The Goodness of God
It’s all too easy, as a Christian, to cast our relationship with God on our terms. I think that makes sense, because that’s what we do with all relationships—if you’re fighting with your significant other, you’re going to have a negative view of the relationship, even if they don’t view things the same way. Our bias skews us. I don’t think that we’re really all that capable of assuming the disinterested observer role in such situations, no matter how much we try.
Anytime we as Christians get to points where we look back upon life, we’re all prone to saying, “God has been so good to me.” We seem to say this as if we’re surprised by it … which is really curious. As Karyn says in her musing on the goodness of God (emphasis mine):
Because the past year has been full of difficult times for many of my friends, and because there continues to be misery in the world, it causes me to reflect on what exactly the “goodness of God†is.
I’d like to encourage you to join me as I ponder and try to think through the goodness of God. I don’t believe that “goodness†is an attribute which is defined by performance. I think God is good no matter what is happening in the world or my life, no matter what God does or does not provide for me. God is good (the grammar in that sentence reveals that the good is not dependent on God or His acts, but it is what or who He is). His very being defines what “good†is.
I think that it’s important in my quest to be more self-aware to be cognizant of this fact; just because I’m a horrible wreck of a person doesn’t mean that I have to let my relationship with God go to crap. His goodness is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
I recently read “Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius and it gave me a superb perspective on the goodness of God with its foundation in the fact that God is good itself. To quote, “So that it is by goodness that He rules all things, since He rules them by Himself and we have agreed that He is good. It is this which is the helm and rudder, so to speak, by which the fabric of the universe is kept constant and unimpaired.” These lines were written as Boethius was in jail on false charges and had lost everything “good” in his life.
I daresay the small book (154 pages) had such a profound effect on me, that I’ve adopted its philosophy as my own.
January 4th, 2005 at 23:22You just may have made my wife’s year by giving her this trackback. She believes no one cares what she writes.
January 7th, 2005 at 21:59I have always held the personal view that God wouldn’t be God if he wasn’t the most powerful thing out there (therefore it would make no sense for a pagan to say “my goddess is stronger than your God”). After reading this, I think I can say, too, that God wouldn’t be God if he wasn’t good.
Make sense or am I taking too much liberty?
January 11th, 2005 at 13:03Makes sense, Roger.
Oh, and Mark … Karyn is sooooooo wrong about people not caring about what she writes.
January 11th, 2005 at 14:26