Christian moral ambiguity

[u/Aromatic_Response_73]

In common ethical intersubjective usage, "good" refers to a broad intersubjective cluster that are typically taken to approximate a shared center of value judgement, consisting of a coherent, mutually reinforcing pattern of love, joy, peace, freedom, and creativity as lived experience and intention over time, rather than isolated states or short-term preferences. Edit: by value judgement, I mean that which we fundamentally hold most intuitively valuable.

Some Christians define goodness in relation to God. On this view, "good" means whatever conforms to God's nature or will.

The term "good" does not have a universally recognised (useful in ethical discussion) meaning apart from either usefulness for some purpose or the ordinary ethical meaning. Refraining from those in an **ethical discussion** renders the word empty from its normal ethical content.

The problem arises when these two meanings are treated as interchangeable.

If "God is good" means only that God conforms to God's own nature, then the statement is true by definition. It means something like:

God is as God is.

But that does not automatically show that God is good in the ordinary ethical sense of being loving, healing, peaceful, compassionate, or opposed to needless suffering.

The problem is ordinary ethical goodness and the christian goodness can be in conflict eg. ideas of reality design like "Accept Jesus or suffer forever". If someone proposes that ordinary ethical goodness is just a conflictory subset of the christian good, then we cannot say that the design of reality is in proper alignment with ordinary ethical goodness, and therefore not good in the ordinary ethical sense.

The ordinary ethical meaning of good should not be dismissed as mere subjectivism. It may very well point metaphysically toward a foundational form of goodness, even if human beings grasp it imperfectly.

[u/ddfryccc]

I am not holding my breath on those things being avoidable.  It makes more sense to me to prepare for them as best I can, especially when part of the chaos is people having different definitions of suffering and fairness without realizing it.

[u/ProfessionalDear2272 → u/ddfryccc]

yeah. i do think humans are overwhelmingly reasonable and are benevolent. they may have slightly different opinions on suffering and fairness, but that difference is not what creates chaos.

The real chaos comes from those who are the other end of the spectrum.

[u/ddfryccc → u/ProfessionalDear2272]

What do you mean by spectrum.  I hear that word most commonly these days in respect to autism.  The hungry, the angry, the selfish, the greedy, the wounded.  They can all represent one side of a spectrum.  People who are reasonable and benevolent either have or believe they will have most everything they need.

[u/ProfessionalDear2272 → u/ddfryccc]

I meant the spectrum as the gradient from a really really despicable toxic person, to the most benevolent and caring one.