The Mighty Good Umpire
In the last blog I introduced six spectrums that we use in moral thinking: good/evil, right/wrong, holy/common, legal/illegal, moral/immoral, and wise/foolish. I’d like to discuss each of these, and I’ll start with the one I believe is foundational to all the others: good/evil.
What do we mean when we say that something is good? That seems like it should be an easy question to answer, but the more you ponder it, the more difficult it becomes to define.
The first thought that comes to my mind is that something is good if it is beneficial. But then we need to ask: “Beneficial to whom?”. I might find exposure to sunlight a beneficial thing; a person with pale skin and freckles who burns easily will not.
If that is the way to see, define, and understand goodness, there isn’t really such a thing as goodness in itself. There are only different people with different ideas of goodness. Goodness is an idea in someone’s head, not a real quality that exists in the thing itself, and any talk of good and evil becomes essentially meaningless. We can’t say a thing—or an act—IS good or evil, only that some people think it is.
That is exactly how many in our society think about good and evil and that is why many conversations about good and evil deteriorate into a cycle of fruitless assertions of my opinion against yours. There is no way to resolve this difference if good is merely subjective.
To speak meaningfully about good and evil, there has to be an umpire—a judge of some sort—outside of us, above us, with the ability (and the right) to judge between our opinions and determine what is good and what is not. In our Christian faith, God (and His Word) stand in that place because the Bible puts Him in that place from the very start.
A key theme in the opening chapters of Genesis is good and evil. In Genesis 1 God creates all that exists and declares seven times that as it comes from His hand, that creation is good; the final summary says it was very good (Genesis 1.31). I find five important truths tucked into that presentation.
First, God IS before all things. This is a contrast with all other ancient views of the gods, who were depicted as arising from the already existing material world. And God’s name is “I am”—the One who is—He is, in His essence, “being” itself—and He gives other things independent of Himself being.
Second, He calls their being, separate from His own, “good”, implying that He is good (as 1 John 1.5 states plainly: “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all”) and has the right and ability to determine what is good. Goodness is pronounced, not self-declared. Creation doesn't certify its own goodness — God, standing outside it, renders the verdict. Goodness comes from the umpire, not the thing itself.
Third, goodness is material, not just spiritual. God's "good" falls on light, water, land, plants, animals, bodies—ordinary physical stuff—before humanity appears. Matter is not lesser or suspect by nature.
Fourth, order and distinction are part of goodness. God separates light from darkness, waters above from below, day from day—differentiating things out of formlessness. Rightly ordered distinction is itself part of what "good" means, not a later imposition on neutral chaos.
Finally, goodness includes a thing fulfilling the purpose for which it was made—an observation made by Aristotle (4th century BC) and baptized by Thomas Aquinas (13th century AD). Genesis spells out the function of things before God pronounces them "good”. Light divides day and night and mark seasons. Plants and animals reproduce "according to their kinds". Man, made in the image of God, is made to reproduce and rule the earthly creation. Goodness goes beyond bare existence. A created thing is ordered toward a designed end.
So, God is good and defines goodness. What He sees as good and calls good IS good. Everything that He made was good.
Goodness is the foundation of all things. Nothing God made was evil. Making evil would require Him to make something He hated, and the goodness of His nature did not allow Him to do that. Evil did not exist in the universe as God made it.
But if we’re going to talk about the spectrum of good and evil, we have to understand evil itself. If God didn’t create it, where did it come from? I’ll address that in the next blog.
What do we mean when we say that something is good? That seems like it should be an easy question to answer, but the more you ponder it, the more difficult it becomes to define.
The first thought that comes to my mind is that something is good if it is beneficial. But then we need to ask: “Beneficial to whom?”. I might find exposure to sunlight a beneficial thing; a person with pale skin and freckles who burns easily will not.
If that is the way to see, define, and understand goodness, there isn’t really such a thing as goodness in itself. There are only different people with different ideas of goodness. Goodness is an idea in someone’s head, not a real quality that exists in the thing itself, and any talk of good and evil becomes essentially meaningless. We can’t say a thing—or an act—IS good or evil, only that some people think it is.
That is exactly how many in our society think about good and evil and that is why many conversations about good and evil deteriorate into a cycle of fruitless assertions of my opinion against yours. There is no way to resolve this difference if good is merely subjective.
To speak meaningfully about good and evil, there has to be an umpire—a judge of some sort—outside of us, above us, with the ability (and the right) to judge between our opinions and determine what is good and what is not. In our Christian faith, God (and His Word) stand in that place because the Bible puts Him in that place from the very start.
A key theme in the opening chapters of Genesis is good and evil. In Genesis 1 God creates all that exists and declares seven times that as it comes from His hand, that creation is good; the final summary says it was very good (Genesis 1.31). I find five important truths tucked into that presentation.
First, God IS before all things. This is a contrast with all other ancient views of the gods, who were depicted as arising from the already existing material world. And God’s name is “I am”—the One who is—He is, in His essence, “being” itself—and He gives other things independent of Himself being.
Second, He calls their being, separate from His own, “good”, implying that He is good (as 1 John 1.5 states plainly: “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all”) and has the right and ability to determine what is good. Goodness is pronounced, not self-declared. Creation doesn't certify its own goodness — God, standing outside it, renders the verdict. Goodness comes from the umpire, not the thing itself.
Third, goodness is material, not just spiritual. God's "good" falls on light, water, land, plants, animals, bodies—ordinary physical stuff—before humanity appears. Matter is not lesser or suspect by nature.
Fourth, order and distinction are part of goodness. God separates light from darkness, waters above from below, day from day—differentiating things out of formlessness. Rightly ordered distinction is itself part of what "good" means, not a later imposition on neutral chaos.
Finally, goodness includes a thing fulfilling the purpose for which it was made—an observation made by Aristotle (4th century BC) and baptized by Thomas Aquinas (13th century AD). Genesis spells out the function of things before God pronounces them "good”. Light divides day and night and mark seasons. Plants and animals reproduce "according to their kinds". Man, made in the image of God, is made to reproduce and rule the earthly creation. Goodness goes beyond bare existence. A created thing is ordered toward a designed end.
So, God is good and defines goodness. What He sees as good and calls good IS good. Everything that He made was good.
Goodness is the foundation of all things. Nothing God made was evil. Making evil would require Him to make something He hated, and the goodness of His nature did not allow Him to do that. Evil did not exist in the universe as God made it.
But if we’re going to talk about the spectrum of good and evil, we have to understand evil itself. If God didn’t create it, where did it come from? I’ll address that in the next blog.