"...he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

    Well I'm back. It's been a while since I last made a post, and I apologize to anyone who reads this blog. I wish to continue on the subject of God's goodness because it is such a large and misunderstood subject. This  post will kind of jump around but it is connected!...loosely... I plan to make a couple of points. I plan to point that God is good, that we must trust in Him, and that our condition is ultimately one of choice.
     I remember reading C.S. Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe years ago, and there was a part when the four main characters; Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy (all in age order), went to a mysterious world through a wardrobe, and found themselves in the country of Narnia. They had been mysteriously transported by Aslan, the Emperor's son, by magic to save the country of Narnia by defeating an evil witch that had cursed the land. She had declared herself the queen of Narnia, and ruled the country merciless. She and other Narnian's-she wasn't an actual Narnian- were aware of an ancient prophecy regarding two son's of Adam, and two daughters of Eve were to conquer the witch and were to rule Narnia afterwards having Peter as the high king.
     Before they were to defeat the self-declared queen they met Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, a lovely beaver couple that were supporters of Aslan- he was the true king of Narnia- and the Beaver's were telling the kids- they were still kids at the time-about Aslan the king, and that he was a lion. Lucy was uncomfortable with the idea of meeting Aslan because she learned about lion condition. She then tried to comfort herself by confirming that he wouldn't be frightful, and Mr. Beaver confirmed that she was wrong, she then asked if he was tamed, this also proved unfruitful, she finally asked if Aslan was at least safe-and I quote Mr. Beaver here because he said it eloquently-“Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” 
    And I present to you Aslan!  C.S. Lewis in his genius subtly presented Christ by using Aslan, and he beautifully presented Christ in that small section. To me this is possibly one of the most beautiful writings in literature outside of the Christian scriptures. 
   A few months earlier this year I had lost my Dad to cancer. This was one of the most confusing times of my life, everything I had known was in question. I thought I understood God's goodness-I already knew how to reason I realized long ago that God is good, and that we would not have any concept of goodness without God, but this was different. I still have problems coping with my dad's death, but I remember praying one morning, and I was hurting. I couldn't understand God's goodness and how it pertained to me. Who wants syllogisms, and deductive logic when one's heart is hurting? Then I remembered Mr. Beaver telling Lucy "Safe? Who said anything about safe? ' Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." And I immediately asked myself who said life wouldn't hurt? He's good. He's the King, I tell you. 
     I had to trust Christ the King because He is good. No matter if I hurt or not He is still good. St. Paul wrote this in his letter to the Roman church  "And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. 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." 
    As humans we have difficulties separating what is good and evil. The writer of Hebrew's wrote "it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.", this can only be dreadful to those that rejected him, but is this not goodness? We must remember that God is immutably good.
   I remember discussing God's omnipresence- which is a fascinating subject! and it is one that i will enter in the future- that involves time, and eternity, and even a pen! I was almost labeled a heretic developing my idea...sigh...it was fun- and the person I was discussing with believed that God could not be omnipresent because he would have to also be in hell, but he forgot that God isn't confined to space. He also misunderstood the goodness of God, as believers we recognize that God is also just, which is also good. We forget at times that God's goodness isn't just grace, or redemption. It is also righteousness. It is difficult to accept that we must give ourselves to a completely good God, yet I would rather give myself to a just God, and die a thousand deaths because he is good. Yet we really want to reject that. 
    When man had fallen in the Garden he fell because he ate from the forbidden tree. Specifically the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is remarkable that they chose to eat from the tree, because they already knew goodness. God had declared that everything was good, and He Himself was ultimately good. Yet, man chose to also know evil. And now we are misdirected in our understanding of good and evil. We are still trying to trying to act as a god, trying to determine what is good and what is evil. If we know God than we will know goodness. 

A Good Cause

               In the last post I ended by saying that I will continue the discussion with human value, and I feel that I missed a few points. The last post is open to some attacks because I tried to fit too much in one post, and I left out some important questions. Thus I will present the questions, and I will answer them accordingly.

                My last post ultimately stated that if one is to deny the existence of God on the basis of an evil world one would also have to explain the concept of evil without an ultimate foundation of a moral standard. This cannot be if the world is pure material because we would only bound by physical laws and that would be the ultimate truth. If one does point to a moral standard then one must recognize it as the ultimate state of being, or better yet, an ultimate being. One simply cannot have good or evil without a point of reference towards an ultimate good.

                Now if I was given this argument to be true-which I believe it is-then one can easily look at the question of evil being even more perplexing because (as Descartes demonstrated) one cannot take out more from the effect than the cause gives…Huh?...This argument works both ways when demonstrating that there is a God, and when one tries to attack Him. By analogy-if there is no God, and we have evolved, we are purely objects made of material and nothing more; we cannot get a personality from a non-personal object. We would be only physical material because our cause is only material-one cannot take out more from the effect then cause. Thus personality must come from a personal cause. And I will admit that some atheist prove their point of an impersonal cause by their own personality, or the lack thereof. Like mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski said about Richard Dawkins “…he’s a bit of a reptile…”

                But! Where do we get evil from? Once again one cannot take out more from the effect than the cause. Therefore we can easily deduce that evil must come from God. We are given personality by God and an evil personality must come out of the cause. This can easily be explained by two examples from my  last post.

                The case we have before us is a case of “less is more”. We are not taking out more from the cause but we are just taking the cause out. We really are not taking out more from the cause, but we are just abandoning it; evil is not evil for its own cause, but it is evil for a good cause. In the last post I referred to Ted Bundy (the serial killer). He didn’t consider himself to be wrong, but he murdered for pleasure. He had a good cause, yet it was perverted. Pleasure has always been good, but we as humans have perverted it. From relationships to prosperity we have abused it. If pleasure is left out of its proper framework then it will become misdirected.  We left our cause, and have less of true goodness and moved away from it. We don’t have evil for its own cause, but a perverted goodness as a substitute.

                As in light, darkness is not a fulfillment of itself, but an absence of something else. When light enters a room it fills up the room, but when it is cut off darkness enters. This is because darkness is just an absence of light. Christ had once said that we being evil know how to give good gifts. As fallen humanity we still are aware of good things, but are haunted by the absence of God-which is true goodness. That is why every evil effect has a good, but perverted, cause. God is not evil; he doesn’t have that in him. We are evil because we don’t have Him in us.