“If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless” ~CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Today we continue the saga of David and the fickleness of humans. He’s got foes who are his children, foes who are the children of his original foes, and friends who are children’s children of his original foes. It doesn’t help that the names aren’t familiar, so it’s hard to keep track of who’s on what side. Throw in some advisors who are friends or foes or both and it’s complicated. As I was nearing the end of the reading, I was wondering how the accompanying reflection was going to tie it together, since I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
The reflection from CS Lewis focuses on God’s absolute goodness. His basic point is that although we all occasionally want to believe that God overlooks our problems, that God has high God-standards at all times, except when we need God’s standards to bend to accommodate our behavior, deep down, we know better. We know that God must be absolutely good, otherwise nothing makes sense.
If my God can accommodate my foibles with different standards, what about your God, or the God of the really bad criminal? If God’s standards bend to my wishes, do they do that for everyone who petitions God? What’s left of God’s goodness then? Thank you, CS Lewis. That makes sense.
Back to David, I think the connection is that David and all the people in this book have good and bad bits, good and bad behavior. Their behavior is fickle and arbitrary. God is not. Bad behavior is bad, even if it’s done by a good person. God has infinite mercy, so bad behavior isn’t a life sentence, but it is bad behavior, nonetheless.
This is comforting to me. I’d rather have a God who is always good, and always knows good, than a God who is relatively good.
This is a complicated reading for me today. My loved one has committed a crime and now is in custody. God is absolutely good. Their behavior was not. I’m not sure how this will all resolve, but I do know God is good. All the time.
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