In preparing for my Sunday School lesson tomorrow, something very unique came to mind. I’ve been contemplating the nature of God. Certainly God is good. But even so, what right did God have, besides simply being all-powerful, in creating man in the first place?
Surely he is mighty, but is he just in creating men with a freewill, some who would then’ decide to reject him and thereby suffer eternally because they have a choice? The same freewill through which only true love can come, is also the avenue of destruction. Is that fair then? Wouldn’t it have been better for God not to have created anything then?
Consider then evil. Evil is not a thing as is Good. Good is only good since if part of it could be or become evil, then there would be no good at all. We characterize other men this way if you think about it. If a man ‘s character is such that most of his acts are good, but there is a blemish so that he does deliberate evil, then we tend to think of him as evil. That evil then spoils the good. Indeed then Evil is Good gone bad. No amount of Good in a anything can overcome the Evil that spoils it all. That is why satan is a liar and the father of lies, though once he was the most powerful and beautiful creature of God.
A little leaven leavens the whole loaf. A little salt salts all. God is good and nothing but good. There is nothing spoiled in him.
So God is good, but God is also love. I tend to think of things mathematically sometimes, so I rewrote 1 Cor 13 with this equivalency.
1Cor. 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not God, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not God, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not God, I gain nothing. 4 God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. 5 God is not rude, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. 6 God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 God never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when God (perfection) comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see [God] face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know [God] fully, even as I am fully known [by God]. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and God. But the greatest of these is God.
It put this scripture in a new light for me. It also paves the way for understand why God is not only righteous in his creation of man with a freewill, but it appears to me that God’s character is such that it necessitates creation. God is good. God is love. God’s nature pursues good and love by making creatures upon who he will bestow this good and loving nature.
God’s license to create is simply because he is good and loving. He has the right to create because it is also his nature to make creatures upon whom he can lavish his goodness and love. Loving goodness always seeks to propagate loving goodness.
L
