the weary

The Goodness of God

Recently I had a good friend decide that he no longer believed in the Bible as authoritative, but
as perhaps a guide to life with some good pointers. This  friend whom I deeply respect seems to have combined Judaism, Christianity and Islam into something entirely new. It has prompted me to deeply seek the reason for my faith in Christ, as the Son of God, and Messiah who died on the cross and rose again. I don't have all the answers but I'm prepared to think out loud.  It guts me that should the Truth be alive and well within Christianity, Christians are not able or prepared to defend it or proclaim it - not even with their words alone. This is the beginning of my attempts to articulate what I have come to believe .

The Goodness of God

God is good by his very nature[1], He is morally perfect[2].  The way He relates and also what He relates is always good; God’s goodness is therefore expressed in relation to His Creation[3]. His goodness is manifested in His love towards His creatures but the goodness of God is however not an emotion, it is a way of being; for He chastises, destroys and punishes out of his goodness also[4]. It restricts how He relates to his creation in that He is so compelled in exuding goodness that He limits Himself by excluding contradictory options - regarless of their relevancy.[5]

The practical application can be seen in our relationships with each other, creation and God. As image bearers we too should exude goodness in the way we care for humanity.[6] Our being ‘in the world but not of the world’[7] is a living expression as image bearers to God’s goodness in obedience, rather than emotion[8]. Christians should therefore be at the forefront of mercy and justice[9] and the redemption of a fallen world, a broken and abused creation, by engagement, stewardship and the liberating freedom of self denial[10].

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[1] Should nothing else exist, God would not cease to be good for it is His very essence.

[2] 3202 tob (Edward W. Goodrick and John R. Kohlenberger III 1990)

[3] (Gen 1:4, Psalm 25:8)

[4] (Ex.34:6-7)

[5] An example is Exodus 32:11 where Moses pleads with God to remember his commitment to Israel when He wants to destroy them, God repents in regards to His relationship with Israel and the option to destroy them is no longer available because of his established promise to them.

[6] (Col 2:8, Matthew 25:31-46)

[7] (John 15:18-19)

[8] (James 4:4)

[9] (Micah 6:8)

[10] As God limits His options by His goodness, so should we refrain from aspects of a fallen world that are not good.

theology and the real world

I've been thinking lately, now that I am doing a bit of digging into Theology, that there is a realistic gap between the language of Theologians, and perhaps the concepts they work towards, and the real world in laymen terms. 

Theology talks about concepts that are often guesswork ( like the concept of Q) but do add a perspective...that can't be confirmed or denied. In the everyday of shopping and pumping gas nobody cares about Q or really where the information for the gospels came from. In reality most people who read the book of Mark, believe that a guy named Mark wrote it from his own life and perspective. They believe he lived around the time of Jesus and that's good enough for most people. 

I don't really care where or what Q is about or came from. Why can't it just simply be the 'talk of the town' that everybody knew about back then. 

It seems an easy trap to get stuck in an intellectual world that convinces itself that 'pondering and critiquing and clarifying concepts' is the contribution they need to make. I'm not sure that is entirely true but I'm still thinking about it. The trap is they do nothing with their lives in the real world, but exist in their circles of influence entertaining each other and not feeding the poor. hmmm

something I want to think more about. Somebody has to think deeply...