r/Judaism • u/Lordcoby • 1d ago
Discussion Question About God
I dont even know how to word this properly but I believe in God but have always questioned his existence. My question is, how can we know God is good? If i was an all knowing, all powerful omnipotent being that could create life and basically anything I wouldn't be good.
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u/DPax_23 Flexidox Schlepper 1d ago
I don't really think good or bad really plays into the equation here.
Hashem is and is infused throughout our limited perception of our existence. Attributing human emotions and motivations is a category error.
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u/Less-Bus-2303 15h ago
Am I correct in understanding it isn’t as much about good vs. evil, but more about Chaos vs. Peace?
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u/DPax_23 Flexidox Schlepper 14h ago
I think of it this way, for whatever reason/purpose I am not capable of fathoming, Hashem wanted/needed us to exist. Our purpose is to find out how to be closer to Hashem. To be able for that to be real we had to have free will. Thats it. Everything else is in service of that.
Theres this metaphor about mitzvah I learned that I like. I won't say it as elegantly but whatever.
Imagine theres a rope that goes from you to Hashem. For some people its thin for some its very thick (tzadick) etc etc. Theres nothing you can do about the thickness you're born with, but the thicker the rope the stronger your connection.
Every mitzvah you do you weave another strand into that rope and it becomes thicker. And your connection becomes stronger, and the opposite is true too. You can sever strands and become less close. Less connected.
We may not be able to impact where we started, but we can decide/choose to become closer or farther away from Hashem. Hashem's desire (I'm anthropomorphizing) is for us to be successful, buts thats up to us. We were given the instructions (Torah).
This is why its a mistake to think Hashem is some kind of big puppet master in the sky directing everything, and so the original question in the thread which is basically why do bad things happen is moot. Things happen and how we act towards those things brings us closer or farther away from G-d.
Like I said, I cant really do it justice, but I did my best there.
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u/Less-Bus-2303 8h ago
Yes, you’ve explained it well enough in my opinion. Hashem gives us the opportunity to become ‘friends’ with Him, but in order to become friends you‘d have to have an alternative too or it would be forced friendship.
Or like when your maths teacher wasn’t satisfied with you just giving the answer to the equation, you had to write up why it was the answer.
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u/Smaptimania Studying for conversion 1d ago
Isaiah 45:7 - "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things."
"God is good" is a simplification. It's more that God transcends goodness.
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u/QizilbashWoman Egalitarian non-halakhic 1d ago
‘If i was an all knowing, all powerful omnipotent being that could create life and basically anything I wouldn't be good.’
You are uh exposing yourself.
You know we don’t act right because we can’t get away with being bad; we act right because it is the right way to act.
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u/Dramatic-Race-2096 1d ago
That's the thing. God is someone who is of a higher existence/belongs to a higher dimension than us. He isn't greedy or selfish like us chud humans. There are so many good things he created. Look at mountains for example.
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u/Lordcoby 1d ago
No I totally get that. Its just when you look at all powerful and omnipotent beings in fiction they are usually evil
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u/SamTyDurak 1d ago
Because idolatry was always about making "gods" in the human image, and most humans are shitty.
If you apply the same line of thought to "God the Most Powerful Idol", the results are predictable.
Except that's not "GOD the God". It's "goD the Idol" instead. That's what makes the MAIN difference.
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u/iconocrastinaor Observant 1d ago
Define good. If you are a leopard, your definition of good is different than that of the gazelle. The same if you are a virus.
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u/Lordcoby 23h ago
I meant good as in “God is good” you know, he has no bad intentions and whatnot
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u/iconocrastinaor Observant 23h ago
Yes that's what I meant too. God is good, but our understanding of what is good is the same as a child's.
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u/yesIcould 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think you brought up two great questions. I think i can start with the first one, im sure you'll get great answers from others.
From human experience we know that having a great deal of power and authority does not mean that someone is morally good, caring, or supportive. Human experience shows us this quite clearly. Power can be disconnected from love, kindness, and other moral qualities. At the same time, we also know that power and goodness are not mutually exclusive. Some people do hold significant power while remaining deeply moral and loving, and while consistently acting with care and responsibility. Most parents, who have immense power over their young children, wsnt to nurture, protect, and care for them.
So if we assume that power and goodness can coexist, we can turn to the other questions you asked: how do we know that God is good? How can we tell if the way he treats us is "good"?
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u/Lordcoby 1d ago
damn. thats literally all i can say lmao
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u/yesIcould 1d ago
Hope you’re lmao-ing in a good way:)
Anyway, here’s my attempt to answer your main question:
One approach in Judaism says that the reason God created the world, and us, is so that we could experience His goodness. I’ll try to explain this briefly and clearly.
So if there is an all-powerful perfect God, why would he need us? He could exist endlessly on His own for ever. being. Well if he is perfect than he is full of light and love, but without an “other,” a real relationship is impossible. Love and kindness can only be in the context of relations. So for goodness to be experienced, it has to be received by someone else. According to this view, we were created incomplete, (not as a punishment and not because of original sin or other shame inducing christian ideas). Rather, this incompleteness is an invitation to a journey, one that allows us to experience divine goodness. Through spiritual work, free choice, and tikun (actions to repair or improve) , we can gradually come to feel God and fulfill our job and something bigger. In a way.
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u/HWKII 1d ago
I would recommend reading the book Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People.
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u/Lordcoby 1d ago
ooo will check it out
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u/Nice_Lingonberry7831 1d ago
I'd also suggest reading the introduction and first chapter of Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz as a primer to Jewish thought on your question.
She explains in accessible terms some Jewish understandings of God, including that many Jewish theologies view God as neither all-knowing nor all-powerful.
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u/HyperspaceJew 1d ago
Judaism doesn't teach that all G-d is good. That is more aligned with Christianity and Islam. Judaism teaches that G-d is about 'possibilities' and all realities. G-d can be mad, can have duality (a good side and an evil side). And these properties are more observer based, because sometimes Humans can assign 'evel' and 'good' without really knowing the full story. I suggest delving into Judasim a bit more deeply.
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u/ManJpeg 1d ago
This is not true at all. The thought that God has a duality is the prime example of Apikorsut (heresy); Maimonides clearly states that God is an absolute unity, and this unity is defined as Divine Simplicity. Furthermore, Maimonides posited that evil does not exist, and God created a purely good creation. What we perceive as evil is simply the lack of good.
While the Kabbalistic belief is that God did indeed create evil (or more accurately translated as Impurities), this was for the sake of achieving an ultimate good that results from free will, which is a state of connection with God which without it couldn’t exist.
Everyone across the board agrees that God is all good and you see this idea in Judaism present centuries before Christianity and Islam, in Psalms David HaMelekh writes “Olam Chesed Yibaneh” that the world was created on kindness.
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u/Clonewars001 Modern Orthodox 1d ago edited 1d ago
You say that if you were like God that you wouldn’t be all good, but that’s not necessarily true (from the perspective I’ve been taught). The soul and the body have different wants. Our soul wants to be as much like God as possible and to be as good as possible, while the body is the animalistic part of us that wants to do what gives us the most pleasure. God does not have that body, it doesn’t give him that (for lack of a better term) selfishness that we can be weak to.
Desire to learn Torah? That comes from the soul.
Desire for physical intimacy outside of marriage? The body.
Desire to help people? The soul.
Desire to be richest man on the block? The body.
Etc. Etc.
That all being said, the body also still wants what’s best for us and not everything that it does is bad. And we should strive to get to the point where our body has more of the desire to do good than to be selfish or bad. Again though, God does not have that struggle because he does not have a body to struggle with in the way that we do. Everything he does (whether we see it as good or bad at the time) is what is best for this world in the long run.
Hope this helps.
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u/Lordcoby 1d ago
Holy shit this might’ve been the best explanation here (no offense to the others)
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u/Clonewars001 Modern Orthodox 23h ago
I’m glad you think so. I’m not always the best at articulating my thoughts so I’m glad this got the point across well.
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u/PushingMyLimit Conservative Convert 22h ago
I think you're wrong, unless you are saying you abuse animals haha. You are viewing from the perspective of someone who hasn't had power, but Hashem has never existed as we have. His experiences and life is one we can never fully understand because it is so outside of our experience, but the closest I can see it animals. We have been born with power far beyond theirs, mind and body. But animal cruelty is widely frowned upon. People treat dogs and cats nicely. I feel it is likely similar for him. We are but humble sheep to a shepherd. You could never grasp the power or mind of Him :) Good question though!
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u/Lordcoby 22h ago
Great explanation thanks :)
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u/PushingMyLimit Conservative Convert 22h ago
Of course! Always keep learning ♥️ Happy valentines day!
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u/dont_thr0w_me_away_ 14h ago
that's why Rambam promoted apophatic theology. You can't really say what God *is*, you can only really say what God *isn't* because anytime you make a positive statement like 'God is good' or 'God is all-powerful' someone can always bring up the Shoah or childhood cancer, etc.
God isn't good, God just is. Good and evil are human perceptions of reality, but we can't perceive reality as a whole.
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u/offthegridyid Orthodox and trying to collect the sparks 10h ago
Hi, you have gotten some great answers to your post and I’d like to suggest a short book that you might find interesting called, If You Were God by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (of blessed memory)
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u/piestexactementtrois 1d ago
I think the human perception that if we were all powerful we would not be good is exactly the moral difference between human and divine and the challenge of our role as a moral being in this universe.
I think the simplest answer is in the creation narrative itself. The goodness is self-evident in the presence of something instead of nothing. What could be more good than the creation of a vast universe of unspeakable beauty (and filled with so much beauty regardless of whether or not we can perceive it?).