What do you deserve?
What do you deserve? Humans are taught to assume we deserve good if we’ve been “good”. And deserve punishment if we’ve been “bad”.
Can you trust in your own assessment of your goodness? What if you are deluded? Who determines what is good”? Who defines good versus evil?
Either there is no God and we are products of random energy-dependent molecular processes, and thus we cannot determine what is good or bad… Or God is really the creator of everything, including the rules that would allow us to exist and experience goodness, peace and joy.
If a God who created everything really exists, that God would be the one who determines what is truly good and what is truly bad on earth.
Since our hearts are programmed to seek goodness (click here to see why people want to be good), then we can believe that there is a source of goodness.
Because we exist and because we believe sibling abuse is not good and should be prevented, it would be consistent to also believe there is a God who has a moral/ethical consciousness.
If God is the one who determines what’s good and what’s bad inside His creation, then we believe we should pursue knowing Him more.
How do you know how to be good?
God’s attributes, God’s ways, God’s words, and God’s ideas are worthwhile pursuits if you want to prevent the #1 form of child abuse.
God intended to be known through His words. The most recognized book of God’s words is the Bible (it’s also the most read book on earth).
The Bible is an amazing collection of books that all pursue the single theme of knowing and loving God. One of the most read books within the Bible is the Gospel of John. It starts with these words:
“In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God… all things came into being through Him…. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
These words refer to the person Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the perfect image of God in human form. Jesus’ life became the way to know God perfectly, and to become perfectly like God.
The Word of God also describes God as love. God is the source and definition of love. God intended for humans to be good, made in His image, as He is… perfect goodness and perfect love.
But the delusion of self-righteousness (the universal human lie believed by our first human ancestors), keeps us from knowing how to be perfectly good.
God says you can’t be good apart from knowing God’s love displayed in Jesus Christ’s completely selfless, self-giving life and death.
How can this be? Every human is deceived by self-righteousness. Therefore the only way to know how not to be self-righteous is to look at the one person who wasn’t self-righteous.
Apart from knowing the image and Spirit of God displayed in Jesus Christ, it is impossible to be perfectly good.
Our goodness apart from God’s goodness given in Jesus is derived from a self-protective need to not think we are bad in our own mind. Read more about self-righteouness here.