What did you see?

In Genesis chapter 1, the Bible tells us, “God saw everything which he had made and it was very good.” However, in chapter 6, the Bible says, “And the Lord saw that the sin of man was great on the earth, and that all the thoughts of his heart were evil. And the Lord had sorrow because he had made man on the earth, and grief was in his hear.” The first question that comes into my mind is: Isn’t God all knowing? If He is all knowing, shouldn’t He know that men would become evil before He created us? If it is the case, it is reasonable to ask, “Why did He commented His creation as very good?”

The question does demand an answer, at the very beginning, I believe not many of us will question God is all knowing. So in this article I do take God’s all knowing for granted. Granting God is all knowing, He should have known that mankind would fall from the very beginning, so it is rational to conclude: if something carries a serious flaw, it is not something that is very good. For instance, we want to purchase a LCD TV, a LCD’s graphics are fantastic and the price is very reasonable, maybe we know that every electronic product does have its life cycle and the TV’s life cycle is 5 years; however, we would not comment the LCD TV as very good if it has a serious flaw, like, it will burn itself when the temperature reaches room temperature. Parallel to God’s creation of mankind, the fell of human and the evil deeds we have been doing are definitely not a tiny flaw, especially when we put in consideration the holiness of God Himself.

Then we have a dilemma, God is all knowing but God regretted His creation that He believed was good earlier. To most Christians, I believe neither we would say God is too passionate in commenting something as good naively nor having a very different standard of goodness from what He has been suggesting in the Bible. So to us, it is obvious that since God cannot contradict Himself, there must be something “in between” us being good and being wicked. According to the Bible, we are created in the image of God but at the same time we are slaves of sins, we own the holiness of God and that’s why God Himself interrupt the History by becoming human in the name of Jesus Christ, died for our sins so that we can repent and once again become His sons and daughters.

So if we consider the story once again, we were created and God believed we were good, then He regretted because we were sinful, but He also prepared Himself for our sins. Put all things together, it is true that we are seriously flawed but we are good because God has chosen to make us good. It is not because good is unfair in treating wicked as virtue, it is just because God does not calculate our sins if we repent. (God Himself has paid the high price.) That means to say, it is a fact that we are wicked and there is no way under the standard of God that we can be good; nevertheless, God has the mercy in treating us as good, as something He can love, it is a gift, the attitude of being merciful is something we should have learn.

The Bible tells us that because God first loved us so we know what love is, I believe there is something we should learn from the passage, Protestant Christians have always been critical, we have a very strict sense to sins and we have been trying our best to “punish” sins, the accusation that we have been judging from a moral high ground is not entirely false, we do have such an inclination. However, today God teaches us something very differently, God is justice and He has the reign in saying, “You are sinful and I don’t think you are good so I don’t love you.” Not only does God love you, He also loves you so much that He died for your evil nature so that you are a new person and you are good once again. As a result, now when we see your brothers and sisters did something problematic, rather than criticizing them of doing wrongly, shouldn’t we first ask ourselves is there some rooms for us to say they are good rather then concluding they are bad? Are we so very different from them in God’s view? If we judge them strictly, will God judge us in the same way?

When we look at a painting, we conclude a painting is good not because it is flawless; maybe the flaws are making the painting even better. So today, when you look at your fellow brothers and sisters, what did you see? A flawed human being who has done a lot of evil deeds or a creation of God that God has commented as good at the very beginning? Here, I have to propose that it is not the case that we tolerate one’s evil deeds; here I am asking us not to be a critic but being a sinner looking at another sinner, if God calls someone good how dare you say he/she is bad? If God our master has the mercy to forgive our evil deeds by dying for us, how dare you to criticize the new person as wicked?

So to the end, I believe God doesn’t judge us because we are bad, God looks at us because we are good. It is true that we are sinful, it is true that we always do something that are unacceptable to God, but, no matter how the Bible tells us that God loves us very much. By using the LCD TV analogy, human being are a rubbish LCD, it is small, bad in quality and like the TV produced in China, we will explode; however, our buyer, God, did not just return us to the manufacturer, He fixed us and commented us as good. So if you see your brothers or sisters’ bad side, try to think about their good side, appreciate their goodness before accusing their evilness, maybe to the end, they have really done something unacceptable, but at least we have tried to look at them as a good creation from God rather than an expired milk that we despise. Let us be less critical and more sentimental.