4/30/2014
THE GOODNESS OF GOD #2
GOAFS II: #92
THE GOODNESS OF GOD #2
4.30.14
The goodness of God refers to His bounty, His charitableness
and liberality in His management of all things. This lowly dandelion is a
reminder of the abundance of giving that flows from God throughout his whole
creation. God is never stingy.
GOD IS GOOD
The better a person is, the more charitable he is. God is the
best and most bountiful Person, for there is none above Him. Since every creature of God is good (1 Timothy
4.4), and creatures derive their goodness from their Creator, He must be
the best, the supreme good. As the cause is richer than the effect, He must be
infinite goodness. Lest any should doubt God’s goodness, here are a couple of
things to think about when arrogant men assault His goodness.
First, God’s goodness is not impaired by His allowing sin to enter the
world.
God in goodness created man with a capacity for happiness.
Would it have been goodness if He had forced man to be happy against his will? God in goodness
furnished Adam with a power to stand, and in goodness he left him free to use
that power. Only with freedom of choice would obedience have been obedience. God’s
goodness is no less goodness because man made ill use of it. It was man, not
God, who fell. Furthermore, in goodness God allowed the fall of mankind, so
that He might show greater stores of His glory in redemption.
Second, God’s goodness is not
impaired by His discrimination as to the objects of it.
God does not distribute
His goodness equally; some things receive more than others. He did not make all
things equally good, yet He made nothing evil. He is good to all, but not in
the same degree. God’s goodness to creatures is measured by their distinct
usefulness to the common end. For example, the faculty of the mind is better
than that of speech, but speech is good because it can communicate what is in
the mind.
The inequality
of God’s goodness shows His goodness more than equality would. For example, it
provides us with links in human society—poor and wealthy need each other. It
provides reason both to praise and petition God.
Not all
creatures have the same capacity in their natures for goodness. A Man has a
higher capacity in this than a mouse; but this implies no fault in God’s
goodness. If God showed all His goodness to any creature, it would not be able
to stand it: even no man can see God and
live (Exodus 33.20).
God has the
right to manifest His goodness according to His sovereign pleasure. He is the Lord
of His gifts. If He pardons many rebels, must He therefore pardon them all? Is
God less good because He will not distribute His goodness to those that despise
Him and do not seek His favor? Is He not free to act according to His wise will
and not according to man’s faulty whims?
Moreover,
God’s punishing of evil doers in no way violates His goodness. Whatever God
does is good, whether it be pleasant or painful to the creature. Punishment is
not a moral evil in the person that inflicts it. Not punishing the wicked would
be bad, not good. The justice of God is a part of His goodness. Goodness
without justice would be impotent indulgence, and would encourage rebellion and
confusion. Could God be accounted good if He had the same attitude toward both
evil and righteousness? Making and enforcing laws is part of God’s goodness
since it promotes goodness and restrains evil. The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just, and good. (Romans 7.12)
Law is no
longer law without a penalty. It would be a perversion of goodness not to
enforce the law. It would be a weak indulgence, not goodness, to bear forever
with the unrepentant. The Lord is known
by the judgment which He executes. (Ps. 91.16). How could it be good for
God to see His goodness trampled upon, and never vindicate His honor? If men
turn God’s goodness into a license for sin, God will turn His goodness into
justice.
However,
punishment is not God’s primary intention in giving the law. Otherwise, He
would not hinder or restrain all the sin he does. Punishment is called His strange work (Isaiah 28.21). The
primary purpose the law is to encourage goodness in men. Divine goodness levels
its hatred primarily upon sin, and not the sinner. The sinner falls under
punishment because his sin cleaves to him. But God in goodness often warns the
sinner, giving him space to repent. When the punishment falls it serves the
good purpose of warning observers and future generations. For example, Christ
told his audience to remember lot’s wife
(Luke 17.32). Judgment is often mixed with mercy for the righteous. The
floodwaters that destroyed the world bore up the ark that saved Noah and his
family.
Finally, God’s afflicting of
His saints is no violation of His goodness.
The
believer’s afflictions are for his good, for the increase of grace. Can we
charge God with evil when the afflictions He sends His church serve to remove
her dross, cure her carelessness, increase her numbers, strengthen her graces,
and provide opportunities to prove her love to her Savior? The prison epistles
of Paul seem to have a higher strain than those he wrote while he was still at
liberty. It would be a want of goodness, or rather a mark of cruelty, for a
father to leave his child without chastening. It is great goodness that makes
us smart here instead of scorched hereafter.
Next week we will
begin to see the ways in which God shows his goodness to us.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
4/23/2014
THE GOODNESS OF GOD #1
GOAFS II: #91
THE GOODNESS OF
GOD #1
4.23.14
|
I
|
have mentioned Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) to
you before. He is one the greatest uninspired writers on the existence and attributes of God. His book of discourses on this
has been summarized for the 21st century reader by Daniel Chamberlin
in a book, A Portrait of God,
published in 2011. I am about two-thirds of the way through this book and have
found nothing that would trouble the great orthodox theologians all the way
back to the Apostle Paul. What I have found are a number answers to questions that
might well have arisen had the Apostles faced the twenty-first century mass
media and the vast body of liberal theologians busily trying to whittle God
down to a man-sized, manageable deity. I am indebted to both Charnock and
Chamberlin for much of what follows.
The Lord
asked the rich young ruler, Why do
you call me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mark
10.18) God alone is essentially and perfectly good. This simple
statement betrays the futility of works-righteousness. None of us is naturally
good. There is nothing we can possibly do in ourselves that would impress God.
Those who attempt to impress God would like to make Him indebted to them. Man is
always ready to transform even faith into a work of merit, but even our faith
is not original to ourselves, but is a gift of God. (Eph.
2.8)
His goodness is more than simple mercy and extends beyond His
mercy.
The goodness of God refers to His bounty, His charitableness
and liberality in His management of all things. God is benevolent to all His
creatures as creatures. To us, this is the most pleasant perfection of Gods
nature, rendering Him lovely and desirable to us. When God would reveal Himself
to Moses in the fullest manner that a mortal could bear, He said, I will make all my goodness pass before you (Exodus
33.19), as if goodness were the fountain of all the other streams of
His glory—the attribute that leads all the rest of his attributes to act.
THE NATURE OF GOD’S GOODNESS
God is good by His own essence. He is more than good in His own essence, for all He created is
good in that sense. But He is good by His own essence, in that none
other causes Him to be good. Goodness is not a quality in Him, but is His very
nature. It is not a habit added to His essence, but is His essence in itself.
His goodness is original, infinite, unlimited, eternal, and abundant.
God is the prime and chief goodness.. All goodness in creatures derives from Him: I say to the Lord, You are my Lord;
I have no
good apart from you. (Psalm 16.2) Our goodness is mutable, it
changes, but His is immutable. He is the standard of goodness; nothing is good
as it resembles Him. There is no speck of evil in God. He is all good.
God’s goodness in communicative. It is the very nature of
goodness to be diffusive, to distribute, it is “catching.” God is not envious
of His goodness or stingy with it. He is more prone to communicate His goodness
than is the sun to spread its rays and heat.
God is necessarily good. He is good by nature, not only by will. He could not have chosen to be bad. He is goodness itself,
and cannot act against His own nature. He did not have to create the world, but
having chosen to do so, He had to make the world good.
Nevertheless, God is also freely good.. The necessity of his goodness does not hinder the liberty of
His actions. He is free in the communications of His goodness. He voluntarily
exercises His goodness in that He chooses that which is good, or which degree
of the good, to do. He is under no constraint with regard to His goodness.
God delights in communicating His goodness. His pleasure in bestowing is greater than our pleasure in
receiving. He does not hoard up His treasures as if He were envious of them.
Rather He delights to be petitioned by men for His goodness. He is under no
constraint with regard to His goodness.
The display of goodness was the motive and end of all God’s works of creation and providence. His motive and end must be in
Himself, for there is nothing higher than He. Therefore this most amiable
perfection claims the best right to be foremost displayed. In creating, God did
not increase His excellency, but He did manifest it. Had He not created the
world, He would have been unknown by any but Himself; but He produced creatures
so that He might be known. The acknowledging of His goodness should be the
great end and motive of all His works.
(To be
continued next week)
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
4/16/2014
PUNITIVE MEDICINE
GOAFS II: #90
PUNITIVE MEDICINE
4.16.14
The utopian fantasy of a single-payer healthcare system (socialized medicine) is not new. It has been lurking in the fervid swamps of progressive liberalism for many years. The first time it clearly raised its ugly head (Hillary-care in 1993), most people, including President Bill Clinton, had the good sense to recognize its time had not yet come. Our current imperial President has no such good sense.
I am not
going to review what a misnomer “The Affordable Care Act” is—it is neither
affordable nor healthy. It is only going to get worse until the entire health
care system lies in ruins and threatens imminent bankruptcy to the country. At
that point the progressive liberals will ride in on a scrawny pale horse and
proclaim that their single payer system is the only remedy for the mess they
have made.
The rest of
this post is essentially a picture of where America is probably headed if we
keep sliding down the present slippery slope.
In 1980
Alexander Podrabinek wrote a book, Punitive
Medicine (Ottawa Il: Karoma
Publishers, 223 p.) The
book is a careful and documented account of the use of psychiatry for political
purposes in the U.S.S.R. Soon after the book was published, the author was
tried and convicted of criticizing the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to exile
in Siberia and served a total of 8.5 years.
About that
time, commenting on this book, R.J. Rushdoony wrote an article (Chalcedon
Medical Report No. 8) about “Statist Medicine.” That report begins this way;
“Notable opponents of the communist regime are discredited by
being sentenced to mental institutions, there to be drugged and tortured into
submission. The psychiatrists act on the orders from above. They justify this
prostitution of their profession by saying that no man in his right mind would
speak out, take a stand against, or contradict and challenge the state system
and official ideology. “Normalcy” and mental health to them means living with
the system. To question or fight the system for them is not a normal act nor a
sensible one; hence, it is a sign of mental problems. (sounds a lot like MSNBC talking head holding forth on
the evils of the Tea Party)
“Thus, mental health is defined by conformity to the Marxist
order, not by a sound mind in relationship to God, and to men in and under God.
Normalcy and mental health become whatever the state decrees and does. Such a
definition is very close to that of the Western democracies and their schools;
men are group directed, subject to group dynamics, and are trained to regard
the behavior of those resisting the group as “deviant.” (One U.S. mother of an
intelligent boy, whose father was a noted scientist, was called to the public
school to discuss her “deviant” son. His “problem,” which brought him under suspicion,
was a preference for reading over playground horseplay.) The group is the norm;
society determines standards and mental health. The Marxists have simply put
this humanistic standard under more disciplined direction: not the group but
the state determines normalcy and mental health.
Rushdoony
goes on to point out that this situation produces some strange diagnoses such
as these: “She is suffering from nervous
exhaustion caused by justice-seeking.” (That sounds uncomfortably close to
what the progressive liberals today say about members of the conservative
right.)
Or, “You have schizo-dissent.” In the U.S.
the progressive liberals use words such as “racism” and “homophobia” in the
same way. Fortunately they do not yet have the power to institutionalize their
political opponents…yet.
The big
difference between the Russian Marxist state and the American Humanist state
can easily be seen in the latest news reports. In January of this year,
President Obama said, “That’s the good
thing about being president. I can do whatever I want.” This is Obama’s
attitude but fortunately there are still a few constraints. His power is far
from absolute. He is reduced to threatening, drawing imaginary lines, lecturing
world bullies, deceiving congress, deceiving the American people, ignoring laws
that he doesn’t like, signing executive orders and talking and talking and
talking but really not accomplishing much. He is the “talker-in-chief” busily
trying to lead from behind.
In Russia,
President Putin decides, “Crimea is a necessary part of my country, I will
reunite us as they request.” He moves troops in, gets his government’s approval
in one day and four weeks later the whole job is done. President Obama would
love this kind of power. All he can do is bluster, blather, lecture, and try to
change the subject.
It is a sorry
sight to watch Barack the Bloviator
come up against Vlad the Impaler in
the arena of foreign policy. The result usually can be labeled a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It was fun reading about Alexander’ bad day to our children,
but it is nothing but painful to see it reenacted by the President on a regular
basis.
There are
many ways to go from here but let me get to the main point—God’s design for the
social order is described as “sphere sovereignty ” by both Roman Catholic and
Reformed theologians. Wikipedia defines “sphere sovereignty” this way;
Sphere sovereignty is the
concept that each sphere (or sector) of life has its own distinct
responsibilities and authority or competence, and stands equal to other spheres
of life. Sphere sovereignty involves the idea of an all encompassing created order, designed and governed by God. This
created order includes societal communities (such as those for purposes of
education, worship, civil justice, agriculture, economy and labor, marriage and
family, artistic expression, etc.), their historical development, and their
abiding norms. The principle of sphere sovereignty seeks
to affirm and respect creational boundaries, and historical differentiation.
Sphere sovereignty implies that no one area of
life or societal community is sovereign over another. Each sphere has its own
created integrity. Calvinists hold that since God created everything “after its
own kind,” diversity must be acknowledged and appreciated. For instance, the
different God-given norms for family life and economic life should be
recognized, such that a family does not properly function like a business.
Similarly, neither faith-institutions (e.g. churches) nor an institution of civil
justice (i.e. the state) should seek totalitarian control, or any regulation of
human activity outside their limited competence, respectively.
Our
founding fathers, whether Protestant, Catholic, generally agreed on this
principle. The Apostle Paul, in Romans 13.1-4 spells out the sphere of the
civil magistrate (the state):
13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no
authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been
instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists
what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For
rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no
fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval;
4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is
wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain!
It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. NRSV
The life of
the state is geared to punitive action. The true function of the ministry of
justice (the state) is to be a terror to evil doers. This works out to the
administration of public justice at home, and fighting just foreign wars when
necessary. The state is given by God as
an agency of coercion—and is ultimately accountable to God for its stewardship
of this trust.
But society
as God designed it has numerous other functional entities:
the home, the
school, the church, the businesses and professions. Each sphere of life has its own distinct responsibilities and
authority or competence, and stands equal to other spheres of life. Each of these has a sovereignty in its
sphere—given by God and not subject to preemption by the state.
When the
state, a basically punitive and coercive institution, invades and violates
these spheres, no good ever comes of it. Take education for example. In 1776,
the illiteracy rate in the new country was estimated at 5%. The rate began to
grow slowly, then exponentially as the state and then the federal government
intruded into the process. In 2013, 35% of all adult Americans were
functionally illiterate, 14% of them could not read at all, and 85% of American
parents could not read well enough to teach their children to read. This is
always the effect when the state takes a hand in what is not its God-given
function. The state is happy to insure that children in school have ready
access to condoms, even though they are not able to read and follow the
instructions on the label.
We are seeing
this same thing in health care. It is
not simply that people prefer their own doctors over faceless bureaucrats—God
prefers that doctors heal and the state stick to its own sphere, function and
responsibilities.
There are
many other reasons why the election in November is critical—here is one that
arrived in my email today: The President wants the US to sign on to the UN’s
International Criminal Court (ICC), which would allow the UN's ICC to arrest
and try US troops for War Crimes, without the legal protections guaranteed
under US Law, and from which there is no appeal.
The President, with his Democratic control of the Senate, has
nearly all the power he needs to get this treaty accepted. If the
Non-Establishment Republicans, and Conservatives, can take back the Senate in
2014, our troops may continue to be protected from unnecessary danger at the
whim of foreign bureaucrats most of whom hate us.
Will the
adults win back control the Senate in November? A win for progressive liberals
will further cripple healthcare in America and very likely be followed by a
single-payer system that will essentially put us right where Russian citizens
are today. We will not only be at the mercy of faceless bureaucrats at home but
everywhere else in the world as well.
These are troublous and dismal times
in many ways. The dark shadows of the homicidal sons of Allah reach across most
of the civilized world. In the United States a voracious humanist State that
admits accountability to neither God nor voter continues to expand its power
and extend its reach beyond its God-given sphere.
During these
days of Holy Week, we need to remember the nature of the battle we are in:
For we do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil
in the heavenly places.
And we need
to pray often the Prayer Jesus taught his disciples almost two thousand years
ago:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Matthew 6.9-13
I think it may not be out of
line here to quote a line from a Good Friday sermon by Anthony Campollo:
It’s
Friday, but Sunday’s coming!
Have a good week and a great
resurrection Sunday.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
