{"id":4369,"date":"2016-05-28T13:25:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T20:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/uncommongodcommongood\/?p=4369"},"modified":"2017-01-04T10:49:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T18:49:44","slug":"god-is-just-and-righteous-but-who-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/uncommongodcommongood\/2016\/05\/god-is-just-and-righteous-but-who-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"God Is Just and Righteous. But Who Cares?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Minos by William Blake Creative Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

How important would it be to you that a therapist you are seeing or a butler or bellhop who serves you were guilty of tax evasion or cheating on their spouse? As long as the therapist or butler\/bellhop weren\u2019t cheating you, would that be okay? What about God? As long as a God who cheats others weren\u2019t cheating you, would that be okay?<\/p>\n

How did God come into the picture? According to sociologist of religion Christian Smith, many young people, who espouse a form of \u201cMoralistic Therapeutic Deism,\u201d view God as \u201csomething like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist\u2014he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.\u201d[1]<\/a> Smith claims that MTD\u2019s \u201ccreed\u201d is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    God does not need to be particularly involved in one\u2019s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    Good people go to heaven when they die.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers<\/em>, Smith and coauthor Melinda Lundquist Denton interviewed numerous young people. The interviews reflected significant emphasis among American teenagers on personal happiness and fulfillment as well as feeling good about oneself or life, yet very little consideration on their part about what God is like. For example, there was very little mention of divine (or human) righteousness and holiness, or divine justice.[3]<\/a> It would appear that many young people are not connecting the dots between their concerns for what God wants from us\u2014fairness and goodness toward one another\u2014and<\/u> what they want from God\u2014fair treatment of good people\u2014with<\/u> what God is like. They likely assume that God is good and fair, but it appears to be no more than an assumption, intuition, or feeling (given that they are not Trinitarian, which would include the accompanying claim that Jesus is God incarnate, and that they don\u2019t see the Bible as divine revelation, according to Smith[4]<\/a>). How do they really know that God is good and fair? How can they be sure this deistic deity or \u2018theism on demand\u2019 divine being, as I like to refer to it, matches their religious opinion or preference?<\/p>\n

    Could it be that it does not really matter if God is just and righteous in all spheres, except when they call on him? If so, it would be \u2018fairness on demand\u2019. Perhaps many youth\u2014and many adults\u2014view God like we do our neighbors: \u201cas long as their crap (i.e., what they do, how they treat their kids, etc.) stays in their house, I don\u2019t ultimately care; it doesn\u2019t affect me.\u201d But as with the therapist or butler\/bellhop who cheats outside the workplace, who\u2019s to say that it won\u2019t spill over into their treatment of you and me, or into society as a whole?<\/p>\n

    Perhaps we don\u2019t want to know what God is like behind closed doors because we don\u2019t want God to know what we are really like in the bedrooms and closets of our lives. If God really knew us, would the Almighty accept us?<\/p>\n

    _______________<\/p>\n

    [1]<\/a>Christian Smith, \u201cOn \u2018Moralistic Therapeutic Deism\u2019 as U.S. Teenagers\u2019 Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,\u201d page 50: \u00a0https:\/\/www.ptsem.edu\/uploadedFiles\/School_of_Christian_Vocation_and_Mission\/Institute_for_Youth_Ministry\/Princeton_Lectures\/Smith-Moralistic.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a>See Smith, pages 46-47.<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> See pages 52-53 of Smith\u2019s article.<\/p>\n

    [4]<\/a>\u201cBut this God is not Trinitarian, he did not speak through the Torah or the prophets of Israel, was never resurrected from the dead, and does not fill and transform people through his Spirit.\u201d See Smith, page 50.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How important would it be to you that a therapist you are seeing or a butler or bellhop who serves you were guilty of tax evasion or cheating on their spouse? As long as the therapist or butler\/bellhop weren\u2019t cheating you, would that be okay? What about God? As long as a God who cheats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":4370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGod Is Just and Righteous. 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