ARGUMENT FROM INCARNATION THAT GOD IS EVIL

God is infinite good, absolute good.

 

If God exists and God is good then it follows that the only thing that is really good is God for everything else is imperfect.

 

Why does it matter if something is imperfect?  It is because religion says that because evil is a distortion of good, it is a good that is twisted, it is not a power, it follows that evil can pose as good.  When good and fake good are mixed you are in danger of not being able to tell them apart.

 

In reality when religion says God is good and that by experience it knows something of what it is like it is self-righteously boasting.  "I am so good and discerning I know what good is.  I know what perfect good would look like."

 

This is so absurd and they know it that they end up saying God became man in Jesus so we might know his goodness and perfection.  But we have not met Jesus except in our subjective worlds.  Nobody today has even spent a day with him on retreat.  So the more they try to get out of the hole they have made they dig it deeper.

 

The solutions only make God imperfect not perfect.  Or as good as imperfect.

 

So what if God is perfect?

 

 It follows then that he should not have made beings who were not God at all for they would necessarily be inferior or not as good, ie: evil no matter if they are morally perfect or not. Even if you are morally perfect you are still not as good as possible. You are only as good as it is possible for you to be. You still fall infinitely short of God's perfection. God should have made beings who are God incarnate and who know this to varying degrees or a limited degree if they need to know it at all. That way there would be no sin and there is no need for evil for God and his incarnations cannot sin. And a pile of beings who are not God incarnate cannot be as valuable as a man who is God incarnate. From this it follows that if God made beings who were not God incarnate then he is making evil for he is making something that falls short of the goodness that is God. The evil is non-being defence collapses. They may reply that this would mean all these people were one person. But if God loved Jesus though Jesus was supposed to be God there is nothing wrong with that. Creation is supposed to be about making beings to love God and to receive love. And besides if the beings do not know they are God they can love one another and they will be like separate persons for their souls and bodies will be separate. They share only the divine nature just like Jesus is supposed to be both God and man.

Some say that God did not do wrong by making people who were not God incarnate for a dishwasher is not evil or doing wrong by not being able to mow the lawn. This reply fails because it would be better (ie more perfect) if it could do the lawn as well so the goodness of the dishwasher is defective. Its value or goodness is lessened by the defect. A God who limits good cannot be good. This means that everything that is not God is evil for its existence is not as good as it could be. God asks that we have the right attitude. Therefore it is a sin not to desperately wish you were God for that wish would be accepting the supreme perfection as worshipful and desirable. One way you will have to accept that God made you limited in good just because that is what he wants but another way you have to yearn that you were unlimited for it would not be God’s fault that you are limited not unlimited. If something can be God then it should be God.

To say the problem of evil and there being a God is not so much that there is a problem of evil but a problem of why is there not more good than what there is is to deny that God is obligated to do what is best. It is to deny that God must behave well. Believers still say God is good in what he does but they deny that he is bound to improve on his creation. Yet the Christians say the behaviour of Jesus showed what God was like. Jesus didn't do anything that distastes us much. He didn't commit adultery but he stayed a virgin. He didn't beat up little children. This is strange if they would have no problem with God making a machine that beats children up for instance. There is an element of manipulation in their reasoning. They pretend that Jesus' example should sell God whereas they really think it cannot.

What is more important than these thoughts is the fact that if Jesus is really God as most Christians say, it follows then that God having become man takes on moral obligations. He is obligated to make life better for us than what it is. Christians will answer that God's nature is to be God. The Jesus nature was only an additional nature he took on so what God does and stands for as God is what counts. But such an attitude doesn't take the incarnation of God in Jesus seriously. If God became man, God became a moral agent. Suppose the God nature didn't have moral obligations. Suppose the Jesus nature did. If God really becomes man then he has to follow what the Jesus nature beckons him to do. He has to become a moral agent. A God who could be moral but refuses to be is amoral and perhaps immoral.

 

FINALLY

 

Imperfect creatures are going to project their idea of perfection onto God.  But the problem is that our idea of perfection is never going to be right.  Trying to use Jesus and incarnations as solutions only highlights this.  A God running the universe who is imperfect and won't admit it would actually be evil for grave harm happens under his watch.