I Would Make a Terrible God

I recently watched a three-part TV miniseries adapted from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End”. I had read that book as a teenager, but couldn’t really remember what it was about. After watching the miniseries, I decided to pull out my old paperback of the novel (yes, I still have it) and re-read it just to see how closely the miniseries followed it. As it turns out only the main plot line was the same. All the details were quite different.

For those of you not familiar with this book, the gist of it is that mankind has reached a pinnacle in its evolutionary development. An alien race is sent to Earth to oversee its final stages. These aliens are called Overlords by humans. The Overlords are godlike in that they can monitor essentially all human activity on Earth and stop any major nefarious activities before they happen. In short order, bad people gave up even attempting to execute their evil plots as they knew they would be thwarted by the Overlords. Peace begins to reign over the world.

I found myself kind of liking these Overlords. In fact, I realized that if I were God, I would probably do something very similar to what they do in the novel. I would use my omniscient and omnipotent powers to keep an eye on all activity on Earth. If I saw a 35-year-old man attempting to rape a 10-year-old child, I would put a stop to it. I might freeze the man in carbonite like Han Solo, or I might just castrate him. Or, given that I would know well in advance what he was going to do, I might just make sure he never exists. In other words, I’d be a terrible God.

Some of you might be thinking, “So, what’s so bad about doing that? I don’t want to see that young child raped either.” Well, it apparently has something to do with free will. I hear a lot of people say that God is good in that he gives humanity free will. We can use that free will to do good or to do evil. God is gracious in allowing us the freedom to choose our own course in life, even if that course leads to other people’s free will being denied. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so gracious. It would be too troublesome to me to be that gracious. I would not be able to just sit by and let one human decimate another, especially since it would only take an infinitesimal amount of my attention and power to put a stop to these things. I figure that, just like in the novel, if I zap the bad guys enough, the rest of them will get the message and quit even trying to do evil.

Here’s the way I would look at it. I want all people to have free will…to a point. But if one human being is trying to take away other human beings’ free will by using direct force on them, I would feel compelled to put a halt to the perpetrator’s free will in order to protect the free will of the victim. I would much rather keep the good person’s free will intact than the bad person’s. That’s just the way I roll. Not very God-like I know, but to paraphrase the old Sinatra song, “I’d do it MY WAY!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, bad things could still happen to a person in my world. Accidents could still happen, for instance. I wouldn’t want people to become cocky in their decision making knowing that I would always bail them out. Also, indirect bad things could still happen to people as the result of the actions of others. For example, suppose a longtime business owner suddenly found himself losing business because a new competitor came to town. If that new competitor drives the old business out of business because they offer better products, prices, and services, then I would not put a stop to that. That’s one person using his free will to compete honestly against another person using his free will in a sea of customers using their free will to decide which business to do business with. All very kosher, even if the old business fails. However, if a new businessman came to town and tried to beat his competition by burning his store down, that I would stop.

So, as you can easily see, I would make a terrible God. I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself from interfering with the evil decisions of my creation.

But, wait a minute! Where does the definition of good and evil come from? Who gets to define these terms? Well, according to most folks I talk to, that would be God. So, if I was God, then I could just declare my way of doing things to be good.

Wow! I’m now beginning to feel better about myself. I guess I wouldn’t be that bad a God after all, especially since I would get to make the rules.

Response to Joel Anderson's Critique of My Book, Part 2

Dr. Joel Anderson has written a second post critiquing my book "God Is: Exploring the Nature of the Biblical God". Below is my rebuttal.

Surprise! I don't actually have a rebuttal. Joel was pretty much in agreement with my conclusions in the "God is Self-Sufficient" chapter.

But I do want to add a couple of things.

Much of the "God is Self-Sufficient" chapter of my book centers around a discussion of God's perfection and why he would create anything if he is totally self-sufficient. In Christian literature, self-sufficiency seems to be one of the attributes defining perfection. However, I challenged the prevailing beliefs about perfection and Joel seemed to agree with that challenge.

The problem with humans discussing perfection is that we consider even ourselves imperfect, making mistakes fairly regularly. So, my question is, "Is it possible for imperfect people to recognize perfection given that our view of perfection is most likely imperfect?" In other words, can we humans even know what perfection entails? The perplexity of this simple question has profound implications.

Suppose a perfect person was born into this world, as it was claimed that Jesus Christ was. How would he be viewed? I think it obvious that a few would consider him to be perfect, others would see him as being slightly flawed, some would view him as just another flawed human that was no better or worse than any other human, and some might even consider him evil. And lo and behold, that is exactly how the responses to Jesus' life played out in the Gospels. But how could this be?

Simple. We all have a different idea of what constitutes perfection. But if this is so, how can we ever know who, if anyone, is perfect? The answer will be unsatisfactory to some. WE CAN'T! The only way to recognize perfection perfectly would be for there to exist some absolute standard of perfection of which everyone was aware.

Of course, some people claim that the God of their religion represents perfection. But there are many religions. The gods of each are different and incompatible. So, can they all be perfect? And within each religion there are many sects with differing views of the God they worship. This is even true on a congregational level. That being the case, whose view of God is the right one and thus the one pointing us to perfection? Who is qualified to make that determination?

All of the above assumes that God is indeed perfect. Most religions seem to believe this. For example, here's a quote from a recent "Questions Answered" from Bible Gateway: "Though the connection between God’s sovereignty and human freedom is mysterious from our perspective, we must remember that God is, by definition, completely good in his actions."

Where did this definition of God being completely good come from? Why is it necessary for God to always be good or perfect? Couldn't God be both good and bad and still be the creator of the Universe? And who gets to decide the answers to these questions?

If you haven't picked up on the real issue here, it's that the word "perfection" is a relative term like the word "cold". You can have a group of people in the same room at the same temperature and humidity and some would say it was warm, some would say it was cool, and some would say it was cold. Who's right? They all are. That's because "cold" is a term that relates how individual bodies respond to air temperature and humidity. Well, "perfection" is similar. Each person has a different view of perfection based on a combination of genetics and life experiences. Fortunately, there are some aspects of perfection that an overwhelming majority of people agree on. This allows us to live together as a community and a nation with laws that restrict certain imperfect behaviors.

That's all I have for now. There will probably be more discussion about this matter as Joel critiques additional chapters of my book.