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CS Lewis 1/16: The Only Good (PoP)

God is our only good, because God is the only good of all creation. There is no other good. His goodness isn't subjective or personalized; what is true and moral and just for me is not different from what is true and moral and just for you. Virtue is all God's virtue. Good is all God's good.

That leaves us two options: either accept God as the source of all goodness and try to be like Him, or reject Him, cut ourselves off from the Source, and be miserable. If we refuse to accept that God's good is the ONLY good then our choice is made, and we will be miserable for eternity.

Suggested Reading: Matt 5:43-48, James 1:16-18

Study Questions:

1) List some things that are good. Do you also think of them as being from God? Why or why not?

2) We're often told to "speak our truth," as if our truth is different from someone else's. Is goodness the same way?

3) How might recognizing all goodness as coming from God help us?


*****

Original Text: "Our Three Responses to God"

It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures: and by necessity, each must find its good in that kind and degree of the fruition of God which is proper to its nature. The kind and degree may vary with the creature's nature: but that there ever could be any other good, is an atheistic dream. George Macdonald, in a passage I cannot find, represents God as saying to men, "you must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness, for I have no other to give." That is the conclusion of the whole matter. God gives what He has, not what He has not: He gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. To be God - to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response - to be miserable - these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows - the only food that any possible universe ever can grow - then we must starve eternally.

- The Problem of Pain


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