[Largely plagiarized summary of select portions of the third chapter of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain.]
How can we define the goodness of God? One one hand, his ways are higher than ours, and what we call good might be bad, and vice versa. On the other hand, our concept of good must not be entirely off.
“If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’, we shall obey, if at all, only through fear–and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity–when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing–may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.”
The fascinating middle ground is that, although we have an imperfect understanding of God’s good, it is not ever confused with bad. In fact, men are (many of them) in a process of gradually discovering good, and as they do, they know immediately that the new law they encounter is good and real, and they feel a sense of guilt at not complying to it. The example is of an adopted child pulled off the streets, who gradually learns his manners, but recognizes them as superior to his former ways, with the humble sense that he has “blundered into society he is unfit for.” In this sense, God’s goodness is different that ours, but as the Platonic form differs from the physical object, or as a child’s scribbled circle differs from the perfect circle he has in his head. Even in the discrepancy, the superior standard is affirmed.
So how can we describe good in the ultimate, divine, “ideal” sense? When we say God is good, we mean that he is loving, and that is true. But by saying that he is loving, we mean he is “kind” and that he wants our happiness at all cost, like a benevolent and somewhat senile grandfather. And that is a poor definition of love. Kindness is not good when separated from the other virtues. “It consents very readily to the removal of its object” (e.g. the euthanasia of an animal). Furthermore, parents who are so kind to their children that they will not cause them pain raise the worst brats and in spoiling them, ruin their character. There is more to love than kindness. So what is God’s love like, then?
We are given in Scripture various modes, of varying analogous depth, which capture aspects of the unfathomable depths of God’s love for us, and thus his goodness as we may know it.
Artist and artifact
We are God’s workmanship. The sculptor or painter who loves his masterpiece, his life’s work, works with it, and will not be satisfied until it has achieved a certain character. In a sense, God is likewise not content with us until we have achieved a certain character.
Man and beast
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. The owner of a dog tames the dog primarily for his own sake, that he may love it (not that the dog may love him); yet, the man’s interests in the dog are the dog’s best interests. The man is not content with a mangy, smelly, unruly mutt – he trains the dog’s behavior and cleans it to make it more lovable. Although to the dog, this process would seem quite unagreeable, the tamed dog achieves the healthiest, longest life, with the most comforts, and the noblest sense of self and loyalty. (In vague analogy, borrowing from the end of the book, a dog truly lives in his master as we truly live in God – reaching our potential and purpose when rightly submitted to our master.)
Father and son
God is our father, and we his children. This symbol means essentially an authoritative love on one side, with an obedient love on the other. Familial affection is mixed with a sense of submission, duty, which produces a relationship engendering a strong sense of honor and rightness in most men, when it is observed among them.
“The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be. Even in our own days, though a man might say it, he cold mean nothing by saying, “I love my son but don’t care how great a blackguard he is provided he has a good time.”
Man and woman
We are the bride of Christ. In this symbol we see that true love demands the perfecting of its object.
When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul/ Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
God’s love contains the kernels of all these earthly loves, and far surpasses them. Ultimately, God loves us more than we want to be loved. We would like a mild, emasculated, wimpy bit of love, love that either made us the center of everything, or else left us alone. But a look at the world can see that this is a contemptible perversion of love – witnessed either in those who are too fearful and self-centered to love courageously, or those that excessively dote upon the object of their love. I am afraid God loves us more truly and fervently than we would like.
When Christianity says that god loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some ‘disinterested’ because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in aweful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. the great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect’, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artists’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.
God loves us more than we would like. Praise be to Him.
Ben Taylor 