But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, GOODNESS, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22, 23, NKJV).
Goodness
The Theory of Evolution™ makes a mockery of the whole concept of moral virtue. The corollary is also true; the existence of moral virtue makes a mockery of the Theory of Evolution™.
Prior to becoming a Christian I was a self-proclaimed "origins expert", and had been since the moment I got my first blue, poured-plastic Brontosaurus (now renamed Apatosaurus) from the local hobby shop as a bespectacled eight year-old. I recall spending many hours as a geekish adolescent in the backyard painstakingly reproducing stone tools from the flint nodules in my mother's garden. Indeed, one of the final obstacles to my conversion was the apparent contradiction between the Bible and evolutionary science. Both could not be true.
I have since steeped myself in the controversy, and after examining ALL the available evidence from both sides I come down squarely in the Young-earth Creationist camp. If this discredits my intellect or judgment in your mind, all I can say is let's discuss it. I may not have all the answers but the ones I have were persuasive enough to have changed my mind on the issue, even after nearly 40 years of holding the evolutionary viewpoint.
I conclude then, that if macro-evolution is true, not species adaptation mind you, but the whole "goo through the zoo to you" kind, then there can be no such thing as goodness, or justice, or beauty, or any other kind of moral virtue. Or if there is, it's all relative and situational and as changeable as the weather. I come to this conclusion because all these things become subservient, not to some transcendent absolute standard, but to whatever makes alpha-male A get better mates than beta-male B. And by better, I mean hardier, sturdily reproducible, and less likely to die. That's it. Nothing else matters. So if in the scheme of things over the course of history our products-of-random-events-over-time, you know our brain's 'thinking', conceives of some idea that we call 'goodness', the immediate question that arises is, goodness for what survival purpose?
If my prehistoric ancestors devised a better way to wipe out the competition for food or mates or territory, evolutionist MUST define that as 'good', because it promoted the survival of the "selfish gene" pool from which I "happened" to have descended. And if they don't, their thinking is not logical or internally consistent, and if that's true, why then would I listen to anything else they have to say? Furthermore, as C.S. Lewis has written, "… if … thoughts … are mere accidental by-products [of the random movement of atoms over time], why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents."
On the other hand, if there exists a transcendent standard of goodness, then it must come from somewhere 'outside' of the material Universe. Where else could it originate? A black hole? A quantum singularity? Some primordial hydrogen atoms? This is important, otherwise their is no point in writing any further about GOODNESS as a fruit of the Spirit. It either exists as an absolute, or it is no more significant then the "preferences" of whoever is currently in power and has the biggest stick.
As a Bible-believing Christian (there is no other kind - does that make me narrow-minded, or as I suspect, merely logical?), I know what GOODNESS is and Who owns it. I know the definition, impact, purpose and etiology. I know what it does and guards against, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it is important.
Since I've already argued that absolute goodness must be transcendent, outside of time and space, and must in someway be imposed upon the physical universe, it makes sense to attribute the source to the One Whom the Bible describes as EXACTLY that: He who inhabits eternity. He who knows the end from the beginning. He whose purposes always come to pass (Isa 57:15; 46:10), namely God. God is also described as all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscience), and everywhere-present (omnipresent). Aquinas summed it up pretty well nearly a thousand years ago when he wrote that "God is that than which no greater can be conceived." Aquinas may have had other problems, but that was a good sentence.
Think about this, God as Designer and Creator, could have made it so that life itself was unutterably agonizing. Fulfilling the need for nourishment, for example, may have been such that while no less necessary, He could have made it excruciatingly painful. Why didn't He? Because He is good. The same is conceivable for so many of the things that give us pleasure in life and, for the most part, make us glad to be alive. Ironically, I think the most telling proof of this argument is what happened to child-bearing after the Fall because of the Curse. In judgment, and perhaps as a reminder throughout all the generations since of the goodness that was lost, God re-implemented reproduction to be painful. Before that, it was not.
To fully understand GOODNESS then, especially as a fruit of the Spirit, we need to understand the "goodness of God." To do that I suggest we look at its effect as described in Scripture, following the example Jesus provided in discussing the realm of the Spirit as an analogy to the wind (i.e.; “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3:8, NKJV).
From the verses below you will see that God's goodness: is abounding; is always directed to His children; is a cause for rejoicing; endures continually and forever; provides for the poor; withholds no benefit; is merciful; lead us to righteousness and repentance; is instructive; is transformative; results in our goodness; gives eternal hope; is all-encompassing and comprehensive; defines what is good; silences evil; is our re-birth mark.
No worthier or more valuable fruit can be cultivated.
Ex 34:6* And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,
De 6:24 ‘And the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day.
De 26:11* “So you shall rejoice in every good thing which the LORD your God has given to you and your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.
2Ch 6:41* “Now therefore, Arise, O LORD God, to Your resting place, You and the ark of Your strength. Let Your priests, O LORD God, be clothed with salvation, And let Your saints rejoice in goodness.
Ps 52:1* <<To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of David when Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul, and said to him, “David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.”>> Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually.
Ps 68:10* Your congregation dwelt in it; You, O God, provided from Your goodness for the poor.
Ps 84:11* For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.
Ps 109:21* But You, O GOD the Lord, Deal with me for Your name’s sake; Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.
Ps 143:10 Teach me to do Your will, For You are my God; Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness.
Ho 3:5* Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days.
Mic 6:8* He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
Ro 2:4* Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
Ro 8:28* And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
Ro 11:22* Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.
Ro 12:2* And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Php 2:13* for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
2Th 1:11* Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power,
2Th 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace,
1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
2Ti 3:17* that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Heb 6:5* and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,
1Pe 2:15* For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men--
3Jo 11* Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.
Goodness
The Theory of Evolution™ makes a mockery of the whole concept of moral virtue. The corollary is also true; the existence of moral virtue makes a mockery of the Theory of Evolution™.
Prior to becoming a Christian I was a self-proclaimed "origins expert", and had been since the moment I got my first blue, poured-plastic Brontosaurus (now renamed Apatosaurus) from the local hobby shop as a bespectacled eight year-old. I recall spending many hours as a geekish adolescent in the backyard painstakingly reproducing stone tools from the flint nodules in my mother's garden. Indeed, one of the final obstacles to my conversion was the apparent contradiction between the Bible and evolutionary science. Both could not be true.
I have since steeped myself in the controversy, and after examining ALL the available evidence from both sides I come down squarely in the Young-earth Creationist camp. If this discredits my intellect or judgment in your mind, all I can say is let's discuss it. I may not have all the answers but the ones I have were persuasive enough to have changed my mind on the issue, even after nearly 40 years of holding the evolutionary viewpoint.
I conclude then, that if macro-evolution is true, not species adaptation mind you, but the whole "goo through the zoo to you" kind, then there can be no such thing as goodness, or justice, or beauty, or any other kind of moral virtue. Or if there is, it's all relative and situational and as changeable as the weather. I come to this conclusion because all these things become subservient, not to some transcendent absolute standard, but to whatever makes alpha-male A get better mates than beta-male B. And by better, I mean hardier, sturdily reproducible, and less likely to die. That's it. Nothing else matters. So if in the scheme of things over the course of history our products-of-random-events-over-time, you know our brain's 'thinking', conceives of some idea that we call 'goodness', the immediate question that arises is, goodness for what survival purpose?
If my prehistoric ancestors devised a better way to wipe out the competition for food or mates or territory, evolutionist MUST define that as 'good', because it promoted the survival of the "selfish gene" pool from which I "happened" to have descended. And if they don't, their thinking is not logical or internally consistent, and if that's true, why then would I listen to anything else they have to say? Furthermore, as C.S. Lewis has written, "… if … thoughts … are mere accidental by-products [of the random movement of atoms over time], why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents."
On the other hand, if there exists a transcendent standard of goodness, then it must come from somewhere 'outside' of the material Universe. Where else could it originate? A black hole? A quantum singularity? Some primordial hydrogen atoms? This is important, otherwise their is no point in writing any further about GOODNESS as a fruit of the Spirit. It either exists as an absolute, or it is no more significant then the "preferences" of whoever is currently in power and has the biggest stick.
As a Bible-believing Christian (there is no other kind - does that make me narrow-minded, or as I suspect, merely logical?), I know what GOODNESS is and Who owns it. I know the definition, impact, purpose and etiology. I know what it does and guards against, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it is important.
Since I've already argued that absolute goodness must be transcendent, outside of time and space, and must in someway be imposed upon the physical universe, it makes sense to attribute the source to the One Whom the Bible describes as EXACTLY that: He who inhabits eternity. He who knows the end from the beginning. He whose purposes always come to pass (Isa 57:15; 46:10), namely God. God is also described as all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscience), and everywhere-present (omnipresent). Aquinas summed it up pretty well nearly a thousand years ago when he wrote that "God is that than which no greater can be conceived." Aquinas may have had other problems, but that was a good sentence.
Think about this, God as Designer and Creator, could have made it so that life itself was unutterably agonizing. Fulfilling the need for nourishment, for example, may have been such that while no less necessary, He could have made it excruciatingly painful. Why didn't He? Because He is good. The same is conceivable for so many of the things that give us pleasure in life and, for the most part, make us glad to be alive. Ironically, I think the most telling proof of this argument is what happened to child-bearing after the Fall because of the Curse. In judgment, and perhaps as a reminder throughout all the generations since of the goodness that was lost, God re-implemented reproduction to be painful. Before that, it was not.
To fully understand GOODNESS then, especially as a fruit of the Spirit, we need to understand the "goodness of God." To do that I suggest we look at its effect as described in Scripture, following the example Jesus provided in discussing the realm of the Spirit as an analogy to the wind (i.e.; “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3:8, NKJV).
From the verses below you will see that God's goodness: is abounding; is always directed to His children; is a cause for rejoicing; endures continually and forever; provides for the poor; withholds no benefit; is merciful; lead us to righteousness and repentance; is instructive; is transformative; results in our goodness; gives eternal hope; is all-encompassing and comprehensive; defines what is good; silences evil; is our re-birth mark.
No worthier or more valuable fruit can be cultivated.
Ex 34:6* And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,
De 6:24 ‘And the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day.
De 26:11* “So you shall rejoice in every good thing which the LORD your God has given to you and your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.
2Ch 6:41* “Now therefore, Arise, O LORD God, to Your resting place, You and the ark of Your strength. Let Your priests, O LORD God, be clothed with salvation, And let Your saints rejoice in goodness.
Ps 52:1* <<To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of David when Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul, and said to him, “David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.”>> Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually.
Ps 68:10* Your congregation dwelt in it; You, O God, provided from Your goodness for the poor.
Ps 84:11* For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.
Ps 109:21* But You, O GOD the Lord, Deal with me for Your name’s sake; Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.
Ps 143:10 Teach me to do Your will, For You are my God; Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness.
Ho 3:5* Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days.
Mic 6:8* He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
Ro 2:4* Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
Ro 8:28* And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
Ro 11:22* Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.
Ro 12:2* And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Php 2:13* for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
2Th 1:11* Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power,
2Th 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace,
1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
2Ti 3:17* that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Heb 6:5* and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,
1Pe 2:15* For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men--
3Jo 11* Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.
