The more I read, study, think, and talk to others, I am convinced that the biggest theological hang-up most people have can be broken down like this:
God is all-good.
God is all-knowing.
God is all-powerful.
Pick two out of the three.
Most people’s struggle with God is that they believe he cannot be all three at the same time.
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My guess is, people would struggle mostly with the first one. Bad things happen and since God allows such bad things to happen (and often to good people), there are many who would question God's 'goodness.'
"A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God." — Ravi Zacharias
mind-numbing…heart-warming…
I had a professor in college who said that she felt that as you developed as a theologian you eventually became willing (or were forced) to compromise one of those three.
This made me think. For a long time. Too long, in fact.
Is one of the problems possibly that God can be all three, and yet as humans we have free will? Where do we draw the line between our all-knowing, powerful, and good Lord and the free will He has allowed us (and everyone else) for good or ill to live in and affect our world?
Free will, for sure, factors into this. Just not sure how.
the problem is that inherent in any adjective is a sphere of meaning that has limits (in application; sometimes one adjective is mutually exclusive with another, like in this example). So when you apply them to God, who has no limits, you are attempting to put God in a 'definition box'. The cache of words at our disposal doesn't have a word that fully describes anything of God. I like how Barth explained God as being "wholly other" and 'un-tame-able.' It seeks less to apply a limiting definition and more to give God room to be God. I also like how God described himself to Job, too.
I'm playing devil's advocate here, but what happens when we use the "God defies categorization" (which he does) reasoning to try and explain away our doubts?
How many people are told, "Don't doubt God/faith/religion, etc." under the guise of "God knows all and you know nothing." The subtle message, of course, being, "God is smart. You are dumb. He doesn't want to hear your problems."
Well, in those situations, I think that the people counseling others to not ask questions are afraid to ask questoins themselves. If God is God, and is as big as Scripture says, then we will never exhaust who God is. I think the real counseling point for someone asking "who is God" in the midst of a painful situation, is to get them to understand that their are aspects of God and God's intentions/actions that are still hidden and mysterious to us. But, in the middle of that situation to trust/have faith that in the same way that God stuck with Israel, died on the cross, and came to empower the church at Pentecost is still interested in us today. That must also be followed up by the church acting as that community called by God to walk with that person.
What I was getting at in my post is that God is bigger than the logical contradictions we try to trap him (sorry for the gendered language) in. I totally believe in revelation and God's self-disclosure through creation, scripture, historical events, and espeicially Jesus. Just in those things alone, we know an increadible amount about God, but we don't know everything. The three options you gave us are ideals borne in the heads of finite, created, people. I just don't think that we can get any further than we have talking about God using those descriptions. haha and I don't really know the alternative yet.
I agree with Justin. While it is important that we recognize that we will always lack the language to describe God, that shouldn't stop us from trying. If you are in love, let's say, you probably lack the words to describe all the reasons why you love that person, but that doesn't mean you don't try. I think that we have to be careful using things like this because they can quickly become cop-outs. Cheap answers to difficult questions.
Yeah, no doubt we should try our hardest. I just worry when people think they have "arrived" at a definition of God. All at once they've been insanely arrogant and have turned God into an object for study instead of a subject for worship (and loving). No, cheap answers are silly. so is needing an answer for everything. I don't need faith to believe in something I'm 100% sure of.
Two Dawkins quotes spring to mind here….“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
and…
"There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"
Those are very Dawkins-esque quotes, for sure. Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett say the same thing in their discussions on faith.
Faith as a cop-out or as a means of evading thought and evidence evaluation is a kind of an arrogant thing to say, don't you think? If the Enlightenment has taught us anything, it has taught us that pure epistemological certianty is impossible. There is nothing that we count as knowledge that cannot be doubted. Descartes (Hume) and his buddies taught us that. But, why should we stop there? why be stuck at "i think therefore i am"? I'm not OK with that, and in my search to make meaning of the universe and reality as i experience it, the God that i encounter in Scripture makes more sense than any other system of meaning making–especially those put forth by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett.
You certainly aren't alone in those thoughts….and the god that others encounter in their different scripture think that it makes more sense than your scripture and any other system of meaning making. These quotes certainly have an arrogant tone especially when heard through certain ears….but really read the postings here…this same flavor of arrogance fills the room. The great thing about the meaning making of non-theists…is that most submit to the fact that they don't know the answeres…and generally don't make statements like..I'm 100% sure of…that is arrogance.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that we do, processes we adhere to, life-philosophies that we think are right compared to those adopted by others. That in now way, however, means that none of them are right. That conclusion doesn't follow. I know all that argument is meant to do is to insert doubt into certianty, but like i said, i'm not going to stop there.
To some extent you have to expect that to come from a Christian blog, right? I know it's probably not good understood in the wider dialogue concerning this stuff, but it is what it is.
Also, Anthony Flew, the guy who came up with the invisible gardener argument that you used earlier became an agnostic in the last couple of years. I don't know where you are at with stuff, but maybe read some of the stuff that he wrote about that.
Really the garden quote to me just says that lack of evidence isn't proof. This is as much an argument for a god as one against…but in truth not an argument at all. The quote doesn't insert doubt into certainty, but challenges the definition of the word certainty….which is used with reckless abandon all over the place. Why is it so easy to be certain? And why is it disproportionately easier to be certain when it comes to religion? I honestly don't know what to expect from a Christian blog, this one seems to be filled with young people, I would hope that at a young age you occasionally look into the mirror and challenge what you believe (I do)….before it just becomes habit to give into whatever your pastor tells you or what you read from an ancient text . I am quite curious to hear some arguments about what it takes for one to be certain about any topic. If I could count the things I WAS certain about ten years ago….whew!
Yeah, i hear ya on that. I agree that people should really question what they believe and look into things–especially when those beliefs call for some sort of life committment like Christianity or another religion does. Just a little about me, I was probably a lot like the sort of people you describe as blindly following the pastor when i came into college. I attribute my being that way to simply trusting the people teaching me. I didnt have a reason not to. Once i got to college I finally got into some philosophy courses that forced me to start thinking for myself. I would say that for at least a year in college i wasnt much more than an agnostic. But, I kept looking into it, and as hard as i have tried to not believe, or to explain God away over the past six years, I can't. I don't know what the tipping point of proof is for you, cause that's a subjective matter in the end. But I know what it was for me.
I know this might be personal, but what is that search for answers/meaning/etc looking like for you?
I guess for me it is in a way the opposite, I can't explain a god In…just doesn't add up in any way. But as we see from looking back on the advances of science….our world gets turned upside down every now and then….but still keeps stepping further and further away from a god explanation. I can't prove the non-existence of any gods or Santa Claus for that matter, so I guess we'll have to end here.
I believe Jesus demonstrated the power and goodness of God in His miracles, and we accept that God is all knowing, but we don't always understand why things happen the way they do. So perhaps any hang-ups are a result of humanity NOT being all good, all powerful, or all-knowing.
How often do you give thanks for the things which you cannot see? I believe God intervenes in our lives every day, and we cannot fathom the full extent of God's goodness, power, or knowledge.
"All I know, it that I don't know nuthin'"
Wisdom is knowing that one knows nothing. Well said.
This also makes me think about our static notion of perfection. I.E. because God is all these things, God is perfect. I believe we tend to hold perfection as a static idea, God is perfect because God is the same all the time.
Recognizing the aforementioned inadequacies of language, what if we begin to think of God as perfect… period. There is that old saying, "The right tool for the job."
Consider these two statements:
A hammer is the perfect tool for pounding a nail, but not so much for cutting a 2×4.
God is perfect all the time, for every situation.
Hmmmm
Well, what if the definition of a perfect god entails that that god would give you everything that you asked for? But, then someone else says that a perfect God is one that eliminates free-will and your desire to want anything? You're forced to define perfection again. Why can't God just be God? It could go something like, "God is God all the time, for every situation."
I'd say the biggest hangup is whether god exists or not….and if you are able to get past that (you should share your findings) the next question would be which god…..people seem to take easy leaps there…..I'd consider those before attempting the list of attributes.
I absolutely adore the way you create, It’s magnificent and in truth I examine each day time