the only one who can save us?


He is the author of this grand story and until we find our place in Him we will feel things just aren’t right with our place in this world for we were destined for more and we do know it. We even know by our own desire that He exists. For every desire has a purposed fulfillment. I think all our questions exist because there is an Answer for He is the Truth for which we are searching.


Paul Copan quotes taken from the book To Everyone An Answer

The Christian Worldview

It has come to my attention that I have failed to properly define what I mean when I use the term “Christian Worldview.” Let me try and see if I can unpack that term. First of all a worldview is a simple to complex system of belief by which we see the world. Everybody thinks with their worldview. A worldview builds from the general foundational to the particularities which rest upon the foundation. For example for the Christian it starts with the existence of God. In this sense I am not talking about presuppositions, but merely a general framework regardless of how that framework first developed. Likewise, the atheist worldview is tied closely to the idea that there is no God and it builds from there. The Christian the worldview then encompasses that there is a Triune God who created the world and reveled himself to the world through Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again providing the way for man to know God. For the atheist it goes into the uncreated evolutionary development of the world and from there it can go into a humanist or postmodernist view of truth or other various options.

Both Christians and Atheists have different respective specifics to their worldviews. Neither group develops cookie cutter specifics with regard to various views about the world. Therefore, typically I try to stay to the general foundation worldview matters instead of the specific details of life views because if the foundational isn’t established then it’s putting the cart before the horse to establish specifics. However, I will answer questions about specifics when asked to the best of my knowledge.

Thus, when I use the word “standard” in context of the Christian worldview, I mean the foundational self-existent standard of God on which the existence and knowability of truth rest. I am not referring to specific details of what that truth looks like. I am not saying that the Christian church’s historical or modern teaching is the truth about all matters. I am saying that the very construct of truth must rest in the self-existing God for if there is no self-existing constant on which to know factual or moral truth then there is no truth to be known. However, I have never met or read of anyone who can live out the idea that there is no truth.

The Reality of Goodness

God is good. For God, to be God, He has to be eternally good. He can’t change back and forth from bad to good because that would make Him less than perfect. And if He is not eternally perfect, He is less than God, and not God at all.

All of humanity, granting a few exceptions, despite our failures, adheres to a standard of goodness versus badness. No one, in his right mind, sets up evil as the preferable standard of living.

Some are of the opinion that the dichotomy of valuing good over evil is a product of evolution and not of God’s design. It must be one or the other, for most people will attest to the existence of good and bad with the understanding of good being the standard by which we must live.

Atheist argue that being good of their own accord and not because God is going to punish them for being otherwise or reward them for their goodness is more admirable than one who desires to be good because God decrees it. However, there in lies a faulty view of God which is not based on real Christianity. Jesus did not come to make mankind more moral, but to transform mankind to a supernatural way of living empowered by Jesus which enables us to live as we were created to live which is not a life bond by sin. It is much more than freedom from bondage to sin, but to focus on the morality issue, we become free from sin, not out of religious compulsion to be good, but out of a changed nature that has been delivered from living in the bondage of sin.

Goodness, thus, is a byproduct of a relationship with Jesus, and not the result of religious compulsion. Thus, we love, not because we “ought to” but because tangible love bubbles up from within us out of our relationship with Christ and it becomes a natural expression by which we live and not something we work at to please a vindictive God. More accurately, it is a supernatural express for it comes not from our heart alone, but from God’s heart through us.

In fact, I think that this argument of the atheist lends itself more to religion than the authentic Christianity I am explaining. Let me expound on this idea. For the atheist to adhere to being good because they are evolved to prefer a standard of good over evil, they are still following rules of goodness. The atheist either follows society’s rules of goodness or their own rules of goodness or some combination of the two. The Christian, on the other hand, does not follow rules of goodness, but is transformed to do what is good as a byproduct of their relationship with Jesus. So “goodness” comes from being connected to God who is good and who transforms our nature versus “goodness” coming from a mere adherence to rules and law. Morality, then, is authentic of who we are in God and who God is in us.

People have a desire to live good lives, while, at the same time, often failing to keep our own standards of goodness, because we were created in God’s image and His stamp of the way things ought to be is ingrained in our very DNA. However, because we have the freedom to choice to follow God’s way of living or our way of living we also have the stamp of a fallen human nature produced when the first man chose his way instead of God’s way. We, thus, struggle between the two natures and when we come to Christ, our fallen nature is replaced by our redeemed nature and through this real tangible relationship with Jesus we become more and more like Him.

This is authentic Christianity. No one by their own efforts can ever perfectly live up to even their own standard of goodness, much less the perfect goodness of God. We all fail. However, God in His perfect goodness and love provided a way to redeem us, making us holy by fellowship with His holiness through the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Now, of course, if God doesn’t exist and this worldview is merely the creative imagination of a bunch of first century fisherman who miraculously created the best selling book of all time and died torturous deaths for their belief in this reality, then this is all rubbish. Christians are, therefore, mistaking God for what is really the work of an evolutionary process which amazingly created in all mankind a desire to do good even if it is self-sacrificing to do so. Moreover, even though evil still exist in this world, it’s merely a product of evolution as well and yet the entire history of humanity judges evil actions as bad. It’s all a matter of chance as to whether our DNA leads us to good or evil. Or maybe evil is what Christianity claims, a product of man living apart from the way God designed life and man left to his own nature produces evil in some form or another because it is impossible to live up to even our own standards without being connected and redeemed by God.

Life as a Christian is exciting. Real Christianity doesn’t look like religion. It has a taste of heaven, a substance of glory, a freedom of Christ. It is a wondrous reality. The Gospel of Christ is good news about a good God. G.K. Chesterton famously wrote that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and untried.”