Early on in my Christian faith, a skeptic to my newfound belief pointedly asked me, "But what about those who don't have God?"
Being a novice yet in my Biblical learning, and having only just begun to "grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ," I did not have an answer.
But in the ensuing years of growing in the knowledge of the Lord, I now have an answer to that skeptic:
Everybody has God, and in fact, I firmly believe that everybody also desires Him when they also desire goodness.
How do I know this? At the most basic level it is because God created, and continues to create, all persons (Genesis; Psalm 139:13-14). God "has" us. We are His creation.
But through the fall, every individual is separated from God, although we never stop being His.
The insinuation in the skeptic's question was to imply that God is, in some way, out of reach to certain folks: that he is unattainable; that He has somehow set up an unfair system whereby some people are devoid of any recourse to "have Him" and must instead sit on the sidelines and forlornly watch all the lucky folks who do have God.
But that skeptic's implication is simply a form of stonewalling.
God is near to, and all are dear to, God--equally, impartially and without favoritism on his part (Mark 12:14; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; 2 Peter 3:9).
He causes the sun and the rain to fall on all (Matthew 5:45).
But not all harken to God.
While God has us, many people willingly, if not ignorantly and self-righteously, do not have God because they don't want God. These are not victims of some sordid divine economy. They are their own worst enemy in that no matter how God calls them, they close their ears and eyes to Him and carry on with hardened hearts.
And yet, these same people will bend over backward, travel to far away lands, and read volumes on self-actualization, happiness, significance and simplicity in the perpetual search for a goodness that evades them.
It's nothing new. Philosophers have been doing the same thing for centuries, and people still peruse their writings today.
Stanley J. Grenz, in his book The Moral Quest, which I have quoted from the last few days, writes that what people don't always realize is that their seeking after goodness is actually seeking after God.
He writes:
"On what basis can we assert that the philosophical discovery of the good is in fact related to the divine will?
The answer to our query draws from a distinction between what is (ontology) and how we come to know what is (epistemology). From the perspective of ontology what Christian ethicists denote as 'the will of God' precedes, or is foundational to, what the philosophers speak of as 'the good.' Goodness is entirely dependent upon and derived from the divine will. Nevertheless the actual way in which a person comes to know the good and the divine will may occur in the opposite order. Knowledge of goodness may in fact come before awareness of God's will. A person may obtain knowledge about what is the good before acknowledging that the good is in fact the content of God's will.
This epistemological reversal does not alter the truth that God's will is the foundation for all goodness and forms the goal of the human quest for the good. Even when a person's first grasp of the divine will comes indirectly--through the quest to determine the true nature of goodness or the good life (i.e. philosophical ethics)--the fact remains that what he or she is actually seeking and even coming to know is nothing else but the will of God (which is the explicit topic of Christian ethics).
Just as Paul drew from the pagan poets of Athens to address the quest for the unknown god, so also Christians can confidently conclude that lying at the foundation of the quest for goodness displayed in philosophical ethics is the will of the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently we can affirm the sincere human search for the good, for we know that the quest for goodness is nothing less than the search for the divine will."
However, there's a problem with general ethics (founded on general philosophy).
Grenz goes on to explain:
"...we must also express a grave reservation about the philosophical ethical enterprise. General ethics is flawed by an all-pervasive defect, namely, its 'anthropocentricity' or fundamental human-centeredness...
Endemic to the philosophical tradition is the tendency to operate from an anthropocentric, rather than a theological, anthropology. Because it seeks to elaborate whatever ethical system can be discovered through the use of human reason, general ethics assumes that the distinguishing characteristic of the human person lies in some dimension of human existence (e.g. the experience of being moral agents) or in some power that humans supposedly possess (such as rationality)...
In contrast to the philosophical approach, Christian ethics does not start from the assumption that the distinguishing characteristic of the human person consists in our rationality. Nor does our essential humanness lie ultimately in our experience of being moral agents. Instead the definitive human characteristic lies in a relationship for which we were created, namely, community or fellowship with God. To use the language of the Hebrew Scriptures, we are to be God's covenant partners...This divine desire to enter into covenant with us even stands at the foundation of our status as morally conditioned beings.
From the Christian perspective, therefore, the ethical life does not arise out of any innate human characteristic or any integral aspect of our existence. Instead its genesis lies in our divinely given purpose as those called to live in the presence of, and responsible to, God. The Christian message is that God created us with a destiny, with a goal for our existence, namely, that we enjoy a special covenantal relationship with the covenanting God, that we live in fellowship with our Maker. Our creation by God with a special destiny is what marks us as ethically responsible."
Stanley Grenz has more to say on anthropocentricity, and I hope to post his comments soon.
copyright Barb Harwood
"So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, 'Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to all men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Acts 17:22-31
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