Is the God of the Bible Good?

[Achilles6129]

Since this appears to be a central issue in debates on theology/philosophy I thought I’d start a thread and begin discussion. So is the God of the Bible good? What are everyone’s thoughts?

 

[Della]

According to whose definition of “good?” It isn’t whether or not God is protrayed as good in Scripture but what those who read it think good ought to be. If our understanding of good is skewed our interpretation of biblical passages will be, as well.

God is God. He simply is. His character is set and cannot change. It is human perceptions that changed as God dealt with human kind down through the centuries.

Most people know nothing about the covenants God made with men, why he seemingly appears fiercer in the OT than in the NT, etc. So, having an intelligent conversation with them is like trying to discuss college level subject matter with kindergarteners. It’s an exercise in futility because most people don’t want to learn the truth, or have no patience to be instructed or simply want to hand onto their biases so they can remain in their ignorance, live however they please, and then think they will be able to stand before God and tell him that he was unfair to judge them.

If people really want to understand, I’ll take the time to talk to them about this topic, but most don’t, so I usually don’t bother–at least not any more.

 

[Achilles6129]

According to whose definition of “good?” It isn’t whether or not God is protrayed as good in Scripture but what those who read it think good ought to be. If our understanding of good is skewed our interpretation of biblical passages will be, as well.

Well, the reason I ask is because there are certain things in Scripture (such as slavery, torture, extermination, etc.) that many people define as evil no matter what the context. So they would argue that there’s no possible context in which such things could be good and so therefore there’s no possible context in which the God of the Bible could be good.

 

[Neofight]

Since this appears to be a central issue in debates on theology/philosophy I thought I’d start a thread and begin discussion. So is the God of the Bible good? What are everyone’s thoughts?

Uh, just a hunch, and I don’t think I’m going out on much of a limb…but, I don’t think that on this particular website you’ll see much argument claiming God is not good!

 

[JurisPrudens]

Well, the reason I ask is because there are certain things in Scripture (such as slavery, torture, extermination, etc.) that many people define as evil no matter what the context. So they would argue that there’s no possible context in which such things could be good and so therefore there’s no possible context in which the God of the Bible could be good.

Let those people imagine they are travelling back in time. They get into the world when all of humanity were constantly struggling to survive. The resources were scarce, You would either have all of your kin die of starvation or wage war on another tribe to take their resources. A stranger was an enemy by definition - he was to be killed, otherwise he might disclose your secrets to the rival tribe.

Would modern moralists be able to discern in such world, what is good and what is bad?! Would they be able to teach their morals to our ancestors? Would they be able to take sides?

“Absolute” moral judgements, if they do not involve God, always fall prey to the tastes and fashions of each generation.

 

[Della]

Well, the reason I ask is because there are certain things in Scripture (such as slavery, torture, extermination, etc.) that many people define as evil no matter what the context. So they would argue that there’s no possible context in which such things could be good and so therefore there’s no possible context in which the God of the Bible could be good.

And if one asks for precise examples what do you get? Passages torn out of historical, cultural, and moral contexts. It’s easy to cherry pick this passage or that story, but to understand what God was doing with and in humanity at any particular time in history one needs to know the times and what the people were like at that time, and what God’s intentions were.

God stated his intentions quite clearly, but I rarely see those who dredge up examples of supposed unfairness or cruelty of God ever discuss them, because they aren’t interested in what God intended. They are only interested in “gotcha” tactics that make it seem as though they have the moral high ground. There have been upteen dozen threads on CAF about this very topic, and in each and every one of them those who tell us “the God of the Bible is cruel and unjust” have no more idea who God is and what he intended to do than a baby. They don’t really care to know, as I’ve already said. They’re only interested in throwing passages in our faces and then declaring victory no matter how patiently we’ve tried to explain God’s intentions and what the context of the times meant in those passages.

There may be some real inquirers out there, but I’ve run across very few. Most just want to justify their lack of belief, not hear any reasonable explanations of anything, sad to say.

 

[Rhubarb]

This question comes down to what the definition of “good” itself is. This is a feat that I don’t think any moral philosopher truly agrees on.

If you mean good in the colloquial sense, I guess we could debate. I don’t know if I’d say yes or no, but, I have trouble saying that some of the actions God took in the bible should be called ‘good.’ God striking Job to settle a bet with Satan seems pretty not-good to me. Sending demons into pigs and driving the pigs off a cliff seems pretty not-good to me. Withering a fig tree (because it had no figs, even though it wasn’t fig season) seems pretty not-good to me.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

According to whose definition of “good?” It isn’t whether or not God is protrayed as good in Scripture but what those who read it think good ought to be. If our understanding of good is skewed our interpretation of biblical passages will be, as well.

God is God. He simply is. His character is set and cannot change. It is human perceptions that changed as God dealt with human kind down through the centuries.

Of course you are starting in the correct place. Whose definition of good? I think there are really only two relevant answers to that question: God’s definition of goodness or our own human definition of goodness.

If we choose the first one, that God’s definition is important, then I would say that it is up to theists to provide a precise and non-circular explanation of what that definition is. That is to say, if you define goodness as “whatever God is” you end up with a tautological question. Asking “Is God good?” becomes equivalent to asking “Is God God?” People might be satisfied by saying that it is tautological, but remember that tautological statements don’t tell us anything useful. In other words, if we say that God is “good according to God” we haven’t learned anything about whether or not the second definition (i.e. our own human definition) would find God good. If you’ve ever used “God’s goodness” as a reason for believing stuff like “God will take care of me” you can’t take the tautological position here. After all, such beliefs are proof that you think God’s goodness does mean something.

If we take the human definition of goodness, though, then it is not nearly as trivial to brush away the less rosy parts of the bible.

Most people know nothing about the covenants God made with men, why he seemingly appears fiercer in the OT than in the NT, etc. So, having an intelligent conversation with them is like trying to discuss college level subject matter with kindergarteners. It’s an exercise in futility because most people don’t want to learn the truth, or have no patience to be instructed or simply want to hand onto their biases so they can remain in their ignorance, live however they please, and then think they will be able to stand before God and tell him that he was unfair to judge them.

If people really want to understand, I’ll take the time to talk to them about this topic, but most don’t, so I usually don’t bother–at least not any more.

When you don’t start off with a strict definition of goodness, it of course becomes possible to justify anything. From the illnesses that God inflicted on innocent civilians, to the children he killed, there is no incompatibility with the “tautological” definition I already covered.

However, if we reject the tautological definition of goodness, I’ve seen that the rest of the discussion generally covers the following ideas:

1. The old testament stories are a-historical and therefore don’t count. God isn’t evil because he never actually did the things in the old testament stories (or the old testament authors were mistaken about what God wanted.)
2. God had some overarching plan for humanity, and the importance of the plan was greater than the importance of the people he killed. In other words, God did the things in the Old Testament, but his ends justified his means.
3. God knew something about each scenario (that we can’t know) that justified what he did. The people killed by God deserved it.

You’ve claimed that you can make elaborate “college level” explanations for what is going on, and I’d love to hear it. However, when building elaborate scaffolds of reasoning, we have to always keep in mind the alternative. In this case the alternative is that the god of the bible is NOT some perfect all-knowing and loving being but rather the product of a primitive culture mythologizing. To me, it seems that this alternative is the much simpler and straightforward option; to reject such an obvious answer for the elaborate mental scaffolds requires a motivator. For religious believers, the motivation is clear (their religious beliefs hinge on it) but I have yet to see a decent explanation for why non-believers would want to build the complex mental architecture required to salvage the goodness of the God of the bible.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

There may be some real inquirers out there, but I’ve run across very few. Most just want to justify their lack of belief, not hear any reasonable explanations of anything, sad to say.

I’ve found “defenders of the faith” are often fairly hypocritical when it comes to issues of the old testament. The question I ask, to make sure that you are not one of the hypocritical people, is “Would you be willing to sacrifice one of your children to the LORD, if he commanded it of you?”

You might think this is some attempt at “justifying my lack of belief,” but I think it is a central issue in this discussion. If you really believe what you are arguing here (i.e. that God is inherently and perfectly good) there can be no hesitation in the answer to this question. Why would you defy the orders a perfectly “good” being? Wasn’t it commendable of Abraham to submit to God’s and have faith in His goodness in the face of such an extreme request?

I can honestly say that I would not be willing to kill my own child because a god told me to. Maybe you would be willing. But I think it is hypocritical to defend the goodness of the Old Testament God if you answer the question in the negative. You can not really believe God is all good if you would not trust Him in that situation.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

The answer is so simple that it might be embarrassing. If a human would behave like God is supposed to have behaved in the Bible, the last word we would associate with God is “good”. If we look at the observable reality it answer is the same.

Let’s just pick a small segment, the world of the microbes. About 95% of the microbes are either neutral or beneficial. The remaining 5% are harmful. The most “vicious” one of the harmful ones kill their hosts, they die themselves in the process. So they are not beneficial even to themselves. A “good” creator would never create beings, which are harmful to everyone, including themselves.

As the other posters pointed out, if one wishes to utter the phrase “God is good”, then he must “castrate” the word “good” until it becomes meaningless.

 

[tonyrey]

I’ve found “defenders of the faith” are often fairly hypocritical when it comes to issues of the old testament. The question I ask, to make sure that you are not one of the hypocritical people, is “Would you be willing to sacrifice one of your children to the LORD, if he commanded it of you?”

 

[Aloysium]

JapaneseKappa;13278091:

I entirely agree. Abraham trusted God because he was convinced His child would be saved by a miracle and, sure enough, it happened. But like the rest of us he wasn’t infallible. He believed God wanted him to sacrifice his child but he was gravely mistaken. He may well have been deceived by Satan who puts evil thoughts into people’s minds. Or perhaps he had committed a serious sin for which he wanted to atone. The Jewish belief in sacrifice was deeply rooted as in most primitive religions. Whatever the reason, Abraham was unjustified in his failure to consult others. It is absurd to blame God for a human error.

Abraham is to be commended for his deep trust in God yet he had excessive confidence in his own judgment. That is the high road to fanaticism - of which both believers and atheists have been guilty. To think we know precisely what God wants and to think God doesn’t exist are both symptoms of intellectual pride. It isn’t God who is to blame for our defects and vices but we who set ourselves up as authorities on subjects of which we are woefully ignorant. Pride and ignorance are at the root of all the needless suffering in the world. That is the real lesson of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice. We should put humility and love for others before everything else in spite of what we claim to believe or disbelieve… and stop behaving as if we have privileged insight into the nature of reality.

Let’s not forget that it was Isaac who was to make the sacrifice.

The son of the father of our faith (a revelation of the sacrifice of the Lamb at the foundation of the earth and later incarnation of the Word), carried the wood on his back up the mountain to where it would be used for his sacrifice as an innocent, to redeem humanity.

But God was to supply the sacrifice, then and later in Jesus Christ, His son.

Demonstrating their faith and willingness to serve God, it was through Isaac that our Saviour would come.

 

[tonyrey]

Let’s just pick a small segment, the world of the microbes. About 95% of the microbes are either neutral or beneficial. The remaining 5% are harmful. The most “vicious” one of the harmful ones kill their hosts, they die themselves in the process. So they are not beneficial even to themselves. A “good” creator would never create beings, which are harmful to everyone, including themselves.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I entirely agree. Abraham trusted God because he was convinced His child would be saved by a miracle and, sure enough, it happened. But like the rest of us he wasn’t infallible. He believed God wanted him to sacrifice his child but he was gravely mistaken. He may well have been deceived by Satan who puts evil thoughts into people’s minds. Or perhaps he had committed a serious sin for which he wanted to atone. The Jewish belief in sacrifice was deeply rooted as in most primitive religions. Whatever the reason, Abraham was unjustified in his failure to consult others. It is absurd to blame God for a human error.

Abraham is to be commended for his deep trust in God yet he had excessive confidence in his own judgment. That is the high road to fanaticism - of which both believers and atheists have been guilty. To think we know precisely what God wants and to think God doesn’t exist are both symptoms of intellectual pride. It isn’t God who is to blame for our defects and vices but we who set ourselves up as authorities on subjects of which we are woefully ignorant. Pride and ignorance are at the root of all the needless suffering in the world. That is the real lesson of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice. We should put humility and love for others before everything else in spite of what we claim to believe or disbelieve… and stop behaving as if we have privileged insight into the nature of reality.

So what you’re saying is that when faced with a command from God that appears to be in violation of our own human definition of goodness, we are right to regard it with skepticism and judge it by our own understanding of morality. Abraham would have been more praiseworthy if he had… convened a court and put God’s command on trial?

In other words, it seems like you are saying that the correct way to answer the question of “is God good?” is to humbly use our own understanding of morality.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Since this appears to be a central issue in debates on theology/philosophy I thought I’d start a thread and begin discussion. So is the God of the Bible good? What are everyone’s thoughts?

I think a better question would be whether the God of the Bible is actually what we think of as God. People have been trying to reconcile the God of Philosophy with the anthropomorphized God of the Bible at least since Philo in the first century.

 

[Della]

If we speak of a human definition of goodness, we must then ask: Which humans’ definition of goodness? Since there isn’t a consensus on that, it’s a pointless thing to assert.

God’s goodness has nothing whatsoever to do with our ideas of goodness because our ideas can (and too often are) arbitrary. God’s aren’t. He made us, we didn’t make him. He calls the shots, not us. Since we lost God’s grace in the fall of man we cannot presume to know anything about God’s goodness. It is we who answer to God not God to us.

God is not concerned with our definitions of his goodness but with us acknowledging that he is God, and we aren’t. That is the beginning of wisdom in all things. Without acknowledging this simple truth nothing more can be accepted or understood by us fallen human beings.

God’s grace has been poured out on mankind in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. That is what we here and now need to be concerned with. The way God dealt with mankind before Christ’s coming is important for us to know in that it tells us that God is God, and we aren’t. That he will exact justice because he is just. That we cannot think we will escape God’s justice merely because we don’t want to believe it exists. But, that all those who acknowledge God and seek for him will find him and his mercy for God is also love.

 

[mikekle]

Well, the reason I ask is because there are certain things in Scripture (such as slavery, torture, extermination, etc.) that many people define as evil no matter what the context. So they would argue that there’s no possible context in which such things could be good and so therefore there’s no possible context in which the God of the Bible could be good.

IMO, the people trying to push those things, they believe Lucifer is actually the ‘good guy’ and Jesus was the evil one. Ive read quite a bit on this topic, they distort verses and make Satan out to be the true messiah, of course, they claim THIS is the deception the bible refers to, in that people are fooled into believing the good guy is actually the bad guy, and vice verse.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If we speak of a human definition of goodness, we must then ask: Which humans’ definition of goodness? Since there isn’t a consensus on that, it’s a pointless thing to assert.

I don’t believe there is a consensus on any definition of goodness. Is the original question therefore meaningless? No, we can pick a definition of goodness and follow it through to see if God is good according to that definition. For example, if you were to provide some definition of goodness-according-to-Catholicism that didn’t fall into the tautological camp, we could have a discussion.

God’s goodness has nothing whatsoever to do with our ideas of goodness because our ideas can (and too often are) arbitrary. God’s aren’t. He made us, we didn’t make him. He calls the shots, not us. Since we lost God’s grace in the fall of man we cannot presume to know anything about God’s goodness. It is we who answer to God not God to us.

God is not concerned with our definitions of his goodness but with us acknowledging that he is God, and we aren’t. That is the beginning of wisdom in all things. Without acknowledging this simple truth nothing more can be accepted or understood by us fallen human beings.

God’s grace has been poured out on mankind in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. That is what we here and now need to be concerned with. The way God dealt with mankind before Christ’s coming is important for us to know in that it tells us that God is God, and we aren’t. That he will exact justice because he is just. That we cannot think we will escape God’s justice merely because we don’t want to believe it exists. But, that all those who acknowledge God and seek for him will find him and his mercy for God is also love.

So you are saying: God does what he wants, we can’t know why, but he is totally good, trust me!

The problem with such a pronouncement is that you’ve mixed in a bunch of things other than goodness without a firm basis for doing so. For example, you say that God is just. But why should God be just? Typically the argument is that God has all “great making properties” or that God is perfect or something like that. However, in order to go from those premises to “God is Just” requires that we define goodness. Why? Because when we ask “what are great making properties” the answer is “properties that make a being better.” Or, more relevantly, “properties that make a being more good.”

Now you’ve just finished saying that God doesn’t care about our definitions of goodness, and that we shouldn’t presume to know what his goodness is like. So how then can you know that God is just? If we want to make God in our own image we could use our own definitions of goodness and say that being just is more good. But God’s definition is not the same as ours. It could be the opposite, or God could be neither just nor unjust. Who are we to say? God calls the shots, not us.

 

[tonyrey]

So what you’re saying is that when faced with a command from God that appears to be in violation of our own human definition of goodness, we are right to regard it with skepticism and judge it by our own understanding of morality. Abraham would have been more praiseworthy if he had… convened a court and put God’s command on trial?

There is no such thing as “our own understanding of morality” unless you are referring to the law of the jungle which is demonstrated by the blood-stained history of the human race. In an amoral universe morality is merely a human convention with no rational basis whatsoever. The principles of liberty, equality and** fraternity** are based on the teaching of Jesus that we are all** brothers and sisters** with one Father in heaven, not just accidental freaks of nature related solely by an accident of birth.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t believe there is a consensus on any definition of goodness…

Obviously there is no consensus on any definition of goodness among people who believe there is no reason why we exist because for them goodness is an illusion. Garbage in garbage out…