It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God- Reading One

Below are some of my favorite quotes from this chapter on goodness, I hope you are able to glean of their wisdom, and understand the main ideas.

" Creation is useful because it is good. It is not good because it is useful. The universe was made by God, it conformed to His nature, reflected His image and therefore was pronounced good." (pg. 18)

- Despite how we abuse it, neglect it and forget to cherish it, the earth is still good, because God created it that way. Regardless of whether or not things are destroyed or no longer functional, there is still beauty in that brokenness, because even the brokenness was originally created beautiful. This concept blows my mind. God is the very definition of beautiful, therefore everything that he has breathed life into represents Him and therefore represents beauty. I love this!

"We also see in God's response that justice is integral to His goodness when God tells of His right to show mercy as He chooses. The act of showing mercy requires the presence of actions that justify punishment." (Pg. 20)

- So often Christians forget that a central part of God's goodness is His justice. We like to think of God as just, but not as a judge. We want for things to be made right, but not to have to endure any pain, and any pain or hardship that occurs we either blame God for or refuse to associate with God, because He is "good". But this quote reminds us that God is just in His goodness, but also able to have mercy on those whom his justice would not favor.

" God's goodness isn't restricted to the lofty and heady realms of glory and justice. His goodness is evident in the many ordinary ways. His common grace extends to every sphere of life and reaches all of our senses- the crunch of leaves during a walk on crisp fall day... the initial peek at waves through dune grasses... the song of a bird on a winter morning. " (Pg. 20)

- He continues with many more examples of how God's grace infiltrates our senses, including starry nights, the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies, warm mashed potatoes, and a nice glass of Cabernet. I really loved this portrayal of grace. I have always understood mercy to be not giving us what we deserve, and grace as being giving us what we don't deserve, and this makes sense now. We don't deserve all of these beautiful senses, experiences, glimpses of heaven, yet in his perfect grace an goodness he provides them. What a wonderful God we serve!

"We make good the equivalent of 'nice try' when we say a child has done good when they have merely put forth effort. And usually 'nice' or 'sweet' are presented as synonyms of good... a nice or sweet God would not destroy every living creature (except those who could fit on a boat), in a worldwide cataclysmic flood... our comprehension of good is bent." (Pg. 21)

- Wow. Yep, our perception of good is definitely flawed. For some reason we associate goodness with good feeling, which is a bent way of thinking. I was talking to a friend at church the other day, and I asked him how he was doing. He said he was good, and because I don't like one word responses when inquiring about how someone is doing, I asked him why he was good. He said the following which, for whatever reason, blew my mind, "Good does not always mean happy, or without hardship, it means under the perfect grace and protection of God. Even when we struggle in life, we can trust that things are good, because God orchestrates them and because no matter the circumstance we learn and we grow from life experiences. So this is why I am good." Gah. Crazy!

"...creation is groaning under the burden of the Fall, and yet it is not completely perverse because we are still able to find the image of God in the faces of mankind in spite of the thoroughness of our depravity." (Pg. 21)

- Read that again. My oh my, how beautiful is that. What God created was good and he impeded himself into his creation. He is here always, and nothing can change that. No amount of humanity's failures can mask his goodness. He is here to be found by us, and we can indeed find him if we seek him. This reality fills me with joy and hope.

"In other words, when we view and create art we are not able to escape the fallen world we live in. We can neither rise above it, nor go around it. We are bound to it. It pervades everything we think and do. There is a communication problem when trying to portray a proper understanding of good to those whose catalog of images and experiences is thoroughly bent." (Pg. 21)

- We cannot perfectly convey goodness in our art, because despite being created as good and still being seen as good because of Christ, our tendencies are not good. We live in a world that does not comprehend God or his goodness, because they don't know him. So how do you portray a God that you do not fully know? It is like trying to sketch an apple without having ever seen one. Sure, we see glimpses of God, especially through his Son, but we do not know him completely, as he would have it be. Which is why we need to seek to know him as best we can, until he restores us to himself and we can know him more fully.

"If we are to even attempt to communicate good in our art we must push out beyond our bent understanding of it and draw from the depths of God's character...Each of us must wrestle with what scriptural goodness is and expand our knowledge of true goodness when attempting to portray it in art." (Pgs, 23-24)

- Like I said above, in order to communicate good, we must seek God. We must learn his character, to the point where that knowledge can't be shaken by our doubt. We must rid ourselves of the world's definition of goodness, a very hard feat, and adopt God's definition of goodness as we embrace Him.

"Evil is not a real thing at all, like God. It is simply good spoiled. That is why I say there can be good without evil, but not evil without good...Evil is a parasite. It is there only because good is there for it to spoil and confuse." (Pg. 29)

- This quote is really encouraging and I have never thought about it in this way. Good and evil have always been very black and white in my mind. I saw them as opposites, never as counterparts, but as opposites. But to think that everything created was first good, and that evil cannot exist without good is a new idea entirely. It makes sense though, the things that God created for our good such as food, sex, knowledge and the like have been twisted and have been used for evil. The idea that evil is a parasite in the presents of goodness makes me want to jump for joy. What a great analogy.



Source:
Bustard, Ned, and Sandra Bowden. "God Is Good like No Other." It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. Baltimore, MD: Square Halo, 2000.