God

An agnostic dyslexic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

God Moves in a Mysterious Way
by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

Is it significant that a back-to-front dog becomes God, while a slightly more contorted cat becomes act (probably with a small 'a')?? Must have a word with Sirius (which reminds me, on behalf of all cats, why is there no cat-star?)

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Aged three, I was spotted with my mouth open as my revered five-year old cousin (just back from Scripture class in kindergarten) told me in lordly fashion »God is everywhere, you know, he is even in that wheelbarrow...«. No doubt the reason why one is nearer God's heart (and backside, sitting in that wheelbarrow) in a garden than anywhere else on earth.

Once or twice--well, no, not a god, actually, but a responsive spider. 1. sitting on the ground with her (then)lover, Ted, in some afternoon-filtered sunshine. Late late autumn in a part of the world where winter barely arrives --the sun is still strong on on skin and clothes are still light weight. Ted is leaving soon and they are uncertain of when they will see each other again. Ted sees a tiny spider walking on the leg of his jeans. He says to the spider, »Tie me to Belle--c'mon, I'll give you a quarter.«
Immediately, like a close up slo-motion sequence from a PBS science special: the spider launches a gossamer web thread into the air, with a kind of shower of crystal almost-sparks, the thread sails across the gap between the lovers and connects at Belle's knee. The spider walks across.

God, the center and focus of religious faith, a holy being or ultimate reality to whom worship and prayer are addressed. Especially in monotheistic religions, God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes—for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain human characteristics that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness.

»Can God make an object that's so heavy He can't move it?« I paused, lifted an eyebrow, cleared my throat.

»For God's sake, shut that rubbish,« he opined.

Wait a minute. Before we get to Jesus, I just realized a problem with the whole idea of God Himself. You tell me that God is all-powerful and I know you believe He's good. But then, what about evil? An all-powerful and all‑good God wouldn't permit evil to exist, and even if it did exist temporarily, He would destroy it. If God exists—the God you believe in-then why is there evil?
That's a good question. Actually, Jesus has a lot to do with our answer to this problem. But for the moment, let's handle it just on the logical level.

What we Christians must show is that the proposition »God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good« is logically compatible with the proposition »There is evil in the world.« One way to do this is to show that there is some third proposition that is compatible with the first and that implies the second. In other words, we can show that A is compatible with B, no matter how incompatible they at first appear, if we can show that C is compatible with A and implies B.

What I'd like to suggest as that third statement is, »It would be morally better for God to create a world containing morally free beings than for Him to create a world without them.«


I don't see how that ties the first two together at all.

I don't blame you. It isn't immediately apparent how this works. Let's look into this proposition, »It would be morally better for God to create a world containing morally free beings than for Him to create a world without them,« and see just what is implied in it.

The key question is, 'What is a morally free being?" The answer is that a morally free being is a being that is free to do either good or evil at any given time—nothing forces him to do one thing or the other. This means it is always possible for a morally free being to do evil.


So, if it is truly better for God to create a world with morally free beings, then it is better for God to create a world with the possibility of evil than a world without that possibility.


Okay, but why is it better to be morally free than not?


You tell me. You're morally free. That means people can praise you for doing good and blame you for doing evil. A hammer isn't morally free. If someone uses it to do something evil, no one condemns the hammer; if someone uses it to do something good, no one praises the hammer, either. Now, which would you prefer: to be yourself, capable of right and wrong and so susceptible to praise or blame, or to be the hammer, capable of neither right nor wrong, and so susceptible to neither praise nor blame?


Okay, I’d rather be myself than a hammer. I’ll grant it's better to be morally free than not.

Good. Now, if God is morally good, and if it is better to create a world with morally free beings than without them, then if God creates anything He should create a world with morally free beings. But such a world is a world in which evil is possible. That means that our first proposition (Gods exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good) is compatible with a third (It is better to create a world with morally free beings than without them) which entails at least the possibility of our second proposition (There is evil in the world). This means God's existence and the reality of evil are not logically contradictory to each other. They are compatible.

But why doesn't God destroy all evil and prevent its returning?

He could, of course, but in so doing He would be destroying morally free creatures. And God could have created a world in which evil was impossible; but then He would have to have created a world without morally free creatures. The only alternative to a morally good world that contains evil is not a morally good world that contains no evil but a morally neutral world that contains neither good nor evil. Such a world, of course, wouldn't contain us. So which do you prefer: a world that contains you, or a world that doesn't?

A world that contains me. I see your point. I guess God and evil are compatible. But just why would God have permitted evil? What purpose is there in it?

First of course it was the only way to create a morally good world. But what was His purpose for evil? Christians believe evil serves a number of purposes, all consistent with God's plan for the world and, especially, for individual people.

One purpose is to occasion certain moral goods that could never come about without evil. One can never forgive someone without someone's doing something evil, right? Forgiveness is one of the highest moral goods, but it is a moral good that could never come about without evil. One could not have mercy without someone's doing something evil that deserved punishment. One cannot have compassion for those who suffer without someone's suffering, and compassion is also a very high virtue. These and other goods all depend for their existence and expression on the existence of evil. So God permits evil in part so that greater goods can occur than could ever occur without it.


Christianity says there is one even higher good that could never have occurred without evil: God's voluntary sacrifice of Himself to bear punishment for us. Think what kind of act gets the highest praise among men. Isn't it when someone voluntarily sacrifices his life in order to save the lives of others? Such self‑sacrifice is a tremendous good. The greatest such sacrifice was when God sacrificed His life in the Person of Jesus Christ to save the lives of all who believe in Jesus.


This doesn't make sense to me. Why was such a sacrifice necessary? What do you mean by God's having saved the lives of those who believe in Jesus? What did they need to be saved from?

They needed to be saved from two kinds of evil: sin and suffering. Christianity says all men are sinners-we all do evil. The possibility of our doing evil is entailed in our being morally free. The reality of it we see in our own lives and in the lives of others.

Justice requires that evil be punished. Punishment involves suffering. But suffering is a kind of evil—an evil of one kind brought on by another. So the problem for God was how to satisfy the demands of His justice and, at the same time, to deliver people from suffering His punishment upon evil. This He did by becoming man in Jesus and then suffering for our sins in our place.

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