The God One

I've been reading Mere Christianity as a part of my personal study, and everytime I read something it gets me thinking.

The truth is, there's a thought that has been bugging me for a while. It seems as if the majority of people are mistaken in their view of God - and it boils down to something pretty simple.

"God is good."

Well, then they ask: If God is good, why does he let people suffer? If God loves us, why is he going to send people to hell?

And here, they've missed the point.

God is not "good" in the sense that you or I am "good." If our dog, Max, is being good, he gets a bit of rawhide to chew on. But God isn't about "being good" - he "is good."

If you assume that there is a God, and that thus he has supreme power and authority and create the world (or at least has a lot of say in what goes on in it), you assume that he's so much bigger than this world - what is the point of him "being good?" He doesn't have to; he has no one to fool.

God is "good" - he created the concept! So then, if God is everything good, he cannot stand evil. It cannot be in his presence. Hence the reality of hell: We, as human beings, are sinful. We are tainted; we are impure. We cannot be in his presence, but for his forgiveness that makes us righteous, because we cannot become "good" on our own.

Ah ah ah! So then we get to the other point: why do bad things happen?

Once again, we assume that if there is a God, he created the world (and that's not a huge leap to assume). In the same way that a mother and father love the child they created together, God loves the people he created. However, he gave us free will.

Why did he give us free will? I think that it's because he wants us to experience the same love that he has for us. If we were puppets bound to his bidding, would our love for him mean anything? No! So, if he gives us free will, we have to choose to love him - and this means a whole lot more.

But, we are not perfect by nature - sin is in the world. And we can choose the wrong thing. So, bad things happen. Do I think that it is sin that causes tragedies, like tsunamis or hurricanes or earthquakes? I'm not sure. What I am sure of, is that tragedies give us an opportunity to choose how we deal with it.

So, my conclusion: God is good, and we have a choice.

If only, through all my musings (and deductions based on other sources, including the Bible), I could answer the question that currently frustrates me: Why did he create people in the first place? He didn't need us to do his work... Maybe it's a love thing. After all, we were made in his image...

And the musing continues.