God is Good

Probably the oldest song I can remember singing in the evangelical church I grew up in is "God Is Good". The chorus continues with further proclamation: "I sing and shout", "we celebrate", "we know it's true": every time interspersed with, God is good.

The purpose of today's post is to propose a new model for belief in God in order to diminish religious mistrust and foster a broader understanding of faith.

My daughter used to claim that almost any meat was "chicken". Sometimes she was correct, it really was chicken, and sometimes it was something else, maybe pork. Correct or incorrect, right? For Fiona, she was working with the set of categories at her disposal, which featured different labels to most of us. She thus could be said to be identifying each piece of "chicken-like" substance "correctly". When provided new categories, she revised her definitions. Today those meat categories are rapidly coming into line with where most of us are at.

"God" is an interesting one though. The word relates to a being or beings that no-one can usually see. Despite the great coming of the incarnated Word in Jesus Christ, first century Christians still affirmed with conviction that God is invisible and immortal. My translation of 1 Timothy 6:16 reads as adapted from the NIV:

To the only one who is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see - to him be honor and might forever. Amen.

Jesus was astonishingly the physical way in which that perfection would be glimpsed - eventually leading to an extraordinary idea of him joining the father in his divine coeternal status, despite some fairly clear distinctions made in earlier times. The point, however, is twofold. Firstly, that we humans desire in earnest to gaze upon the perfectly good. Our souls drink it up. That is what Jesus enabled (see Colossians 1:15). Secondly, to return to that classic hymn, God is Good. God defines goodness. It's actually a bit like saying: goodness is goodness. It's reflected in other mystical statements like God is Love. For Christians, Jews and Muslims he necessarily defines that which is perfect.

This might sound unacceptably vague or ambiguous, but actually, there is a beautiful simplicity on offer here to which we can all have access and from which I feel sure we can all benefit. If in fact God is goodness, defining goodness and love itself, then there can literally be no squabbles about his goodness, any more than we could complain that a sandwich is not a sandwich.

The dividing line is not whether God is good or not - almost everyone has a category for "good" and almost everyone knows instinctively that that perfect measure lies outside of themselves.

Where Christianity might be said to differ from Buddhism or Humanism, for instance, might be the notion that perfect goodness should be personified (as opposed to could be personified). I don't know Buddhist thought well enough to assert this for sure, but I assume that there is healthy accommodation for the personification of Goodness, whom we might refer to as "God". Of course, Christian doctrine actually muddies the water a little in staking the claim that perfect goodness is the Godhead, but not personified as only one person, since Father, Son and Holy Spirit each are persons possessing and personifying the divine Goodness. 

Indeed, it seems to me like there is a lot of common ground here between the current human perspectives. Here is another logical step for humanity: many people would like to benefit from greater Goodness in their life, even though they don't come close to defining it or personifying it. The ancient way we have interacted for millennia to invoke such Goodness is through meditative prayer and spiritual request. Doing so collectively enhances a sense of connection, community and belonging.

What I find so appealing in this realisation of the natural appeal to pray more is that there is a natural "fit" between our human needs for 1) goodness and 2) community. 

There is a third human need concerned by the recognition of a universal Good. We need to experience gratitude. Research shows not only that regular meditation provides powerful and sustained improvement to our brain states but also that it develops our brain structures, developing our physiological capacity to be compassionate. That level of benefit runs so deep we can describe it as a need to be grateful. What religious belief provides is something precious: someone to be grateful *toward*. However, I want to be really, really careful here not to be heard to say that humans need to thank a personified Goodness (a.k.a. God) in order to develop neurologically. That's clearly false since many traditions achieve this effect simply by practising a sense of gratitude and expressing it frequently around others. What I am saying however is that the personified/personal way is a great way to tick three boxes in a way we can agree is beneficial:

Enhancing our own goodness and love

Enhancing our sense of community

Enhancing and channelling our gratitude

God really is Good, unfalsifiably so. *He* defines it. In the next post, let's think more about the next steps of relating to God: how this appeal to his perfection requires we keep our requests broad and sensitive to what our senses are telling us. Of course, to do this we will necessarily be opening the ugly can of worms that is suffering.