with a twist.

I was out to coffee at the JR-HC (James River Hebrew's Campus) tonight with friends, and I realized.

We were in the middle of an impassioned discussion about how to save the world, when the question of God's goodness came to me.

"Ashley, how could the overwhelming good that you're seeing--this all-out, sacrificial sort of love for others--be a product of anything but a good God?"

Well, maybe it's a manipulation. God could still be fundamentally evil, and use this illusion of good to fool the world to further hurt. Maybe He enjoys watching us slave away against the evil we can't seem to eradicate.

"Hm, okay. You're right--that's a possibility. But, think about the nature of goodness itself. Good done for a malevolent purpose isn't actually good. So, it would truly have to be an illusion. Could an evil God create a false sense of good in order to fit a grander scheme of perversity?"

I suppose. Though, we don't experience the drive of our goodness as manipulative or instrumental. We just find disgust with what is perverse, and joy in what is sacrificial--even as don't always act out these ideals. So, those parts of us are truly good. And what is truly good couldn't be created from a God whose good is only illusory. If it's not in God, it doesn't exist. If He's not good, goodness can't exist in us.

"Oooo, that feels like a misstep. In the Christian sense, evil is not in God, and yet, it exists. Hence the reason for atonement. So, let's move back. An evil God could not breed what is good, but a good God could breed evil?"

Yeah, Ash, I'm pretty sure that you're now just regurgitating a C.S. Lewis book you read several years ago.

"Shh, I'm busy. Why would it seem that the goodness in us is a proof that we must come from a good God (and not an evil one, because an evil one could not beget goodness), but that evil exists alongside a good God?"

Because evil is the absence of good. There's no space in goodness for evil. It's when goodness is no longer there, that evil is. So, an evil God as the absolute absence of good doesn't allow for the goodness I see. But, a good God doesn't necessarily bar the vacancy of itself. Evil can exist in the world of a good God. But goodness can't exist in the world of an evil God.

Vodka tonic, on the rocks, with a twist of lime, pleasethanks.