Goodness is no mere philosophical category to debate over, though some of us have been doing that here lately. It is at the heart of human desire, and it is the very nature of God himself.
God’s goodness is far too large a topic for any writer. Still I am going to try to take out one small page of it to look at together. His goodness covers all categories: his perfection of being, the beauty of his works, his love for the world, his complete wisdom and knowledge, and so much more. Psalm 145, a favorite of mine, exuberantly expresses much of this. Since our discussions here have been on ethics and morals I find myself thinking now especially of God’s moral goodness. It is true, but not sufficient to say that he is fully holy and righteous in all he is and does. It’s not wrong, but it’s rather too abstract. God’s moral goodness is communicated to and through his relationship with us human beings, created in his image. His moral nature is the basis for his moral precepts given to us.
The Ten Commandments encapsulate it in marvelously compact form. The text is found in Exodus 20:1-17:
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Various biblically-based religious traditions number the commandments differently (Wikipedia covers this nicely), so I will treat them in unnumbered groupings here. Someone has remarked at the amazing social utility of these Commandments: that if we only obeyed these, our world would be a far better place. Families would be strong: children would be in proper relationship with their parents, and couples would be faithful to each other. Their eyes would not be straying to other potential partners. For all the current controversy about what makes a family, who can doubt that this kind of loving stability would be good for families, children, and communities?
If we took these Commandments seriously, there would be no fear of walking on dark streets: no muggings, no thefts, no murders. We could leave our home and car doors unlocked.
We could trust each other’s word. Imagine that: imagine being able to trust politicians and salesmen without question!
This is a picture of the Good, applied to human society. Of course I have skipped over some of the Commandments. They begin with a right relationship with God: worshipping him only, not making false representations of God, not taking his name “in vain,” i.e., treating God lightly in conversation, or misusing his name for personal advantage (as in swearing oaths falsely, for example). The interpersonally-oriented commandments are good in themselves, and if followed, would lead to a far better world; but they flow from the good character of God, and to strip them loose of God is to distort them.
All the Commandments are about our relationships: first our relationship with God, later our relationship with others, and even our relationship with ourselves. This is how I understand the Sabbath commandment, at any rate. It is the only one of the Ten that was not re-affirmed in the New Testament; in fact, Jesus re-interpreted it. “Man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is made for man,” he said (Mark 2:23-28). This is not about obeying an impersonal rule not to knit on Sundays, as my own grandfather mistakenly thought, and enforced with his wife, my grandmother—which drove her batty, I’m told (she died before I was born). It’s not about being wrapped in restrictions, it’s about having freedom to be refreshed and to worship, both privately and in community. The final commandment, about not coveting, is also an inward-related matter, for coveting is always (at least at the beginning) in a person’s private thoughts.
These Ten Commandments do not express all the goodness of God: his self-sacrificial giving is not clearly evident there, for example, or his call for us to follow that example through altruistic love. These are a snippet (albeit an important one) of true goodness, true ethics based in true reality, and true morality.
Referring back to recent disputes here about morality, though, I thought it would be timely to remind us that there is in Judeo-Christian theism an answer, not just as the outcome of a philosophical argument, but in the revelation of God’s good character, and his good guidance for all of us through his Word.
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