To my agnostic friend's question on God's goodness
Although there aren't really answers that we can universally accept when it comes to God's goodness, here's one that I have found to be helpful to me.
Agnostic: God has been good to me but that doesn't mean he is good. There's no way for me to objectively say that he's good just because of my personal experience.
Me: It's true that just because your dad gives you candy all the time means that he is a good person. My belief that God is good is because he gives you freedom. Freedom not in the sense that you can do anything you want but in the sense that you are free to accept or reject Him, to acknowledge or to ignore Him, to love or to hurt Him :)
The agnostic being mentioned believes there is a God if i'm not mistaken. he just cannot really define him and prefers not to ascribe Him to any particular religion that we know of for he feels it's too limiting of a perspective.
posted by Denz at 5:18 AM
7 Comments:
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8:00 PM
"My belief that God is good is because he gives you freedom. . .in the sense that you are free to accept or reject Him, to acknowledge or to ignore Him, to love or to hurt Him"
I am not clear how that makes a person/being necessarily good. If anything, I'd say the more correct word for someone you described is indifferent.
I am not against the theory that God is good. I cannot, however, understand this reasoning.
4:53 PM
I have to totally disagree by calling someone who allows you to swear at him indifferent.
In my opinion, if you hurt someone who is indifferent, he/she doesn't get hurt nor affected versus someone who does love you.
On the other hand, a person who cares for you and looks after your well being should be able to tolerate and accept to get hurt even though he doesn't like it but because he puts you before himself.
Just because you allow your child to express his disappointments and anger towards you doesn't mean that you're indifferent to your child right? You may see it as an act of putting the child before yourself.
2:32 AM
Hmmmm. . .I'm not sure. There could be other reasons why we are "free". (In The Devil's Advocate, for instance, Al Pacino said that it is for God's entertainment.) If someone lets you be, I don't think that he or she necessarily loves you. It could be that he doesn't care whatever it is you do to yourself.
3:46 AM
"Just because you allow your child to express his disappointments and anger towards you doesn't mean that you're indifferent to your child right? You may see it as an act of putting the child before yourself."
Just because you do does not mean that you love your child either.
9:39 PM
Well, I don't know about God but I know that it's not so entertaining to continuously watch little children do little foolish things. It gets boring and there are more entertaining things to do as an adult. Is there entertainment in watching us do stupid things for thousands of years from a supreme being? It's very improbable because there might be infinitely more entertaining things God can do. In other words, I think there are better things to do for God's entertainment than giving us freedom to do foolish things.
6:17 AM
However, we cannot really understand God. He's beyond us to comprehend. On the other hand, we can understand ourselves and our own motives. Instead of questioning God, it might be more productive for us to question ourselves. Do we really love God? Are we willing to work hard to search for him? Are we willing to be his children or would we rather follow and pleasure ourselves instead? I think those answering those questions are very practical for it shapes the person that you become.
6:20 AM
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