Does a Good God exclude the possibility of a Bad World?

[blazeofglory]

It seems to me that people use this bad world as an excuse to disbelieve in a good God, but does a bad world necessitate the absence of a good God?

I don't think it's reasonable

God has little to do with badness and goodness. These are humans' attributes not God's

[CDJIV]

Well God did destroy the human race except for Noah and his family because the world was growing too evil. The world is the way it is because we are given free choice to be the way we want to be. It is possible that there must be a breaking point because there was before.

God is indeed a good God, but I dont think that is a valid argument for the evil world in which we live. Not at all.

I agree with Sapphire in that evil is a way to put more emphasis on God, simply because there must be polar opposites that reflect each other. We think the world is bad because we have a good God, but would we feel the same way if we did not believe in a God? Or if we belived in an evil God? Could that be possible?

There is contradicting statements in your writing and I think this is the first thing we should look at: ourselves. Adding, how we think and how we express ourselves.

If the evil is used to put more emphasis on God, then evil is either a servant of God or exactly like God in nature. Maybe both. If God is so good, and Satan wants to be "like God", then whose got the problem? Us or God? God wants us to be like him but Satan is bannished for trying to be exactly like God wants us to be.

How much of free choice can there be in the Bible? If Nedbank sends me a letter saying I qualified for a R20 000 loan without me even asking for it, do they send hitmen to sort me out if I say no? Well, I hope not.

[NovemberGuest]

This my (admittedly biased :P) christian view.

God is Good.
The world is bad..well: sinful.

I'm probably repating what someone said...if so, sorry.

Well when God made the world it was Good. But Satan, and ex-angel who rebelled against God, wanted to have power over humankind. So he tempted Eve, the first woman, to disobey God. She did, and her husband Adam followed her.
This was the fist sin...but it ruined man forever.
This sin became know as "the fall of man."
Since then, mankind has been sinning...and we are all born with "sin nature", the tendancy to sin.
God can only accept perfection. And since mankind was no longer perfect, it meant that they would have to "die" (not only physically...bit spiritually, meaning they would go to hell)
But God also loved People. So he decided to make them perfect again.
But to attone for all the sin in the world, there would have to be a perfect sacrifice.
Someone who had never sinned would have to die in the place off all the people who had...and that someone was Jesus. He died on the cross, giving his life for ours. Becasue he died, according to my belief, if we accept him as our savior and admit that we are sinners, our sins will be washed away, and we will, again, be perfect in Gods eyes. We will die physically, but we will be spared spiritual death, and we will go to heaven.

"But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed."
-Isaiah 53:5

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life." -Romans 6:23

The world is a bad place, but God is good, and gives us a way out.

I know thats not very well written, and most likely many people won't agree with me. But its what I think on this subject, and I'm interested to hear what other people think, too.

[CDJIV]

Not if bad entered the world due to Satans' fall from grace and man & woman's desire to follow Satan to achieve their desire to be their own god. At that point, God gave his creation what they "wanted," that is, a world system of self-actualization. Hence, death, sickness, misery, sadness, etc. God also gave us a savior, and the following promise:
Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

The story of Satan's fall is not viewed in the same way by all 2.1 billion Christians. Neither is Adam and Eve's sin. If evil is necessary in understanding good (Genesis 1 & 3), then evil must be God-given.

God gave man free will. God allows man to choose evil, if that's what he wants. It's not God who created evil, it's not God who perpetuates evil, but man by choosing it over good.

Isa 45:7 "..I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.."

How much of what we think we read, we don't actually read?

So tell me, do I first need to whack you with a 2x4 for you to appreciate the goodness of a hug or kiss? Do you need to eat a piece of rotting cheese in order to appreciate the taste of chocolate? Really? Must I yell at you first so that you can appreciate a whisper in your ear?

Do babies need to eat sour things so that they'll appreciate the sweet? Must you be abused before you can understand the beauty of being loved?

Really? Really? Do we only understand by contrast?

Yes, because the Bible teaches us contrasts. Light and Darkness. You cannot understand the one without knowing the other.

Genesis 3:22 "..And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.."

In fact it is hard to describe God, and we human beings are subject to angers, joys and the like and to try to understand God from this perspective is really a wrong course.

Who gave us anger, joy and the like? Once we get born, we don't automatically know the Bible or even morality. That we get taught. Knowing God then has to resemble in what our senses perceive and express. The two is thereby closely linked. Do we wait for miracles to happen every five minutes, or do we question the input that tells us how we are supposed to feel about God? It's not wrong to question.

Acts 17:11 "..Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.."

Once you question the input, you can always go back to where you came from, but at least you'll know you made a more informed decision.

Bad/evil accentuates our appreciation of good, but it does not define it. To give it such weight is to suggest that it is as equally valid and necessary as good. That simply cannot be. As well, to argue thusly would also put an end to those arguments people wish to put forth as to the problem with God not eradicating evil from this world; if it's equally valid and necessary, why should He do so?

God didn't say to Moses that he was good or bad. God just said "He is". That's midway if you may. If there is only beautiful in heaven, how do you define beautiful then? It will be obsolete with no name. The same as a "Good God". The "good" will be obsolete in heaven.

This might lead someone to argue that "good" in our terms defines what heaven will be like, and not an inbetween. Once we get there we would not know evil anymore but only the security of our "good" fealing we sometimes had when we were still living on this cursed earth.

Denying it might be a form of denial.

We have no universal measurement of good and bad. There's no metaphorical scale of 1 to 10 of righteousness, no numerical value we can assign.

Jakobmuller suggests the need of empirical evidence. Redzeppelin reckons it's..

Beyond absurd. It is logically impossible to maintain this position.

..And the parting of the Red Sea? Walking on water? Healing a blind man with spit and clay? Turning water into wine?

How so? What makes this absurd and illogical? What is illogical about relativism, as apposed to a naturalist belief, which in itself is built on an assumption, and therefore is, in itself, illogical. Where does logic fail here? ...The moral of the story? Even something as central to us, such as color, is only central because we see it. ...How by eating the apple. ...If you are going to accuse someone of faulty logic, don't just accuse, at least give some substantial evidence to support such a rigorous claim.

I agree with most of what you are saying but my focus was "apple". You've got no way to prove that it was an apple that was eaten. This is an example of missing some things we still bring from our past beliefs. Identifying the fruit is still important but nothing really concludes it to being an apple. Grapes are more likely due to being more evident and within context.

[Redzeppelin]

God didn't say to Moses that he was good or bad. God just said "He is". That's midway if you may. If there is only beautiful in heaven, how do you define beautiful then? It will be obsolete with no name. The same as a "Good God". The "good" will be obsolete in heaven.

This might lead someone to argue that "good" in our terms defines what heaven will be like, and not an inbetween. Once we get there we would not know evil anymore but only the security of our "good" fealing we sometimes had when we were still living on this cursed earth.

Denying it might be a form of denial.

No - there is no "midway" between good and evil - Jesus said this: "Why do you call me 'good'? No one is good except God alone." (Mark 10:18)

The definition of the word "good" is God Himself; all that characterizes God defines what is good: justice, mercy, love, generosity, kindness, loyalty, courage, compassion, etc. Heaven isn't about a "feeling" - it is about being in the presence of the creator of the universe.

Jakobmuller suggests the need of empirical evidence. Redzeppelin reckons it's..

..And the parting of the Red Sea? Walking on water? Healing a blind man with spit and clay? Turning water into wine?

I dislike being misquoted. My statement had nothing to do with empirical evicence; it had to do with the absurdity of making "good" and "evil" fully subjective terms; that is flatly illogical and nobody can long maintain such a position with consistency. Please make sure you do not quote me out of context. Your rhetorical questions put to me are meaningless because I wasn't addressing the possibility of miraculous events.

[LMK]

I do not think that pain and suffering preclude the existence of God (by what ever form one gives Him).

Just as I do not think that the existence of God (by any other name would smell as sweet...sorry, couldn't resist) precludes the existence of anything good, bad or otherwise.

~L

[RichardHresko]

The question presented in the thread needs to be examined a little more carefully.

It is certainly not a given that the world is bad. (The position that the world is bad is the position of Manicheism -- a gnostic group.)

Further, it can and has been argued by Augustine and others that there is no such thing as natural evil. Earthquakes may not be pleasant affairs, but are not evil in a universal sense, only from the POV of human beings.

The question of what can be said of moral evil is what is really interesting. Moral evil is the choosing of a lesser good over a greater good, and is a possibility that exists only by creatures that have free will.

LMK is correct that suffering does not preclude the existence of a good God, since suffering in and of itself is not evil in the moral sense.

[blazeofglory]

The question presented in the thread needs to be examined a little more carefully.

It is certainly not a given that the world is bad. (The position that the world is bad is the position of Manicheism -- a gnostic group.)

Further, it can and has been argued by Augustine and others that there is no such thing as natural evil. Earthquakes may not be pleasant affairs, but are not evil in a universal sense, only from the POV of human beings.

The question of what can be said of moral evil is what is really interesting. Moral evil is the choosing of a lesser good over a greater good, and is a possibility that exists only by creatures that have free will.

LMK is correct that suffering does not preclude the existence of a good God, since suffering in and of itself is not evil in the moral sense.

I agree to the points here; and all I feel is that what we call bad for us can be good for others. Losing life for deer is bad and getting food for tigers is good. Good and bad are simply points of views or conceptions but not realities in point of fact

[Judas130]

It seems to me that people use this bad world as an excuse to disbelieve in a good God, but does a bad world necessitate the absence of a good God?

I don't think it's reasonable

Not necessarily true. The problem of evil is a matter of concern to the doubting believer, yet does not have to dwell on the mind of the unbeliever. The unbeliever realises there is no 'problem' of evil, but that there is just life.

[DanielBenoit]

I'm a bit ambivilent on my opinion on this matter, but if there is a God, then he certainly doesn't consider suffering to be experienced in vain.

One very interesting opinion is that of Chestov's, who made the paradoxical conclusion that the world was a lot more absurd with God in it, and thus a reason to believe. That, to embrace the absurdity of life, is to embrace God, and that His greatness arises out of his incomprehensibility.

[balehead]

I believe God to be good, and to be letting the world run it's course, whether that course be bad or evil, because we need our free will etc.

[hiuspinci]

Hi there, Would a new one like me be welcome here?
Thanks so much in deed.

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[TheQuarkGotAway]

God has little to do with badness and goodness. These are humans' attributes not God's

Blazeofglory has it right in my mind. Good/bad/evil are relative conditions for each person, subject even to redefinition over time for that individual. Any broad generalizations about the common good depend ultimately on a generalized attitude about what humanity is. That definition- what humanity is- ah, there's the rub.

[isidro]

Milton argues that God could stop evil but wanted people to choose Him out of love, not coercion. He could force goodness on us but then He would destroy our ability to learn and think and progress in ways we need to learn.

A rather evil man, for example, tortured me nearly to death and stopped my heart twice. Does that mean that God is necessarily bad? No. His doing so and my miraculous survival eventually forced him into therapy and whereas before he was an excellent liar in hiding the truth of his actions and heart from everyone, because I was so plainly injured and could threaten him with imprisonment, he could no longer hide. He has now made a complete 180 and quite a philanthropist.

[atiguhya padma]

Is heaven not a case of God forcing goodness on others? Or does freewill occur there too?