Can we subject God to questioning?

Something that always perplexed me about the Book of Job is that it seems God doesn't consider Himself accountable to His creatures.

From Wikipedia:

God's speech also emphasizes his sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world. The thrust is not merely that God has experiences that Job does not, but that God is king over the world and is not necessarily subject to questions from his creatures, including men. The point of these speeches is to proclaim the absolute freedom of God over His creation. God is not in need of the approval of his creation. It is only the reader of the book who learns of God's conversations with Satan; Job himself remains unaware of the reason or source of his sufferings. The traditional interpretation is that, humbled by God's chastising, Job turns speechless, giving up and repenting his previous requests of justice. However, another interpretation is that Job's silence is defiant, and that what he gives up is not his belief that justice be done, but his confidence that God will behave justly.

I don't mean that God has no good reason to allow suffering. God may have a fantastic reason. My concern was I didn't understand why we can't hold God to account.

For example, surely if you had a child who was suffering, while their parent was standing around and could seemingly assist that child, then it would be reasonable to demand that the parent explain their inaction. Maybe the parent has an excellent reason, e.g. the pain involved in the medical operation was necessary for the child's future health. But, at least with parents, courts can demand an explanation for apparently negligent actions.

It occurred to me that one way to justify the Book of Job's position might come from the definition of God.

Consider these verses:

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

Titus 1:2: "in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago"

Hebrews 6:18: "God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged."

They seem to say that God is unable, not just unwilling, to sin (maybe because sin means acting on some untruth, and truth is so firmly planted in God that He cannot so act).

If you define God as a being who is unable - not just unwilling, but unable - to commit evil, then asking God whether or not He is committing evil seems a bit silly. It would be like defining a triangle as an object with three sides and then asking why there is no fourth side. E.g. the answer why there is no fourth side is that a triangle can only have three sides. Similarly, if God is defined as unable to do evil, then you already know whether that particular God has committed evil before you even ask the question.

Under the definition of God as a being who is unable to commit evil, it's fair to say that you shouldn't demand that God tell you whether He is committing evil. Why? Because, with that assumption, the question doesn't make sense. If you already accept that God is unable to do evil, then the answer has to be: God didn't commit evil.

So I suppose you can make an argument that if you are running with view that God is unable to commit evil, then you shouldn't question God because the question is nonsensical.

Applying this to Job, one main difference is that even though the Bible tells us that God is unable to commit evil, by looking at the world we can have some doubt about that. So are we really in the position of being able to say God cannot commit evil before we discuss the problem of suffering?

If we can't start off with that assumption, then you can't say that questioning God is nonsensical.

I would say that if we look at the world, then yes, we don't know that God is a being who is unable to commit evil, but consider the issue from the point-of-view of a God who is unable to commit evil and created the world. According to this God's point-of-view, He is allowed to disagree with our negative impression. For this God knows the real situation. So from that God's point-of-view, maybe He is allowed to say, 'Well, if you knew the truth, then you would know it is nonsensical to question me', and put forth this view to His creations.

In summing up, I think that for people who don't know that God cannot commit evil, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to question God. But this doesn't take away from the fact that from God's point-of-view, questioning His goodness is literally nonsensical (assuming us Christians are right), on the basis of inability. That is, on the basis that God is unable to do evil, it makes no sense to ask whether God did evil. So I suppose that God could in this way have a right to tell people they are unable to question His ethical conduct.

Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?

God knows everything, right? So God knew who would choose not to follow Him and therefore who would go to hell. So God could, clearly, have prevented a lot of suffering by simply not creating those people. But God didn't.

How does one respond to this issue?

What I would say is that if it was that easy for God to solve the problem, then God would do so, based on verses like these:

1 Tim 2:3-4: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'"

2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his word, as he seems to some, but he is waiting in mercy for you, not desiring the destruction of any, but that all may be turned from their evil ways."

Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, putting to death the prophets, and stoning those who are sent to her! Again and again would I have taken your children to myself as a bird takes her young ones under her wings, and you would not!"

Turning to philosophy, what I might conjecture is that God can make us knowing everything we'll do, but not use that knowledge to make or not make certain people.

Creating a person could be a bit like flipping a coin that will come up 50/50 heads or tails. You can't make it go heads or tails. So just like I can't make a random coin toss always come up heads, God can't make people who will always choose a certain way.

However, unlike flipping the coin God *does* know everything about us before we are born. So in that respect what we have here is something very unlike flipping a coin. God knows but this knowledge is not 'actionable', God can't avoid making the people who will choose badly.

This is venturing further into speculation but it might be that once a soul exists God knows everything about it, including how it will choose in all possible situations. So once God guarantees that a soul will exist, God knows everything about it. However, without making the soul there is nothing can God know about it, because the knowing is based on that soul actually existing - not merely potentially existing. Because before it's created there is not a potential set of choices, there is actually no set of choices at all, because you need a real person to have a potential set of choices to look at, not a mere idea of a person.

(I found this answer interesting as well).

Why should we worship God?

A question that people who aren't Christian often ask is why should we worship God? What right does God have to legitimately want worship from us? Isn't God a megalomaniac for making heaven involve praising Him?

There's an analogy I've started to use a lot to explain why I would want to worship God that borrows from everyday life.

Let's say you have a friend who is an amazingly good person. They are 100% genuine, kind, respectful, trustworthy, dependable, etc. They are generous to a fault, and are a very kind husband/wife who works very hard to support their family. They sacrifice a lot to help others, even people who aren't their friends or relatives.

Now, you would, I suppose, respect them a lot, and this would just be a natural reaction to the truth of the situation.

Now, what if God is perfectly loving (and not just perfectly good but also can't be tempted otherwise), infinite in abilities and knowledge, and is the creator of everything? Then respecting God and putting God at the centre of one's life is not anything different from one's presumed reaction to that friend - it would just be a natural reaction to the truth.

And we say, as Christians, that God really is all those good things, and so worshipping God is a natural reaction to the truth of the situation like respecting that friend is a reaction to the truth.

Was the atonement obligatory?

In the book of Romans, 5:7-8, Paul says:

"Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."

A problem with this paragraph is that if God hadn't 'made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf' (2 Co 5:21), then we would have kept our sin and consequently suffered separation from God when God could have done something about it. In this situation, it doesn't seem as though dying for us is especially praiseworthy, because it seems obligatory for God to step in and save us if He can do so.

But I'm not entirely sure that this analysis is correct.

Take a situation where someone is a very heavy drinker and has made the choice to drink themselves into unconsciousness as often as they can. A family member or friend would be right to feel concerned about the heavy drinker, but are they obligated to stage an intervention and forcibly commit the heavy drinker to some kind of rehabilitation?

On the one hand, if the heavy drinker knows what they are doing, then perhaps the family member or friend should accept the heavy drinker's choice and let them destroy their life. On the other hand, maybe feelings of concern make it right to commit the heavy drinker to rehabilitation. Is there an obligation to do the latter?

What if staging an intervention is very costly to the family member or friend? Suppose that the family member needs to give up his/her life savings to pay for the heavy drinker to be rehabilitated and as a consequence they must accept a much lower quality of life whenever they stop working. Is there an obligation on the family member/friend to arrange an intervention at great personal cost?

I believe that if someone is making a very self-destructive decision, then an intervention may be obligatory if it does not come at a great personal cost, depending on the situation. However, if an intervention comes at a great personal cost, and the person who is destroying their life knows what they are doing, then I doubt there is an obligation.

How does this relate to God and the quote in Romans, though?

It seems reasonable to imagine that before someone becomes a Christian they don't really care that much about the Christian God and don't wish to commit themselves to that God. It's also reasonable to think that before someone becomes a Christian the prospect of an eternity living without God is not a particularly frightening prospect, unless they follow another religion where this is that religion's idea of hell.

This implies that when God saves someone God has to change our desires so that we will not want to go through an eternity apart from, and not giving recognition to, God (Eph 2:1: "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,")

In this respect, God is like someone intervening in someone's life because they think someone is going down the wrong track, when that person doesn't want their help (at that time) and, if someone is OK with the prospect of not being with God forever, knows what they are doing.

The other point is that God had to pay an enormous personal cost in saving us. If God performs a miracle so that you receive $1,000,000,000, then that doesn't really cost God anything even if we really appreciate it. God is all-powerful after all. But Jesus' death for us on the cross is perhaps the only good thing God has done that cost God immensely (1 Co 6:20: "for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.") The cost that God paid was not simply being crucified, but included bearing all of humanity's sins, which may have involved pain and suffering that we cannot imagine. God did it because of the joy He would have in seeing us come to know Him for an eternity (Heb 12:2: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.")

The conclusion is that if you combine 1) someone intervening in someone's life to help them when they know what they are doing and they do not want help, with 2) the intervention coming at a great personal cost, then there is not necessarily any moral obligation to help. This means that Paul is right when he praises God for saving us, assuming our situation fits with (1) and (2).

A discussion about Biblical slavery

Someone wrote something criticising the God of the Bible for allowing or even endorsing slavery in the Bible, and this is what I wrote in response (which I've edited a bit), which I thought might be worth sharing:

I want to point out that there are some 'ameliorating' factors here.

One is that there was no social security system in Israel back then, apart from having a large family. In the West, we're used to the idea that even if we have no job and no family to live with that everything will still end up OK. But in the ancient near east, this situation may lead to our death. So suppose someone was out of work for a while in ancient Israel, without family or social security, then they would probably starve. So if God allows people to sell themselves into slavery, then there is a kind of social security in that for people who can't get a job as long as the slaves have lots of rights securing their protection from harm etc.

Actually, there weren't supposed to be any poor people in Israel at all because of God's very generous welfare laws (Deu 15:4, Lev 25:35-7). But there has to be a backup plan in case that fails.

Slavery for Israelites was supposed to be voluntary and they are supposed to be treated as "hired workers", i.e. like employees (Lev 25:39-42). They are supposed to work for a maximum of 7 years, and at the end of that time to be released with a generous supply of goods (Deu 15:12-14).

Note though that slaves who were sold to Israel from other nations (in the international slave trade) did not have the right to be released every seven years. But we read in Deut 23:15-6:

"If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. 16 Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him."

Which means that slaves can choose to be free by running away (but not everyone agrees with this interpretation, see here).

Note also that God doesn't endorse the slave trade, because the Bible condemns 'men stealing', i.e. kidnapping to sell into slavery, in 1 Tim 1:9-10.

In terms of protections for slaves, they got to have a Sabbath (Ex 23:12), and in every seventh year slaves had the same right as wealthy people, free people, etc. to the harvest of that year (Lev 25:6).

Moreover, if you killed any slave, then you yourself would be killed under the 'life for life' clause (Gen 9:6). If you inflicted any permanent marks or injuries on a slave, then the slave had to be set free to compensate (Ex 21:26-7). If a slave owner beats a slave without inflicting permanent marks or injuries, but leaves them bedridden for more than two days, laws would apply that punish the owner (Ex 21:23-7). Now, this is still not acceptable, but it's quite different to American slavery.

One view on why slavery exists in the Old Testament is that there is a good reason to have something to provide social security and God compromised with the Israelites so that turned out to be slavery rather than e.g. an income tax and pension system, like in modern developed economies. The Bible says that God let Moses compromise regarding divorce and polygamy (Matt 19:7-8), so God may have allowed this with slavery as well but if and only if it has a strong social security benefit where there is no other way to provide social security.

A good verse on slavery from the New Testament (apart from the one that condemns 'men stealing' for the slave trade in 1 Tim 1:9-10) in the Bible comes from Eph 6:9 which destroys the institution of slavery without actually making it illegal. In Eph 6:9 slave masters are told to "obey [their] [slaves] with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men" when read in conjunction with Eph 6:5-7. This isn't just telling slave owners to be nice to slaves, but is telling them to serve their slaves like someone might serve God, or like people in marriage should serve each other. Doing this would create a pretty weird dynamic in a slave-owning house and would make the institution ridiculous.

Looking at the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, Part 1

Skeptics often object to God's character in the Old Testament, and one event that is often mentioned is God's order that the Israelites conquer Canaan.

As a thought experiment, I thought I would make a list of conditions and see whether people think that the conquest of Canaan would have been OK for God to order if all the conditions I'm about to mention were perfectly fulfilled. This list heavily borrows from an article by someone called Glenn Miller who runs 'A Christian Thinktank', available here.

I admit that it requires turning the dial on the benefit of the doubt given to God up to 11, but it arguably makes sense as Glenn Miller points out. In a later article I might argue for how the Bible can support this interpretation, but first I want to see whether people agree that these conditions would make it OK for God to order the invasion if they were perfectly satisfied. Glenn Miller does a much better job at that than I would anyway.

1. God ordering the Israelites to conquer Canaan is not an act of favouritism towards the Israelites, or 'dis-favouritism' towards the Canaanites. That is, the conquest was supported by God according to an impartial set of criteria that need not refer to any specific group or persons.
2.1 If it's possible for a cultural group to 'earn', somehow, getting forced out of their homeland because of morally bad practices (both as a judgement and as a way of reforming that culture). There are morally bad practices that can do this.
2.2 The Canaanites had extraordinarily bad moral practices. So basically the Biblical portrait isn't a caricature but somehow real. E.g. child sacrifice, sex slavery, if they were a 'war culture' that periodically destroyed neighbouring cultures as well as suffering a lot of internal fights, etc.
2.3 The Canaanite culture threatened neighbouring cultures so much that stopping their raiding and attacks on other groups would have had a huge protective benefit for the area.
3.1 If the Canaanites were given a lot of warnings from God before the Israelites came that their practices were not OK and that they needed to change their behaviour or there would be serious consequences.
3.2.1 If God was willing to cancel the invasion of Canaan if the Canaanites had changed their behaviour based on clear warnings, and...
3.2.2 The warnings were clear, and...
3.2.3 God gave them plenty of time to change.
4.1 If when the invasion happened the Israelites had to offer peace first before attacking a city and it is only on the condition that a city rejected peace that it was attacked.
4.2 If the city accepted peace, then 'tolerable' conditions were placed upon its inhabitants.
4.3 'Tolerable' conditions include a conquered city's inhabitants acknowledging the authority of Israel, paying annual tribute, and being able to be called on to perform works of public service in times of need (e.g. repairing city walls) (see Gill's commentary here).
4.4 Deuteronomy 20:10-16 does not contradict point 4 because God was willing to apply point 4 to the central Canaanite cities and did not do so only because God knew that they would reject any negotiation with the Israelites under the terms above. So God wanted to apply point 4 to them, but God's awareness of how the Canaanites would react made that pointless (see Clarke's commentary here).
5.1 If a city was attacked, almost all of the people who were killed were combatants/soldiers who had chosen to stay and fight...
5.2 Because the Israelites were not to pursue people who ran away and...
5.3 Civilians/non-combatants could easily run away, resettle in another area, and escape the Israelite conquest because of their somewhat nomadic style of civilization and...
5.4 Had plenty of time to resettle in another area and knew for a long time that it would be a sensible thing to do, because they had known for a long time that the Israelites were coming and were given plenty of warnings about their great power and intentions to conquer the land...
5.5 Partly because the Israelite conquest of Canaan was quite slow and gradual, and...
5.6 Civilians/non-combatants did run away. So civilians, or non-combatants, were rarely subjected to violence because they could easily flee and did so.
5.7 Although it's not highlighted in the Biblical verses, this is something that went on all the time 'behind the scenes'.
6.1 If God's purpose was not to kill Canaanites but to drive them out of that area, to push their culture and society out of that area and...
6.2 In fact this is what happened - not genocide but relocation, as reflected in the overall balance of Biblical verses on the conquest and descriptions of what actually happened written after the event in other parts of the Bible, i.e. the Canaanites are still around for a long time afterwards.

So if this is what was going on and you can read the Bible as saying this, then is God in the clear?

The persuasiveness of this sort of defense of God depends a lot on how one judges God. Does one give God a defense or justification as long as that defense hangs together as a coherent idea that could hypothetically be true? Or not make that assumption?

A God with emotions makes sense

Is it really a massive assumption to say that God can feel emotions?

It's true that God didn't evolve and has none of the physical components of emotion, like the release of certain chemicals in a brain, etc. That's true. But think about what emotions involve in terms of reason...

Can you feel anger without perceiving that someone has failed to meet an obligation? I don't think that you can. Can you do something on the basis of, "I will treat others the way I want to be treated," without feeling empathy? No - if you incorporate that value into your actions, then that = feeling empathy. Can you feel envy without perceiving a lack in your life? No, you have to perceive a lack in some area of your life to feel envy, etc.

So acting on certain kinds of practical reasons, or reasons to do with action = feeling certain emotions.

When you think about it logically, one would have to conclude that any kind of practical reason could probably be matched to an emotion. This would include emotions that humans have no experience of if you assume that there are practical reasons that humans never relate to but which other species do (uniquely alien or animal emotions).

So a basic emotion, a chemical emotion, like anger is actually an act of practical rationality or exercise of practical reason. In the case of anger: someone not meeting a perceived obligation.

And rationality is something that is very broad and goes way beyond evolution. Rationality is something not even restricted to the physical universe! It is something we could share with robots, aliens, and even creatures outside our universe.

So, at the end of the day, that's why I think that a God who feels emotions makes sense if you interpret emotion as rationality to do with action. Because a God who acts is a God with some understanding of emotion, of what it basically is, even if God's version of emotion is very different to ours.

And, of course, any creator God is a God of action, because God has proved He/She/It acts. Of course, a creator God has created the universe.

Going beyond this issue, a vague 'God who acts', who feels something like emotion, is different from a loving God who cares deeply about His creations, like the Christian God. But I don't see why God having no love is seen automatically to make much more sense than God having love. We probably feel that the existence of a loving God needs more of an explanation than a God of pitiless indifference. But if you, on the other hand, assume that finite reason cannot understand an infinite God, then how do we know an (infinite) God of love needs more of an explanation than an (infinite) God without love? If we can't use finite reason to understand what's going on when it comes to God?

Why would God allow Satan to do stuff?

One of the reasons why belief in a devil - a malevolent being who tempts people into doing more bad things than they would otherwise do - is criticised is that it is hard to imagine why God would allow such a being to tempt humanity (another problem of a mind without a body is not as difficult because it's possible there can be bodies that aren't physical in the sense we're accustomed to). Let's re-examine this 'absurdity' from a philosophical point-of-view.

There was a debate on Nightline a while ago (YouTube link) which discussed the existence of the Biblical character Satan. One of the persons in favour of an actual Satan said that she became a Christian because such a character existed, or in a skeptical explanation because she experienced a negative force that acted like Satan (i.e. self-destructive urges in human nature).

I find this statement interesting because it seems that many, many people become Christians because there is a sort of self-destructive or selfish force within people. What sometimes happens is that people's lives are falling apart and they need to make a choice between giving in to the self-destructiveness, and falling into an 'abyss', or giving their life to the Jesus of the gospels. In this way many people decide to do a complete turnaround and commit their lives to Jesus.

I see hence a reason why God might allow humanity to be tempted beyond what would 'normally' occur. A Satan character could magnify and make more extreme the self-destructive impulses within us. A lot of the time this would just be bad. But sometimes, through being forced to make a stark choice between life/death, becoming like Jesus/self-destruction, 'Satan' would actually accomplish the opposite of what is intended (something like, 'Hey, this is what will turn my life around and give my life meaning and purpose').

This seems like a reason for God to allow a 'Satan' to tempt humanity, if that's what it would accomplish. But I think two conditions need to be satisfied from a secular moral point of view:

1. The first condition would have to be that people are being saved from an ultimate separation from God in the process, which is, in reality, a really horrible fate.
2. The second is that this process is the ONLY thing that will cause some people to change their mind and choose to live forever with God rather than apart from God.

Presumably, if there was another way to save someone, then God should employ that way instead.

Looking at the second condition, what's a list of things that often make people want to be with God rather than be apart from Him? Often people are drawn to Christianity by feeling some sort of emptiness, lack of fulfillment, a feeling of hopelessness or pointlessness to life without God, discontent with the whole idea of serving oneself rather than God after seeing the 'bad side' of sin, the idea of perfect relationships in the afterlife rather than messed up ones now, a hope for 'another kind of happiness' that is eternally fulfilling and great, as well as other reasons.

These thoughts are negative thoughts that Satan could easily magnify (i.e. in Satan's desire to make life harder for people). They are also thoughts that tend to encourage a lot of people to follow Jesus and be with God forever (note: one reason why I associate 'follow Jesus' and 'be with God forever' is that it makes sense to me that you could only ever go to heaven as a free gift and I don't know any religion that teaches this apart from Christianity).

So if Satan can magnify these thoughts, and having these thoughts sometimes makes the difference between someone choosing to be with God forever rather than be apart from Him, then does Satan have a useful role? Can God use Satan? It seems so.

So allowing a 'Satan' to do stuff under these two conditions and only if these two conditions are satisfied could make allowing Satan to do stuff an overall good thing, and these conditions make some sense.

Does God help those who help themselves?

Suppose there's something you're struggling with or you have a persistent desire that hasn't been fulfilled. Can you only depend on God's help if you basically fix the problem yourself, if you "step up" in some impressive way and solve the issue on your own? Does God help those who help themselves?

I find it helpful to think about this whole issue in terms of two general points:

1. Someone once said to me that they didn't fully understand God's love until they had children, because it just crystallised how much God's love for us is not about us doing anything to earn it. Of course, if you have kids, then you basically just want them to do well. You want them to succeed and flourish in life and be happy, and you don't impose a series of hoops or challenges or requirements on that. And you act to bring that about, as far as you can. Now, most parents certainly don't follow a rule: "Parents help their children when they help themselves" in relation to their kids, and we admire and respect that as a part of being a good parent. So the question is: is God worse than most parents? I would certainly hope not. So that counts against "God helps those who help themselves." See for example Rom 5:6: "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners."

2. The other point comes from a joke which illustrates the other side of this. There's a Christian, let's say 'Andrew,' who is having money problems, and he prays to God, "Dear God, if you help me win the lottery, I will be an incredible Christian. I will build a church, give a lot of money away, witness to heaps of people" and so on. But he doesn't win the lottery. So he prays again, "God, I'm at my wit's end. I will do anything for you if you help me win. Please, let me win!" But he doesn't win. So he prays again, "God, what do you want from me? What am I supposed to do or say? I will do anything for you if you help me win!" And then God answers him from heaven, "Andrew, help me out here. Buy a lottery ticket." See for example Psalm 32:9: "'Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.'"

The second point shows that if we pray, for example, to find a job but don't send out any resumes and suchlike, then God literally CANNOT answer our prayer. That could be the case sometimes. But, even if it is, God will try and help us as much as a loving parent would, which goes far beyond helping those who help themselves. Although sometimes God may not fulfill a persistent desire because of greater, at present inexplicable reasons, but we can't conclude from this that He doesn't love us completely, especially when one considers that e.g. God died on the cross for us, which involved, in Jesus taking our sins, more than 'just' being crucified.

Two ways we can say God isn't good

Job 1:22: "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing."

Job 33:9-12: "You [Job] said, 'I am pure; I am without sin; I am innocent; I have no guilt. God is picking a quarrel with me, and he considers me his enemy. He puts my feet in the stocks and watches my every move.' But you are wrong, and I will show you why. For God is greater than any human being."

There are two ways we can say that God isn't good.

The first way is obvious. We can say the Christian God exists, but that He isn't perfectly good despite what the Bible says. That is, the Bible inaccurately describes God.

The second way of saying that God isn't good can be a lot more subtle. I'll illustrate it using an example.

Suppose that a parent loses their spouse and child in a horrific accident one day. It also happens to be the case that the parents had stopped going to church a few months ago because they had just been too tired to go along, what with everything else that had been happening in their lives (or for some other reason).

Suppose that the surviving parent says 'I completely affirm that God is good. The reason why my spouse and child died is because God decided to punish us for not going to church more often.'

The second way of saying God isn't good can be quite subtle. It happens when someone affirms and sincerely believes that God is good, but when they try to explain suffering in their lives they say something about God that implies He isn't really good.

If we affirm that God is good, then we should not try to explain why God has allowed something to happen in our lives that subtly (or more bluntly) says that God isn't good. Because it just can't be true, and so it will mislead people who believe it. The surviving spouse is right to say that God is perfectly good, but something would be very amiss with God if their terrible tragedy was a punishment for not going to church more often.

Sometimes we can explain why God allowed something in a really great way. Sometimes, after enough time has elapsed, we can look at our life and understand really well why God didn't answer a specific prayer, or frustrated a persistent desire.

But if we can't explain our suffering very well, it's a lot better just to stick to our principles, affirm that God is good, and say 'I don't know why God allowed this to happen', rather than come up with a poor explanation.

There are general truths we can fall back on if we don't know the specific reason why God allowed something to happen. Characters in the Bible that we know God was helping and watching over often went through very long periods where God might have seemed distant and uncaring (like the account of Joseph in Genesis). Plus, humanity's unnatural separation from its Creator ensures some degree of suffering (like a fish out of water). Also, God will honour people's free will, allowing them to do evil to others, or damage their own lives.

Points to remember about the Old Testament laws

A lot of critics of Christianity argue that there are bizarre Old Testament laws that show that the Christian God is not really good. Without going into any specific explanations of any Old Testament laws (here is a good site for that), here are a couple of general points about all of them.

Something to remember is that Jesus specifically says that the Old Testament laws involved a compromise between what God wanted ideally, and what the ancient Israelites were prepared to accept. Matt 19:8-9: 'Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended. And I tell you this, whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery--unless his wife has been unfaithful."'

Ancient near east culture was so incredibly different to us that they would have considered 'standard' the OT laws we find bizarre. We can find similar attitudes in laws in other ancient near east cultures of the period, and so it was probably what the Israelites were prepared to accept (link). Also, the OT laws are a lot nicer than other laws from that period.

We have to remember what principles the OT law is grounded in. A few great verses are: 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD' (Lev 19:18). And two interpretations from the New Testament, Matt 7:12: 'Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets', and Matt 22:35-40: 'One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."'

So if the rabbis of the Old Testament period thought that was what the law was really about, then there must be something in their understanding compared to ours that modern critics are missing, that enables them to think that. So while the basic principle of 'Do unto others' has remained unchanged throughout the millennia, the social, cultural, historical (etc) context has made it so that ancient rabbis see something in the law that, today, we seem to miss.

Would a loving God never judge or condemn someone?

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" - 1 Cor 13:4-7

1 Corinthians 13 gives a great definition of love. Surely any loving God would fit this description.

And in this description Paul says that love 'keeps no record of wrongs'. So how can Christians say that there is a perfectly loving God who will judge humanity? Surely no one has anything to worry about. A lot of people think that a loving God will never judge anyone.

But what about 'love always protects'?

Consider someone who commits a murder. 'Love always protects', and so the loving thing to do is to protect everyone in the community from future murders by putting the murderer in prison.

Surely many people throughout history have refrained from doing evil because God has said that evil acts will receive punishment, which has protected vulnerable people. If you believe there's a God who will judge you for hurting someone, then you will definitely not hurt them, even if you won't do so for moral reasons.

What if significantly less evil has occurred throughout history because of God's promise to judge? This can't be proved, but it would be a good reason for God to make and carry out that promise.

This judgement is not hell (which is a separate issue). It's a proportionate 'payback' for whatever evils someone has done (Rev 20:12-15). Hell is not the result of a specific wrong act that we do so much as a consequence of choosing not to be with God forever, which means separation from God who is the source of true happiness (a happiness that will never get tedious).

This judgement does not apply in the same way to Christians (Rom 8:1), because Jesus took our moral failures onto Himself on the cross. "We know that the person we used to be was crucified with him to put an end to sin in our bodies" (Rom 6:6), which is fully manifested after we die. But we still have to give an account to Jesus about our life (2 Cor 5:10).

How is God free if He cannot sin?

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

How can God have free will, and be all-powerful, if He cannot do evil?

I think the answer is that there are actually two kinds of 'cannot':

Cannot 1: 'I cannot throw a rock into space from my backyard'.
Cannot 2: 'I could never rob a bank and kill people. That's evil'.

Cannot 1 is physical impossibility, cannot 2 is the inability to be tempted by something - usually evil. When the Bible says God cannot do evil it's referring to 'cannot 2' rather than 'cannot 1':

Cannot 2 is fine for free will, otherwise no one could make a statement like the one above associated with 'cannot 2'.

So God is 'physically' able to do evil, it's just that He can never, ever find it worth doing. Evil is inaccessible to God because He can't be tempted to do it.

How so? I think it has something to do with the way God can never 'forget' the truth, or be tempted to forget the truth. When we do the wrong thing we often have a period where we 'umm' and 'ahh' about doing wrong in our mind, and then if we do the wrong thing we somehow 'forget' what we should do. We come up with an excuse that doesn't make sense to someone else. Because God is always truthful, He can't be tempted to do that. Hence God is never tempted to do evil.

Either a completely evil or a completely good God

People sometimes say there are four kinds of Gods that can exist when it comes to goodness. Either an evil God, an amoral Deist God (neither good nor bad), a 'usually nice' God, or a completely good God.

But I actually think there are only two options here: a completely evil God or a completely good God.

Consider this: an amoral Deist God, just like an amoral person, has no concept or awareness of good or evil. A Deist God started the universe off for unknown reasons, and doesn't interfere. It doesn't care whether people are happy or suffer.

An evil God actually delights in evil and inflicting pain on people.

But let's say that the amoral God found it useful to suddenly wipe out humanity, or to inflict pain on people. Then the amoral (Deist) God would do so, because It has no concept of good or evil - our suffering wouldn't be an issue to It.

So the difference between an evil God and an amoral Deist God seems to be this: an evil God has a selfish reason to inflict pain on humans, but a Deist God has no selfish reason to inflict pain on humans. In all other respects, the evil God and the Deist God are the same. Just like the evil God, the Deist God has no concept of (or concern for) good and evil, and always acts to fulfill whatever It determines Its interests to be.

This means that if we feel like believing in a God, we can't believe in a God who is neither good nor bad. A Deistic God who has no concept of good or evil is actually a purely evil God.

So, if there's a good God, then why does it have to be completely good? Can't a good God be a generally nice person but sometimes a 'jerk' to people?

There are two reasons why a good God is probably perfectly good.

The first reason is that to be good at all (in any way) you need to feel that treating people the way they'd like to be treated has SOME importance. So a 'usually nice' God feels treating people the way they'd like to be treated is important to some degree.

But why would a 'usually nice' God value treating people the way they'd like to be treated on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays only (so to speak)? If a God valued treating people right some of the time, then why wouldn't it be consistent? If being good has value then why not go all-out? A God (a superior being without our issues and hangups) should be able to handle that. I.e., 'If I'm going to value treating people the way they'd like to be treated I might as well do it with 100% consistency.'

A second reason is that a 'usually nice' God would have some arbitrary level of flawed goodness, and that isn't a very 'neat' view of things. It's sort of like the 'zero, one, infinity rule' in maths. For example, if you're deciding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin it makes sense to say either none can, one can, or all of them can at once, rather than '57 angels can dance on the head of a pin but if there were 58 then they would fall off'. So it makes sense to say a caring God is 100% caring rather than e.g. '80% caring'.

Slavery in the Old Testament laws

Something we need to remember regarding the Old Testament laws is that they involved a compromise:

Matt 19:8: Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended."

It would not be surprising if a lot of laws in the Old Testament were similar (for example regarding its acceptance of polygamy versus Jesus' monogamy view). I want to look here at this possibility regarding slavery laws.

Slavery is wrong, but it would have been good for God to make laws related to slavery if a) slavery was going to happen whether God wanted it to or not, because we're talking about ancient Near East cultures, and b) this was the only way of making sure it happened in a relatively just way.

I think this is the thinking behind the Old Testament laws on slavery. So with that said, let's look at whether b) is correct. Is it believable that the Old Testament slavery laws tried to control the evils of slavery, by making them more just than they would otherwise have been?

I've put some helpful quotes here from a really good article on this from Glenn Miller's Christian-thinktank:

"The 'slavery' of the OT was essentially designed to serve the poor!":

Lev 25:35-43: "If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36 Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. 37 You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. 38 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God."

39 "If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40 He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. 42 Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43 Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God."

"If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, sells himself to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free." (Deut 15.12) Although this doesn't apply to foreign slaves.

"The Mosaic law contains numerous initiatives designed to preclude someone having to consider voluntary slavery as an option":

"Pentateuchal prescriptions are meant to mitigate the causes of and need for such bondservice. Resident aliens, orphans and widows are not to be abused, oppressed or deprived of justice. When money is lent to the poor, they are not to be charged interest." "There were not supposed to be any poor in Israel at all!"

"But God is a realist (Deut 15.11!); hence He made a wide range of provisions in the Law for the poor [one of which is slavery as a form of debt relief]"

So slavery in Old Testament law was meant to serve the poor, rather than serve the rich.

Some other key verses:

"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." (Lev 19:18). The word 'neighbour' should apply to Israelite and foreign slaves, so slaves should be loved if someone wants to honour every part of the Old Testament law.

"However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today." (Deut 15.4). By implication all slaves should have decent living standards.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." (Ex 21:20-1, NIV). "If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth". (Ex 21:26-27).

OK, so this doesn't sound too good in places. First of all, it allows the beating slaves as long as you don't injure them so badly they can't get up in two days, and as long as you don't permanently injure them in some way. But it's not as bad as it could be. Apparently 'he must be punished' means that the master is actually executed if the slave dies under the "life for life" clause. Moreover, the rule for being beaten is not that different from what applies to free Israelites:

Ex 21:18-9: "If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."

This is a lot more humane than other societies with slavery, which shows that God possibly acted to bring about a 'moderating' of slavery laws:

"An owner could kill his slave with impunity in Homeric Greece, ancient India, the Roman Republic, Han China, Islamic countries, Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Russia, and many parts of the American South before 1830…That was not the case in other societies. The Hebrews, the Athenians, and the Romans under the principate restricted the right of slave owners to kill their human chattel."

Secondly, isn't it bad that it says slaves are property? Glenn quotes: "Freedom in the ancient Near East was a relative, not an absolute state, as the ambiguity of the term for "slave" in all the region's languages illustrates. "Slave" could be used to refer to a subordinate in the social ladder. Thus the subjects of a king were called his "slaves," even though they were free citizens. The king himself, if a vassal, was the "slave" of his emperor; kings, emperors, and commoners alike were "slaves" of the gods. Even a social inferior, when addressing a social superior, referred to himself out of politeness as "your slave." There were, moreover, a plethora of servile conditions that were not regarded as slavery, such as son, daughter, wife, serf, or human pledge."

So saying that slaves are property wasn't such a huge thing in ancient Near East society as it would be now if someone said you were their property.

We can see God's ultimately honourable intent behind the Old Testament slavery laws elsewhere:

"The entire seventh year of the planting cycle was dedicated to the poor (and servants [slaves])!":

"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove." (Ex 23.10) "Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you -- for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you," (Lev 25.6)

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:10).

So I think one can establish, as I said at the beginning of this essay, that it was a good thing for God to make the Old Testament slavery laws as long as a) because of the hardness of people's hearts there was going to be slavery whether God wanted there to be or not, and b) this was the only way to control the evils of slavery so that it happened in a relatively just way. B) seems to be the case from the points made above.

The gospel for people who are really, really nice

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to talk about Jesus to some people because in most of the situations they are in every day, they do the right thing. So when people hear from let's say, a fiery preacher that they are 'liars', 'haters', 'coveters' and other negative stuff they may think 'Well that may apply to some people but not really me'.

How should one think about presenting the gospel to a non-Christian who is an extremely nice, loving, self-sacrificial person who almost always looks out for the interests of others? I believe it has an added degree of difficulty that is not present if you are talking to someone who has done some really awful stuff in their life.

Here are a couple of important points to think about on this issue.

The first is that there are some people who are good enough to do the right thing in most of the situations which they are in every day. But this does not mean that they would do the right thing in really, really challenging situations. So when God looks at such a person, He sees not only that they would do the right thing on most days, but also that if they were put in a really challenging situation that they would fall short and do the wrong thing.

An example of this kind of possibility can be found from the Stanford prison experiment (link). When people do the wrong thing, it's often not that they are 'bad apples' as much as apples that have been put into 'bad barrels'. In the prison experiment, the professor got a group of normal college students together and gave some of them great power over the rest. The nasty results showed what can happen when people are put into extraordinary situations. A similar thing might be going on with the goodness we have every day versus what goodness we would have under a lot of pressure.

So when God looks at us He sees our failures in situations that haven't occurred yet, and which may never occur, but which still apply to us because it's how we would act. We shouldn't be willing to do the wrong thing in these not-yet-occurring situations, but we are. Thus, if you hate someone, you are a murderer in a situation where you have absolute power. If you lust after people other than your spouse, you are an adulterer in a possible situation. If you are tempted to lie, you are a liar in a possible situation. So God sees these potential sins, and thus we can be sinners in a pretty big way but about potential stuff rather than actual stuff.

A second point to remember is that one way you can talk about the gospel is that we are all horrible sinners and so on, but another way is a lot gentler. The point of the gospel was ultimately to get humans to hang out with God and be perfectly happy forever. Happiness in heaven is about experiencing the happiness of God. See Psalm 16:11; 36:8-9, and Romans 14:17 which says: "For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." If someone isn't willing to meet God's standards then it's hard to see how they could have access to God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. It would be hard for that person to live with the Holy Spirit, and for God to live with that person, if they don't want to meet God's standards. So the deal is: not being willing to meet God's standards = you can't experience God's happiness through the Holy Spirit, and so you can't go to eternal life.

God's standard is perfection as shown by the life of Jesus (not our own idea of perfection), and the only way to meet that standard is to accept that you can't meet it and that you need God's help. When Jesus died for us "our old self was put to death on the cross with him" (Rom 6:6a) and "It is no longer I who [faces situations where I cannot avoid sinning] but Christ ... living in me [who faces those situations and will always do the right thing]" (Gal 2:20a). Thus, anyone can meet God's standards because Jesus can do everything related to meeting God's standards in someone who accepts him, and so they don't have to worry about it at all as long as they genuinely trust Jesus.

So the gospel doesn't have to be about how everyone is a horrible, horrible sinner necessarily. Although I think that we usually overestimate how good we are, so maybe we are worse sinners than we think, even the really, really nice non-Christian. Presenting the gospel can be more like, "Well I know you're a really, really nice person, but getting to heaven isn't about being really nice. It's about being willing to meet God's standards, which is a perfect standard. Because eternal life consists in experiencing God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. And you can't experience God's happiness in the Holy Spirit if you aren't willing to meet God's standards, because the conflict between you two will be too great (or something like that). However nice you are, this is a situation that can't be gotten around. So to make it to eternal life you either need to meet God's standard, or accept you can't meet it and that Jesus took all of our wrongful intentions towards others onto himself on the cross."

Do humans have no right to make a reply back to God?

Rom 9:20: "But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so?"

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

My belief on this is that we can't really answer back to God BUT this is ONLY because God cannot be tempted by evil. If there's a God who can be tempted by evil then I think we have the right to answer back to them. But if there is really a God who cannot be tempted then if we believe this with our whole heart I think it's appropriate to decide never to answer back. And also, this applies only as long as we genuinely know what this God is really saying/wanting. That part is very important. So provided those two conditions are fulfilled, then yes.

A theory on the relationship between the Fall, and suffering today

This is a speculative look at a difficult topic: how does the Fall lead to so much suffering today, especially suffering that seems to have nothing to do with free will?

The Bible says there is a strong relationship between the Fall and suffering:

Romans 5:12: For this reason, as through one man sin came into the world, and death because of sin, and so death came to all men, because all have done evil

Here is a theory of how suffering, death, and sin could be related. It has a few problems, but maybe there is something in it to answer questions in a genuine way.

A while ago I was reading an online comic and in it one character was trying to justify the existence of hell. But instead of saying 'God is a God of justice' or 'God gives us the freedom to reject Him' the character said that the reason for hell was something like: 'God will not allow sin in His presence, because He is a good God'. I thought that was an interesting response, because 'God not allowing sin in His presence' because of His goodness would seem to have nothing to do with hell and suffering, depending on your view of hell.

Later on I got into reading about the philosophy of mind and consciousness. Consciousness is what you feel when your brain processes information. Whatever consciousness is, it seems different from our physical brain. It seems to exist in a 'mental world' quite different to the world of e.g. tables and chairs. Debates in the philosophy of mind are about how a 'mental world' arises out of a physical world.

Thinking about the philosophy of mind, one interesting idea is to say that there are two worlds that humans live in: a physical world and the mental world. So instead of trying to figure out how the mental arises out of the physical, you can sort of give up and say that humans are a combination of the physical and the mental and the mental is in its own world with its own rules. The mental is based on the world of God.

You know that phrase 'God will not allow sin in His presence, because He is a good God'? Imagine that in the mental world, either a mind is connected to God or it's not. If it's not connected to God the mind suffers horribly. The problem is that when we do something wrong, God needs to separate Himself from our wrongdoing, and that means that God has to disconnect our mind from His. This means that sinners' minds get disconnected from God, creating horrible suffering, even if physically everything is fine, and there are no diseases, tornadoes, tsunamis, nothing of the sort...

So physically, God can stop any hurricane, earthquake, disease, accident, anything. But God cannot stop pain, terrible, unrelenting pain, if a mind is not connected to Him in the mental world. Because that's what it feels like for a mind not to be connected to God in the mental world: death and pain.

Somehow, if God remained connected to a mind that wants to do wrong, then God Himself would be 'infected' with sin. Or maybe it's not a matter of choice, and God simply cannot be connected to a mind that wants to do wrong. Either way, you can explain how horrifying pain must exist in a world where there are people who do wrong, even though God is perfectly good and all-powerful.

There are a few big issues here:

1) Animal suffering. They don't really do wrong because they aren't morally responsible. Yet there's a lot of suffering in the animal world. The Bible does say that the animals were subjected by God to the pain that humans are under (Romans 8:19-22), but why?

2) So maybe getting disconnected from God causes pain. But it sure seems that viruses cause pain. One way of getting out of this problem is to say that the pain has to be there anyway, and God chooses to make it look like physical stuff causes the pain. This seems a little bit odd and counter-intuitive... God needs to have a reason to make it look like e.g. earthquakes cause pain when actually our mind getting disconnected from God causes pain. God doesn't add to our pain by making it look like it's the result of e.g. diseases, so at least that aspect makes sense.

3) Suffering is a universal fact of life, and there isn't anyone who doesn't experience it. OK, but some people suffer a lot more or less than whatever is 'average'. Why? This remains a bit of a mystery. Maybe suffering gets 'balanced out' over an eternity, assuming a person doesn't have their sins removed by Christ - Luke 6:24?

On the good side, this theory does fit in with Luke 17:20-21, which talks about what the Kingdom of God involves:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

If suffering happens because our mind gets disconnected from God, then perfect happiness will come when our sins are completely removed by Christ. Because we have never experienced life having our mind connected to God, then this theory explains why heaven is going to be so wonderful, even if it sounds to a non-Christian like it's just a change of scenery. They might ask: what's so great about heaven, just because it looks beautiful? The great thing about heaven is that our soul/mind will be connected to God for the first time, and we will experience life as it was originally meant to be experienced - in union with our creator, feeling the happiness that the image of God was originally meant to feel. We cannot even imagine what this is like - if we could, our mind would not be currently disconnected from God due to sin.

It also explains why no matter how much God helps those who reject what Christ did for them, they must suffer forever if they continue to reject Christ (very reminiscent of CS Lewis' Great Divorce).

In summary, you could say that the theory works like this:

Do we suffer because of a greater good? Yes.

1. Either we are perfect and there is no suffering.
2. Or we are morally imperfect and God becomes evil, because God allows sin in His presence/does not separate Himself from a soul that does wrong.
3. Or we are morally imperfect and there is horrible suffering, but God is perfect and provides a way for us to be free from sin and be truly happy one day (through the cross).

The third option is the best, which is what we see God doing. For the greater good of God remaining free from wrongdoing, we must suffer, assuming this whole system regarding a 'mental world'.

[See comments for clarification]

One interpretation of original sin and the Fall

One interpretation of Original Sin and the Fall that I like is that there are two kinds of free will that you can have. In the first kind of free will (which we have) you can be a good or bad person in every choice. In the second kind, God protects you so that you will make every choice for good, but you can choose to 'opt out' of this system and have the first kind of free will, where it can be a struggle to be good in every choice.

In the first kind, God lets you know good and evil for yourself, in the second kind, God gives you His perspective on good and evil, ensuring your perfect goodness (Gen 3:1-5).

So Adam and Eve had a kind of free will where they were guaranteed to be perfect, so long as they didn't choose to work out good and evil for themselves. But God left them the freedom to work out good and evil from their own perspective, and they chose to 'opt out' of His protection. That destroyed their relationship with God, because without looking at things from God's perspective it is impossible not to sin if you have the ability to think in terms of selfish interest (Rom 7:18-24).

But why not just redo the whole thing with a different Adam and Eve? And how come we don't get to be in the Garden and decide this for ourselves (isn't that unfair)?

I think that without experiencing sin and evil, eventually *everyone* chooses to 'opt out' of God's protection, because we just don't know well enough why we should let God protect our choices. So we all share in Adam's sin indirectly, in the sense that we are all born with personalities that would have Fallen if we had started off in the Garden (but after our life, we have learned not to want or do that).

Christ's atonement lets us go back to a state where we see people in the way that God does, which puts perfection within the reach of anybody without regard to their former works, achievements, personality and character traits.

Check out Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all". Maybe we could have started off in the Garden like Adam and Eve, but God skipped this so He could set history up in a way that could save the elect (in my interpretation, anyone who God knew would not resist what Christ had done for them on the cross).

Link to some more speculation on original sin and the fall...

Why God can't just forgive sin

Let's say that a guy steals something from someone one day. He realises it's wrong and so he apologises to the owner. The owner is a very nice person so he forgives him.

Then he steals from the owner again. He feels terrible so he apologises again. Because the owner is a forgiving person he forgives him again.

Then he steals from the owner again. He apologises again, and is forgiven again.

Then he steals from the owner yet again. He feels absolutely terrible, and so he apologises and is forgiven yet again.

That's a bad situation to have happen. Even so, the principles in this situation apply to all Christians, and for people of any other religion who have an analogous point-of-view.

How so?

Well, let's say I sin against another person. I recognise my guilt and apologise to God. God forgives me.

Then I sin again, doing the same sort of sin, against another person. So I apologise to God. God forgives me unconditionally.

Then I sin again, making the same sort of mistake, some time later. I realise this and so I apologise to God. God forgives me yet again.

Is there any Christian for whom this sort of situation is not the case?

I suppose it's possible that some Christians can perfectly repent of some sins, but there are a lot of sins that will still remain to one degree or another in a Christian's life (even if most of the time they're only expressed in the head, or in a possible situation that hasn't happened).

So imagine that the thief keeps stealing again and again, and the owner keeps forgiving him. That's awfully nice of him, but does that deal with the REAL issue here? The real issue is that he keeps stealing. It's not a matter of forgiveness, in that hypothetical situation, it's a matter of the fact that he keeps stealing and needs to stop it. Forgiveness deals with the owner not taking revenge, but it doesn't deal with the fact that someone who steals all the time is a thief and needs to stop stealing.

According to the same principle, in this life Christians will never stop sinning against God and other people, even though God always forgives us. God will always forgive us every time that we honestly ask for forgiveness. But does that deal with the REAL issue here? The real issue is that we don't meet God's standards despite God's forgiveness. Because I'll bet that after we ask forgiveness we don't suddenly become sinless. God's forgiveness deals with God taking revenge, but it doesn't deal with the fact that our actions are not up to God's standards.

This is why God's forgiveness outside of Christ is not good enough to save people. What condemns people is the fact that they don't meet God's standards, and thus can't be with God forever. It's not an issue of God taking revenge, it's an issue of the fact that someone who does the wrong thing can't be with God. God's forgiveness means God won't take revenge, but if we continually want to sin, then we're not up to God's standards and can't be with God.

So God can't deal with sin just by forgiving it.

God needed a form of forgiveness that changes the heart of the person asking for it, so that they never sin again in any possible situation (which is what it means to meet God's standards).

But what kind of forgiveness can do that? Certainly nothing that the owner can give to the constant thief he forgives.

The atonement solved this problem, creating an extremely 'powerful' kind of forgiveness. Imagine all of our evil collected together in a pool of black sludge. You could say that in the atonement God poured out all of our evil onto Christ (although Christ never endorsed it) and we received Christ's perfect goodness in return. God 'gave' our evil desires/intentions to Christ in the areas where we sin, and Christ lives in us, acting perfectly, in return (Rom 6:6; Gal 2:20). So Christ in Christians will one day enable Christians to be perfect by doing everything for us in the areas where we currently sin. Christians aren't perfect only because God is waiting until the 'Day of Redemption' to apply this fully to Christians (Eph 4:30). See here for a longer account of how Christ's death takes away evil.

This is a reason why I think Christianity makes more sense than a religion where the solution to humanity's wrongdoing is for God just to forgive sin. Just like a person forgiving a thief who keeps stealing doesn't solve the thief's problems, so God forgiving our sin if we want to keep sinning doesn't solve humanity's problems.

[Edit] Clarification after someone said to me they didn't get it.

Basically, I was saying that forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then it means I won't report them or plot against them, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

So the cross is a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. God puts our evil onto Christ, and then the punishment for it is put on to him, and so it is no longer us living but Christ living in us, in return (Gal 2:20). Luther called it the 'great exchange'.

Philippians 3:8b-9a: "for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ"

And 2 Co 5:21 is good also.