The Trouble with the Belief that God is always "Good"

The trouble with the belief that God is always "good," as so many Christians and Muslims believe, is that it means that anything God does or has ever done, is simply "good" by definition, because God did it, even if it would be the greatest evil of all when lesser versions of the same thing are done by or for the devil. 

So when the Hebrews of the Old Testament brag about committing genocide for God, it's necessarily interpreted as "good," at least in comparison to whatever practice evoked God's righteous call for genocide anyway. But if we say that all of the genocide committed in the 20th century alone was committed by or for the devil, we consider genocide to be the greatest evil of all, even though most of the genocides that occurred in the 20th century were, in many instances, related to Christianity. 

When child sacrifice is carried out for Satan worship, Christians call it an abomination, even though Christians worship a God they believe told Abraham to sacrifice his own son to a God who would later decide His anger with the disobedience of His imperfect children could only be assuaged through the sacrifice of his own "perfect"son instead.

Point this out to a Christian, for example, and they will find any number of ways of explaining away such non sequiturs, or simply decide they are not worth loosing one's faith over.


When Armageddon is fought in the Book of Revelations, as the Devil rises to power in the world, it is thought to be a horrible thing, but when God destroys everyone and everything on the planet with a flood, however, it's glorious! The difference, Christians and Muslims alike will assure us, is that the former is evil, which is obvious to eve a ten year old, while the latter is "good." And because God's murderous or genocidal actions  are always "good," no matter how "evil" they may appear to the untrained eye, they need to be explained and understood using a highly developed system of theology. Apparently only "believers" have the secret decoder ring that allows them to tell the difference.

By extension, such "beliefs" only ever lead the most ardent of believers to the inescapable conclusion that any act performed in the service of a God who can do no wrong, could therefore never be wrong either, no matter how much it appears to everyone else to be nothing but.

This is like the United States always supporting the Middle East Peace process, because no matter what the U.S. does - even if it starts a war - it is always considered to be "supporting" the process. It's just that America, like God, often works in mysterious ways, but should always be trusted nevertheless to have a plan.

We also see this in claims by the Republican party to be "pro-Life," and oppose abortion, when in fact the Republican party would never be stupid enough to ever allow abortion to be made illegal, because if they did, all those Catholics would find some other single issue to vote for. And that single issue may be one the Democrats have a stronghold on.

And on an individual level, it also means that a person NEVER has to apologize for anything, since every act such a "true believer" engages in, even those unrelated to their religious beliefs per se, are always "good" a priori. And if any injury or insult is suffered, it is purely the fault of the incorrect interpretation of the person who, either out of naivete or over sensitivity or both, allowed them self to feel injured or insulted.

Those who beat God's disloyal servants are always doing something "good," in other words, while those who beat people for money or the devil, etc, etc, are always doing something "bad." And it is the sole responsibility of the person being beaten to know the difference.