January 26: 2010: Why I Believe In The Goodness Of God

"In light of the suffering that is going on in Haiti, how can you believe that God is good?"

That question is distinct from the one that asks whether God even exists. I have never been able to doubt his existence. (See the February 1, 2004 posting, "Why I Am A Theist".) I cannot conceive of a self-creating cosmos: the mere fact that there is a universe has always been enough to persuade me that a self-existing Creator made it. Or, to put it another way, I cannot imagine a world existing but unmade; however, I can imagine an eternally existent, unmade God. I believe that that God lives.

But is he good? That is the question that gnawed at me from time to time during my college years. I never thought that God might be bad (like the Divine Sadist of Salieri's fevered imagination in the film "Amadeus"), so much as "beyond good and evil." Could it be that things like pain and pleasure, hope and despair, right and wrong, life and death - all things of great importance to us - would all turn out to be petty parochial concerns before that everlasting omnipotent Deity? In the same way that you could never bribe such a God with money or tempt him with pleasure or feed him with food, could you ever please him with goodness? Did he care about right behavior? Or were goodness and badness sub-divine, human creations that did not rise to the Eternal Spirit? I knew that goodness must govern human action, but could anything, even goodness, govern the behavior of God? Was he "above all that"?

Part of the answer to my questions has come from the fact that, in the end, I have not been able to conceive of goodness as a "petty parochial concern." There is something fundamental about goodness that resists all efforts to reduce it to the product of blind evolutionary forces, and if a Creator "put" goodness into his universe, then how could he himself not be good? Where in the world did goodness (and our awareness of it) come from?

If it is asked, "But couldn't exactly the same thing be said about evil?", the answer is no, it couldn't. Evil is spoiled goodness, or the absence of goodness; but contrariwise goodness is not "reformed evil" or the absence thereof. Goodness has a "stand-alone" quality that evil lacks, as though goodness were the host and evil the parasite. Take away evil and you have good; take away good and you have nothing. Evil is not so much the opposite of good as it is the perversion or degradation of it.

I believe in a good God because I believe in goodness. When I say I "believe in goodness" I do not mean that I happen to like it or favor it or that it holds a strong appeal for me or that I wish there were more of it. I mean literally that I believe in it; I believe goodness exists, like a mathematical primitive, and cannot be explained as the product of other elements. Just as numbers would still exist if there were no humans to count things, so goodness would exist if there were no humans to do right.

While "the problem of evil" is frequently invoked as an argument against the existence of a good God, I believe that atheism and deism (the belief in a non-moral, distant God) have a far more serious difficulty trying to explain "the problem of good"! How do you account for it? While it cannot be denied that there are horrors in Haiti (and elsewhere), neither can it be denied that there exist pleasures inexpressible, scenes of great beauty, acts of kind service and self-sacrifice, music, chocolate, hope, hospitality and good cheer. All that kind of thing. Goodness in every form beckons us, through a vale of evil and pain, to the Power that installed it in the universe as a reflection of Itself. Goodness trickles down to us through cool streams in desert lands from its source high, high in the mountains of God.

Only because I believe in goodness, real goodness, am I able to despise, reject, hate, oppose, flee from, or try to fix evil. All badness must be "put to right" in accordance with the will of our good Creator. So: heal the sick, feed the hungry, comfort the grieving, repent of your sins, vanquish all selfishness and pride. That is what our good God wants and delights to see.

January 19, 2010: The Goodness Of God And The Horror Of Haiti

A friend of a friend, who had been feared dead, was rescued recently from an elevator shaft in a collapsed building in Haiti. His loved ones rejoiced and celebrated the goodness of God. "See," wrote one, “I told you God was faithful...he preserved Dan’s life.”

But what if God had not preserved Dan's life? What if the elevator shaft opened to reveal the corpse of a man who had agonized for days before dying in pain? Would God have been faithful then? Should Christians acknowledge God's faithfulness only when their prayers are answered favorably?

Just over 50 years ago an evangelist colleague of Billy Graham contemplated misery of the sort that is happening in Haiti now (which is also happening during every second of every day in some part of the world), and concluded "No, we should not celebrate God's faithfulness - because he doesn't even exist." Thus Reverend Charles Templeton became an atheist.

Later when Templeton was asked if there was one thing in particular that caused him to lose his faith, he said, "It was a photograph in Life magazine." The photograph showed a starving woman in Africa holding her dead baby. Templeton thought, "Is it possible to believe that there is a loving or caring Creator when all this woman needed was rain?" He asked his interviewer, "Who runs the rain? I don't; you don't. He does - or that's what I thought. But when I saw that photograph, I immediately knew it is not possible for this to happen and for there to be a loving God."

Christians do in fact believe that God - the only God, the loving God - runs the rain. When he gives it, people reap and eat; when he withholds it, people starve and die. Sometimes he gives so much of it that people drown. He also micromanages every millimeter of the earth's shifting tectonic plates, using them both to create majestic Himalayas and to take 100,000 lives in one furious instant. He personally builds and engineers all the DNA strands in your body - both the ones that help you to feel inexpressible delight and the ones that will leave you diapered and unable to recognize your children.

(You should know that Christianity is not for wusses. If you want a religion that provides spiritual daintiness and mild moral uplift, look elsewhere.)

I actually sympathize with the frustration that atheists like Templeton (or comedian Ricky Gervais or Tribune columnist Eric Zorn) express when they see Christians proclaiming "God is good! God is faithful!" in happy circumstance but going silent (or changing the subject) when they face pain. Is God still good and faithful and praiseworthy when things are Haiti-awful?

The Bible thinks so. When Job lost everything he fell before God and worshiped, saying "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." (Job 1:21) David fasted and prayed for several days about his sick son, and when he heard that the boy had died he got up from the ground, "washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes,...went into the house of the Lord and worshiped." (2 Samuel 12:20). The prophet Habakkuk even steeled his heart to rejoice in God in advance of lean years: "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior." (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

What kind of fool rejoices in the Lord and trusts his goodness despite seeing (or experiencing) Haiti-like horror? Simply one who believes that God is infinitely smarter than we and takes all eternity into the scope of his good plans.

Take for example the photograph that crushed Templeton's faith: a starving, grieving mother holding her dead baby. I do not know, cannot claim to know, would not hint that I think I knew, the divine purpose behind that horror. But how much intellectual arrogance does it take to insist, as Templeton does, that there cannot be a loving purpose behind it? How could he know that? How could he know for sure (did he simply take it on faith?) that there is no afterlife where that mother and child now celebrate with joy unspeakable and full of glory? Or how could he know beyond a doubt that if the child had lived he would not have grown up to be a serial rapist? I don't know that either, of course, because I'm humbly agnostic about that child's future in the set of all counter-factual realities, but Templeton's belief requires certainty that - even in the eternal scheme of things - it was better for the child to live than to die in infancy. I simply don't know that.

There is a lot that I don't know. The Bible hammers away at that theme too, telling me that God's ways are above my ways, and his thoughts are above my thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). When Job came to question God's decisions, God answered him (essentially) "Hey Job. How do you make a hippopotamus?" Think about that. We who will never be able to assemble from scratch a single self-replicating cell ought to think twice about questioning the Wisdom that created and sustains all life.

The horrors in Haiti are not grounds for believing in the goodness and faithfulness of God: they are sorrows which lack the power to hinder such a faith that we have established or received on other grounds. I will discuss those grounds, Lord willing, next week. In the meantime, it is right to praise and thank God for every instance of rescue and provision and charity and heroism in Haiti. And it is right to acknowledge his goodness and wisdom and worthiness when, despite best efforts, everything goes horribly wrong.

January 12, 2010: To A Son Getting Married (Part 4)

One last piece of counsel, Ben, before I move on to other things. Simply this: share everything and hide nothing.

I recall a line of dialogue from a movie I saw years ago, though I can't remember the movie or whether I saw more than 30 seconds of it. A man was explaining to somebody the happiness of his marriage and said something like, "She knows the worst thing about me, and it is still ok." He was asked what that worst thing was, and said that he wasn't speaking about one thing in particular - just that generally she knew everything there was to know about him, and accepted him anyway. (Presumably he accepted her likewise.)

That kind of openness is essential. It is not right to hide things from your wife, or blindside her with sudden revelations that would devastate her. Get it all out there now.

Unless I am very self-deceived, I think I practice what I preach. I have only one email account, and Lisa knows the password. Everything I've written is available to her. She even knew my sexual orientation (January 20 and 27, 2009: "A Life Incongruent With Who You Are" and "Wait, Seriously?") before we got engaged. One of the first things I did when we began dating was give her your mother's phone number and email address so that, if she had questions about me, she could speak freely to the person who was married to me for 20 years. It was and is important for me that she see that all my cards are on the table. I have no secret bank accounts, she can see all the websites I visit, and - unlike Tiger Woods - I don't need to hide my phone from her.

It goes both ways of course. One of the things that first knit my heart to hers was her stunning transparency. It floored me. I saw immediately that she was as honest as a child who simply hasn't learned the subtle tricks of obfuscation and people-pleasing.

Be an open book to your wife, Ben. Tell her plainly what you like and don't like - don't make her have to guess. (At the same time, labor to become the kind of person who has so many likes and so few dislikes that Amy will find it easy to please you and hard to displease you.) Hide nothing. I have seen so many relationships ruined by secrets guarded and nurtured and indulged. Better to be like Johnny Depp in "Ed Wood" where he tells his girlfriend that - though heterosexual - he likes to wear women's clothing, or like Harvey Pekar in "American Splendor" when he tells a woman - before they can start a relationship - that he's had a vasectomy and won't be having children.

In the Bible God asks himself in Genesis 18:17, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" and decides that he will disclose everything to his chosen one. Likewise in John 15:15 Jesus tells his disciples, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."

Talk, reveal, do not shield, and keep doing that for the rest of your life.

Oh, and one more thing. Read the October 13, 2009 Pastor's Page "On Praising Spouses".

God bless you both.

January 5, 2010: To A Son Getting Married (Part 3)

Ben, be courteous to your wife.

You are a courteous man already, and this bodes well for your marriage. I’m writing this not as an admonition, really, but just as an encouragement to keep doing for the next few decades what you’re doing now.

The importance of showing common courtesy to your spouse is one of many things I remember being alerted to first in the writings of C. S. Lewis. He has an essay titled “The Sermon And The Lunch” where he talks about a clergyman who extols from the pulpit the sweet comfort of relaxed domesticity where a man can retreat from the world and just be himself. It turns out the minister practices what he preaches. When he’s home (as Lewis discovers as a lunch guest), the minister throws away all binding constraints of civility and treats his family with rudeness.

I’ve seen that kind of thing many times, and I’m sure you have too. There are men who treat their colleagues, clients, patients, students, customers, parishioners(!) with perfect professional courtesy during the day and then go home and are mean to their families at night. They would never think of being abrupt or dismissive toward a visitor at the office. Total strangers that they happen to meet are almost always received with grace. But at home they take off the mask of good will, and their spouses see a side of them that the world would never suspect.

My point is that you can never take off the mask. Wear it till it becomes you. If you will permit this contrastive analogy: though our spouses can see us naked and the rest of the world may not, even our spouses must never be allowed to see us denuded of common grace and good cheer.

You mentioned an incident where you walked into a room and the individual there neither looked up nor said “hello”. Perfect example. We accept that kind of behavior from someone with autism or related malady, but we know that if the snubber is not socially handicapped then he is just being hostile. He could never get away with such hostility in the workplace - especially if he had your job as a host at a restaurant!

I’m glad you have had the work experience of greeting people warmly hour after wearying hour no matter how contemptuously they treat you. That is good training. Greet your wife warmly too, even though you see her every day and she is no stranger. Familiarity with her will reduce the formality of your greetings but must never blunt their kindness.

Many years ago a co-worker of your grandfather eavesdropped on a phone conversation he had with your grandmother. Stunned by your grandfather’s affectionate way of addressing his wife, the man later said, “After 30 years of marriage I hope I’m talking to my wife the way Lowell does to his.” Go and do likewise.