Thank…Goodness?

By

John Orlando

How many times have we heard someone say, “thank goodness” after something good happened?  I have heard this many times, and I have even found myself uttering these words from time to time.  And, to be honest, I never really thought two seconds about it until one day when I was watching the news on CNN.  The northeast United States was in the middle of a heat wave, and the report stated that there would be no relief from the high temperatures until Friday.  One of the CNN reporters responded:  “thank goodness it’s Friday.”  

“Yeah,” I thought, “thank goodness it’s…wait a minute…hmmm…thank “goodness” it’s Friday?”  I’m not that bright, but the saying isn’t thank “goodness” it’s Friday, but thank God it’s Friday! (I know because there is a restaurant that I eat at frequently that is called TGIF, and some kind person informed me that TGIF stood for “Thank God It’s Friday”!). 

I began to really think about that for a minute.  Question:  who in the world is goodness, and why would I thank “goodness” about a certain day of the week, unless “goodness” actually had the power to bring that day of the week into being?   As a matter of fact, why would I thank “goodness” for anything? Is “goodness” a person?  Has “goodness” done so many wonderful things for me that I must constantly offer my praise of thanksgiving to it?  

Now, I am quite sure that some people that walk around giving their thanks to “goodness” might say that they do that because they do not want to use the Lord’s name in vain.  Call me a pessimist, but; I find that a bit difficult believe…let’s be honest:  most people couldn't care less whether or not they use the name of the Lord in vain. Many of the same people that say, “thank goodness” after something good happens are the same ones that turn around and say, “God damn it” when something bad happens!  Let’s see here:  this person won’t use God’s name in association with something good in an expression of gratitude, but, this person will invoke the name of God in relation to something bad, and basically use the name of God as a curse word.  Yeah…makes perfect sense to me!  Secondly, offering a praise of thanksgiving to the Lord is not using His name in vain; after all, the apostle Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 to, “…Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”  Notice, we are to give thanks to God in all circumstances, not to “goodness.”  Oh yeah, and please note that we give thanks to God in all circumstances, not just some circumstances!  

We can give thanks to God well enough when something “good” happens to us, but what about when things aren’t going so good?  Hey, believe me, I can relate to this!  When things aren’t going so well for me, I rarely if ever give thanks to God!  Instead, some rather “unholy” thoughts (and words!) pass through mind.  As a matter of fact, the day I wrote this, a series of “not so good” things happened to me.  Did I remember what I had just written a few hours earlier about giving thanks to God?  Of course not!  I proceeded to throw a pity party.  What a clown!  Worse, what a sinner!  I find myself murmuring against God and His providence more times than I care to remember.  

As a Christian though, I give praise to God because He has forever forgiven me of all of my sins due to the perfect work of Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and bodily resurrection.  Having, by God’s grace, received Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior (that is, by casting all of my hope to get heaven on what Jesus did for me, and not what I can do for myself), the Bible declares that I have everlasting life (John 6:47).  And now as a Christian, when I commit sins in my daily life, I am called to simply go to my Lord in prayer and confess my sins, realizing that He is faithful and just to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)  If you are reading this and you have never received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, may I direct you to this link: http://www.eeinternational.org/dykfs/[email protected] 

Anyway, the point is that we are to give thanks to God (not to “goodness”) in all circumstances.  Today though, I notice a lot of folks not giving thanks to God at all, but giving it all to “goodness!” Why is this?  What is the real reason that people say, “thank goodness” instead of “thank God”?  

There are probably a number of reasons for this; but I think that a lot of it has to do with where we are as a culture.  Now, I know up to this point what you have read has been on the light side.  But, I have to take a brief detour here to give you some background on the “thanks” crisis that we are in.  Ok, here we go: 

You see, back in the 1960’s, God was declared to be dead (actually He was declared to be dead much earlier than that by Nietzsche in the late 1800s).  People liberated themselves from what they perceived to be the oppressive traditional values that they were raised in.  Love and sex were now “free” in the sense that a person could freely have intimate relations with someone (and as many “someone’s” as they chose) apart from the bonds of marriage.  People were free to experiment with mind-altering drugs to experience a sense of euphoria.  Much more could be said, but the bottom line is that the situation that arose during that time in our country was similar to that of Israel as described in the book of Judges:  “every did what was right in their own eyes.”  (Judges 21:25).  If God is dead, why shouldn’t we just do whatever we want?  

It should be understood that the reaction that occurred was not against Christianity per se, even though the culture up to that time by and large held to a Judeo-Christian ethic.  The problem with the culture up to that point is that while it held to a Judeo-Christian ethic, it did not have the God of that ethic at the center of its thinking.  Instead, most people were what I call practical Deists.  They believed in a “God” (you know; the “big guy upstairs”) but; God was up in Heaven doing His thing and has left us down here to do our thing.  Just live right, don’t kill anyone, and when you die you’ll get to see all of your friends and family that died before you up there, and you’ll all have a big party (God will just go back to reading His newspaper…wouldn’t want to disturb the kiddies and their festivities).  Thus, the culture held to an ethic of absolute moral values, but they were not anchored in anything objective, namely, God.  The best the culture could come up with was “this is right, and this is wrong because that’s just the way it has always been.”  

Thus, things were ripe for a cultural revolution.  The seeds of the secular humanist and atheistic philosophies that had been sown and taken control of the educational system in the country in the early 1900s (headed by the “decimal” man himself, John Dewey) had now fully harvested in the universities, with the professors being the anointed prophets, priests, and kings of a gospel that taught that everything is relative; there is no such thing as absolute truth.  Why be constrained by such an oppressive thing as absolute moral values?  As a matter of fact, those things can be more harmful to the human psyche because we try to restrain our natural tendencies and affections.  So, if it feels good we should just do it (as long as we don’t hurt someone).  We used to say that God was there, but has left the world to run on its own; but that wasn’t good enough, because it still had us bound by absolutes and also the fear of the prospect of some sort of judgment when we died.  But now, ah yes now, we just declare loudly and boldly along with Nietzsche that God is indeed dead, and since God is dead, there is no need to fear some kind of divine retribution for our actions.  We are free to fulfill all of our sexual mores, and whatever else we think might produce the ultimate effects in terms of self-gratification.   We are the captains of our own ship (and the ship is headed nowhere…to absolute nothingness). 

So far as I can tell, the culture made its clean break with God in 1963 when it banned prayer in public school, and slowly but surely people began to eliminate God from their vocabulary altogether, unless of course the word was used in conjunction with a curse word. We could use the word “God” to express the outrage and anger of our hearts, but never ever as an expression of praise to the Creator of heaven and earth (lest you be labeled as a religious nut and be looked upon with great suspicion by the supposedly enlightened masses that are too smart for all of this “God” stuff, and have everything all figured out).  In this climate, religion was still tolerated, but you had to keep it in the closet; God-talk out in public was just unacceptable. 

Thus, the seeds sown back in the early 1900s sprouted and brought forth the fruit of relativism in the decade of the 1960’s, and the seeds planted back in the 1960’s have all sprouted forth and produced poisonous fruit today.  All of the kids back in the 60’s that were the sponges that soaked in the “God is dead” philosophy have all grown and reached positions of power in our culture today.  The hippies and “free lovers” of yesteryear are today’s politicians, scientists, lawyers, judges, schoolteachers, and professors.  And if God was dead to them back then, what do we suppose God is to them today?  To discover the answer to that, all we have to do is look at what is coming out of the arts and entertainment industry, and then look at some of the legal decisions that have been handed down since then.  

In terms of the arts and the entertainment industry, it has usually been agreed that the arts can give us a sense of where the culture is philosophically.  In other words, we are able to get a sense of what the public at large generally believes about life through the art that is predominately produced and accepted.  A wonderful work in this area is the book written by Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live.  Schaeffer traces the history of the arts and is able to draw direct parallels between the art that was produced during a particular time-period in history, and the predominate worldview that was held during that time.  

So, what does the art of our time tell us about the beliefs of our culture?  Back when it was declared that God was dead, religion in general was basically tolerated.  People that expressed any kind of fervor for Christianity were just referred to as “Jesus Freaks”, and they were looked upon more with pity than anything else; sort of like the crazy neighbor that everybody knows, but as long as he doesn’t bother anyone, then no big deal.  After all, we want to live and let live, so, just let the religious fruitcake enjoy his delusion if it gives him a sense of purpose and contentment. The arts, while basically reflecting a secular and/or atheistic tone, usually stopped short of anything that would be overtly offensive to Christians.  

Slowly but surely though, that sentiment evaporated. Where once those that were vocal in their love for Christ were labeled “Jesus Freaks,” and were thought to be harmless zealots on the lunatic fringe, now anyone that expresses any sort of positive sentiment about Jesus Christ is viewed with great suspicion and thought to be at the very least potentially dangerous.  Where once artists produced incredible works of artistic beauty in depicting various biblical scenes, now we have a crucifix in a jar of urine, and a portrait of the mother of Jesus splattered with elephant dung being accepted as art.  

Hollywood has also escalated its attack on Christianity steadily through years. Christians were (are) depicted as intolerant bigots and/or dangerous maniacs that threaten the very fabric of society.  Christ is portrayed as a delusional insurrectionist, either through “scholarly” documentaries on such channels as A&E, or through movies such as The Last Temptation of Christ.  Add to this the untold number of television shows and movies that directly attack biblical ethics by openly indorsing and promoting such sins as abortion on demand, homosexuality, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, violence for violence sake, the nonstop use of profanity (the “f” bomb most prevalently, and of course the use of the words God or Jesus Christ as terms of profanity), etc., etc., and we have a situation where the population at large is being both desensitized to any sense of ethics, and essentially indoctrinated against and hardened toward historic Bible-believing Christianity. 

The print media is no better.  Every Christmas and Easter Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, and various other major publications publish articles that directly attack the historicity of the New Testament and call into question the person and work of Christ.  And when Mel Gibson produced his movie about the sufferings of Christ, The Passion, it was viciously attacked by such news titans as the New York Times (you can see some direct quotes in a review I wrote of the movie at this link:  http://www.geocities.com/johnandursula/passionreview). 

With reference to landmark legal decisions that have clearly signaled our cultures break with God and the ethical standards founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, I have already mentioned the ban on prayer in public schools in 1963.  Other significant legal decisions are the passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973, where it was determined that a mother could legally murder her unborn baby for no other reason than that she just wanted to.  Today we have witnessed the full assault on traditional marriage, where certain states have or are in the process of trying to legalize homosexual marriage, and the Federal government rejected a bill that would define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Pornography is rigorously protected as a first amendment right (see Larry Flynt’s landmark Supreme Court victory in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt) and allowed to infiltrate not just the convenient store down the street, but every single home that has internet access is just one click away from having pornographic images splattered across the monitor.  Meanwhile, kids that would dare write a paper extolling the virtues of Jesus Christ are told that they cannot write anything about Jesus, and organizations such as the ACLU seem to work tirelessly to attack any person or institution that would dare utter the word God or Jesus in a public setting. 

Thus, the sentiment of our culture today is that God is dead (and if God is dead, why should you give thanks to Him?), and that’s just the way we like it, and we are hell bent on ensuring that “God” is not resurrected from the ash heap of rejected presuppositions…presuppositions that in actuality contributed significantly to the forming of this country, and were indeed the fabric that held our society together.  

Of course, the great irony is that though the presupposition of a living God has been replaced with the presupposition of a dead God, those that hold to the presupposition of a dead God nevertheless live as if God were not dead at all, but very much alive!  How else do we explain their commitment to such things as logic, science, purpose, justice, virtue (at the end of day, even they agree that stealing is wrong, etc.)? You see; the necessary thing to presuppose for any of those things (and every other thing in life) to even exist, much less have meaning, is that God is alive and well.  Not only that, but He is also in control of all things.  

But, our culture continues to bury its head in the sand of complacency, comfort, self-sufficiency and self-gratification.  God is dead, and we will not be confused with the facts that clearly dictate otherwise.  And since God is dead, we have no one to thank for any single thing.  The most we can do is give thanks to a word, “goodness.”  And here’s the kicker:  the only way we could know what “goodness” is, is if there were in fact some absolute standard of goodness, because without that, we would never know what was truly good and not good.  And once we begin talking about absolute standards of goodness, well, we are now forced to invoke God Himself, because words like goodness, and badness, have no significance apart from considering what it is that gives those words and ideas their true meaning.  

So, I will no longer give my thanks to a word, because first of all, "goodness" is just a word, and as such it has no being and no power.  The word "goodness" did nothing to bring about the circumstances that would elicit a response of praise to it from me.  Second, the word "goodness" itself only derives it true meaning when considered in light of the absolute goodness, namely, God Himself.  And since God is the absolute goodness, and goodness can only be understood in relation to who God is and what God says is good, and every good and perfect gift is from God Himself, then I will just tell God, “thanks.”  

And now, after all of that, you the reader are probably thanking God that I am finally finished. :-)

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