The Godly God

The Godly God
Atheists sometimes ridicule and mock. Agnostics often apathetically ignore. Faithful constantly struggle and seek to reconcile the concept of a Godly God – a sovereign God that is in complete control. Theologically, it’s described as Omnipotent, all-potent, all-powerful. An all-powerful being wouldn’t be reliant on the power, abilities, or even will of creatures. The Godly God does what it wants with its creation and yet, the God and its actions are moral.
Herein lies the dilemma for humanity. The very definition of deity is something with more power and most likely with all-power, especially over humanity. This is true whether we’re talking about polytheism or monotheism. The Hindus, Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs and on and on had a concept – an original concept that their gods or God were all-power and could and often did treat creation and its creatures as playthings or puppets. Therein lies the dilemma. How could a moral being be so egotistical and arrogant?


THE ORIGINAL GOD
The original concept of deity or god(s) was that they were superior to human beings in abilities, knowledge, and even morality. But as time went on, humans had to resolve and reconcile the obvious crisis – how these all-powerful beings apparently behaved immorally, according to humanity’s perception. A god that sits by and allows evil to happen, such as the senseless death of a loved one or rape, child-abuse, or generic things like war or death from old age – that is either an immoral being or one that isn’t all-powerful. So, while the original concept of “Godness” is that the being does whatever it wants and is still moral, humans had to begin to rework the concept.
To fix this crisis of immoral gods, some cultures added equally powerful anti-gods, devils, or demons to their pantheon. This way, the “good” God can be seen as moralistically “trying” to do the right thing but is in a constant battle with an equally or almost equally powerful deity. This is seen in many cultures like the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans and the Norse/Vikings. But this insertion of the anti-god only made the “good” God less powerful, less potent. Who wants to believe and follow a god that may not win in the end? Thus, no matter how dire the stories of the battles between “good and evil” -- good is always depicted as winning in the end.

As human philosophy began to mesh with religion, the reconciliation of the problem of an all-powerful yet still moral God took on another aspect. It was admitted God is all-powerful but it was postulated that the deity either purposely limited its power to allow for…”free-will” of humanity, or worse yet, the deity could not act UNTIL humanity acted first. This puts the morality back on humanity…sort of. It was said humans could pray or appeal to the gods, either through sacrifices -- animal, human, or otherwise – or through some selfless or meditative action as simple as prayer or as complex as fasting and wandering the desert for years. Yet, bad things still happen in the world. The human answer that preserved God from being an ogre and puppet master in the sky? The answers range from a spiritual battle between good and evil, to an evil being that tricks people, to simple human free-will against which God cannot intervene no matter how many supplications or sacrifices are done by the humans. This doesn’t help the God’s goodness but rather often causes people to abandon the powerless deity. Or… another reconciliation is that “God’s ways are not our ways” or “The ways of God are mysterious”. (Isaiah 55:8-9 in the Bible, Rigveda 10.129.6-7, Tao Te Ching 14, Avesta, Yasna 31.8 of Zoroastrianism, Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 98 of Sikhism, Qur'an 6:103 of Islam)


THE NEW GOD
So, in effect humans began to create a new kind of God that they could reconcile as being God but still being moral based on human standards. As stated, but better listed here, the solutions included:

1. A restrained deity that would not act first.
2. An opposing deity responsible for evil or tempting humans.
3. A purposeful deity that has hidden purposes for allowing evil.

There certainly could be more solutions to helping God skirt its moral obligation to hinder injustice and evil, but they generally fall within these 3 points. All three of these points could be in operation simultaneously.

Under point (1), the most prevalent belief is free-will. Free agency where humans act outside the control of the deity. In some religions, this is used to determine the final spiritual state of humans. If their free-will decisions were mainly disobedient to the will and dictates of the deity, the spiritual destination could be one of eternal judgment and torment or at least a temporary punishment or even annihilation. Depending on what “good deeds/works” they performed and accomplished on earth, determines if they go on to paradise/heaven or hell or annihilation. Or as with religions that are more cyclical than linear, the person may reincarnate as some lower lifeform as either punishment or lesson.

Under point (2), free-will may still be active or it could simply be a situation where the evil deity captures humans against their will. In Christianity, the first humans, Adam and Eve were said to have a innocence that didn’t allow them to comprehend good over evil – perhaps a type of free-will. God warns them not to eat of the Tree of Conscience – of Good and Evil – but he doesn’t make them aware of the serpent that would possibly trick them into disobeying God and eating the fruit. Some might blame God for this – a part of the moral dilemma. Eventually, the serpent (either an underling of the Devil or the Devil himself – a banished angel?) does convince Eve that God isn’t telling her the entire truth. That God simply wants to keep Adam and Eve ignorant and that’s the real reason God doesn’t want them to eat from the tree. Ironically enough, God even states this as the result:

“Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” – Genesis 3:22 NKJV

A further part of God’s warning was that if they ate the fruit, that they would die. The serpent countered that they would not die. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, the Bible says their eyes were indeed opened and “became like one of Us” – like God and also, they did not drop dead physically. Instead, God banished them from the self-sustaining garden where he put them and caused them to suffer and all humanity after them to suffer in toiling and in child-birthing as an existential punishment passed onto all humanity for the sins/actions of the first humans. How is this moral? Enter, point (3).

Under point (3), all observable evil in the world has an ulterior purpose that makes it morally “good” in the end. The Bible is replete with examples of this, from the story of Joseph whose brothers sold him into slavery so that he could be in a place where he could eventually save them from starvation, to the blind person whom was born blind and struggle all their lives with it – not because as some religions assume, either they or their parents did some evil and the blindness was the punishment, but the person was blind all their lives for a single purpose – so that one day Jesus could come and heal them, thus showing his power. (John 9:1-5) Is that moral? God used this person’s entire life to prove he is the all-powerful God.


THE NEWER GOD
As time has gone on, humans have been trying to reconcile the dilemmas and paradoxes of an all-powerful God with a moral God. But to confuse things even more, now that many people have acquiesced to the concept of free-will, which was not part of the original concept of the Godly God – the sovereign God, they also are struggling to reconcile how God can be sovereign and humans are still in control of and responsible for their own actions. Again, the Bible addresses this in Romans 9:10-24 where the account is related that God created two brothers but even before their births and before they had done any good or evil, God chose one over the other to love and the other to hate. The account continues with the hypothetical audience asking how then can God blame people for how he made them? God answers back that he is all-powerful and can make things that honor him and things that do not – yet he is still glorified and moral.

Of course, some people have tried to brush away this account, saying it was simply a lesson between God choosing the Jews/Israelites over non-Jews. But does that really solve the moral issue?
These questions have generated opposing factions in the faithful, especially within Christianity which has been the most tested religion of history – tested in that it has been exposed to and practiced in a wide variety of societies. Many religions are regional or ethnic and rarely impact anyone outside the region or people group. So, the premises of Christianity are tested and pushed to their limits more often than any other religion.

The factions have gone by various names over time; in reverse order – Calvinists vs Arminians/Semi-Pelgians, Monergists vs Synergists, Determinists vs Free-willers. The names of the factions often take on the name of an articulator of it, such as John Calvin vs Jacobus Arminius but don’t get hung up on any particular faction or person, otherwise you’ll spend all your time re-fighting those old battles.
The newer God is one that people are constantly trying to reconcile or save from its own moral crisis. Sometimes illogical explanations are given such as saying, “God’s sovereignty and man’s free-will are like two parallel lines that meet some place in eternity”. As nice a platitude as that is, it is a logical nonsensical fallacy that simply kicks the spiritual dilemma down the road into infinity. It really doesn’t help anything.


THE RESULT
The result of the current eating of the fruit – the moral dilemma of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility could crash and burn some people’s faith. When coming face-to-face with the reality that they can’t find an excuse or solution that keeps God’s sovereignty and their free-will intact, they might chuck it all. Why believe in a God that not only knows things ahead of time, but as most if not all of history’s religions claim; PLANNED everything, down to the most minute detail – the person may conclude it is all pointless. Any good deed they do is meaningless. Why “honor thy mother and father” or help the sick or poor? “Fxck em!” – to use a crude yet powerful expression.

One last chance to save the deity – Universalism. This claims that despite anything the creature haves done will on earth, they will ultimately be saved. This alleviates the contrast of the Elect vs the Reprobate dichotomy found in so many religions. Paired with free-will, this smooths over the implication that God created some to save and others to damn – not based on any merit but for his “own good pleasure”. This way the responsibility of their final spiritual state is pushed back on the human – it becomes their own fault, not God’s. But with Universalism, that issue is also resolved because no one suffers forever. In fact, even some reincarnation systems will allow a creature to keep coming back as different iterations of itself until it gets it right.
The free-will position doesn’t resolve the moral issue because no matter how much power is ascribed to the God over the anti-god or the humans, that the “strongman” stands aside an allows evil to happen, seems to still make him guilty of allowing evil.


So, the only solution to the dilemma is to return to the beginning; the original God. If there is an all-powerful entity or force at work, no matter what happens to our spiritual state in the end, or works we do while on earth, this Godly God is still just and moral because it defines morality, not us. All the effort of humanity to insert ourselves somewhere within this power structure, whether by eating an eye-opening fruit or building a tower to heaven doesn’t change the fact that God is God and we are not. While that is difficult and even destructive to many a person’s “faith”, the reality can only be glossed over but not fully explained away.
Or, you could go the atheist or agnostic route. Who cares? Or who knows? Both options allow you to ignore the reality and ironically enough end up at the same place as the free-willer, with humans deciding what is moral – either based on individual conscience or societal consensus. We become our own gods.