Right is Might

Proving the existence of good, God, and meaning in life.
(c) 2006 by Jon Gill; re-posted 2011 from www.jonathangill.net

right - n. truth; goodness; that which is true, good, and correct;
adj. true; good; correct
might - n. power; authority

I saw a poster the other day on the wall of an Army compound that had a picture of tanks crossing the desert, and the words, “RIGHT IS MIGHT” above it. As much as this fit the category of propaganda posters from the last 100 years of America’s military recruiting (even having the guts to put “U.S. Army” at the bottom of it all) the simple truth of the statement hit me. While very few people agree that "might makes right", and the jury is still out for most people on whether what we did in Iraq was inherently “right” (this is not an essay on Iraq), the fact remains that “right is might” – that is, that which is inherently good also has inherent power.

There are two important corollaries to take from this truth, which in turn will show the original true. The first is:
(1) if inherent good is inherently powerful, that which is absolutely good is absolutely powerful.

The second is:
(2) the appearance of goodness or truth has power (or the appearance of power) to the degree that it appears true.

The third is a moot point: that which does not appear good or true has no power at all. The reason this last point is moot is because things that are inherently evil or false usually exist only with a great degree of verisimilitude – they would have been dismissed long ago if they had not.

POINT 1: Absolute good and absolute power.
When people are asked about the definition of "God", most of them agree that the idea of God is a supernatural, omnipotent being. Where they differ is on His character – is He good, or “good”? Is he father or daddy? Does He really love you, is He out to get you, or is He just out there? The question arises from skeptics (and also pondering teenagers trying to figure things out for themselves), “Can God make a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” The paradox presented, of course, is that if God is omnipotent, then He should be able to make that rock, but his omnipotence would then be immediately challenged by having a rock that he is unable to lift. The unfortunate conclusion, besides confusion, is usually the skepticism of the very idea of omnipotence. What follows the idea that no person or being can be omnipotent. That no one person, religion, or creed can ever have the truth. That truth is relative. That you should just do the best you can, because that’s all anyone can hope for. It’s sad that such ignorance can lead to such widespread ideas of hopelessness and vanity.

There are two things wrong with the question about God and His rock. The first is best explained in another paradoxical question: “What would happen if an unstoppable force struck an immovable object?” While the question boggles the mind, the intelligent person will figure out that if one exists, the other cannot. If there is an immovable object, no force is completely unstoppable. If there is an unstoppable force, no object is completely immovable. These truths are there in the very definitions of the words. Relate this to the God-rock conundrum, and we see that it is logically impossible for an omnipotent being to create something that can never exist, but that impossibility does not in any way limit that being’s omnipotence – God is still capable of creating anything that can exist, and doing anything that can be done. God is the unstoppable force, the rock is the immovable object. God would not be God if that rock could ever exist – and that is the very reason that atheists and skeptics raise the question in the first place, so that the very nature of God is questioned.

That brings me to the second thing wrong with the God-rock question, and how it relates to the original hypothesis: the nature of God. God is absolutely powerful, and God is absolutely good. God is incapable of sin, for sin is the disobedience of God’s law and design, and sin separates us from God. If God were to sin, He would cease to be God. He would separate Himself from Himself. It is His goodness, His perfection that defines who He is. (Some religions, such as New Age, Existentialism, and Latter-Day Saints, believe that God was first imperfect and then worked to become perfect, and that we are all on the same path. Well, good luck to you all.) Either way, the main thing that defines an all-powerful being is how perfectly good he is. Not only does no one want to believe that an evil being could be all-powerful, but even in movies and our culture we show that villain having some ultimate flaw that is his downfall. “Fallen” (or “fell” in the older times) is how we describe evil things, as if they are already beaten. And of course they are, for if good is omnipotent, evil can never be. Unlike good, which has inherent power, evil has only default power.

There is no yin and yang (a concept which entails the equality and inter-relatedness of good and evil) – light has always been more powerful than darkness, for darkness is merely the absence of light. Cold is merely the absence of heat, not an entity of its own. It is not cold that affects us, merely the absence of the heat we need to live and be comfortable. Darkness does not overtake the sunlight at dusk, the earth merely moves out of the sun’s light, allowing us to see light from far-away stars, and the sunlight reflecting off the moon and the planets. Darkness cannot overtake a lit room unless the light first goes out or is hidden - its power is only by default of the light source.

Most people believe that even the most evil person “still has some good in them”. Why? Is it because if there is no good left, there is no hope for redemption? Is it that they fear the supposed entity of evil, or rather because the complete absence of good leaves them and the afflicted person completely powerless to change him? There is only one being that is incapable of redemption, and he is only evil because he relinquished what good had originally been bestowed upon him. That brings me to my second point, but let me summarize this one: the only thing that can be absolutely powerful is something that is absolutely good. Any imperfect being will always have an area that can be exploited, their downfall, their weakness. An omnipotent being can have no weakness, and therefore can have no imperfections.

POINT 2: Evil, lies and verisimilitude.
The second (and third) point is that something that is imperfect or evil can only have power to the degree that it appears true and good, even if it lacks true inherent power. Verisimilitude (the appearance of truth) is powerful – we call it deception – and blatant lies are ridiculously impotent. If someone tells you, while outdoors, that the sky is green, you would laugh in their face because you can see quite plainly that it is blue (or grey, if you live in England). Even if you were indoors, such a story would be met with immediate skepticism, having never seen or heard of the sky being green before. In the same way, if someone came up to you and said that your grandma had died, while she is sitting there in the room knitting, you would dismiss it immediately as a falsehood, ridiculous. However, if you had not seen your grandma in quite some time, and the last time you did she was ill, the news would have much more of an impact upon you. It is the possibility of this truth that has the power – if it is true, you will be attending a funeral soon, remembering her life and all your memories of her. If it is untrue, you will still be feeling those emotions until you find it is false, at which point the news will cease to affect you, other than to chide the one that passed you the lie in the first place. Then think about how much more the lie could affect you if the bearer of the false news went to great lengths to pull off the prank. If he told you to go ahead and call someone to verify, and the person you called was in on the joke and played along, affirming the lie, you would trust with all your heart that it was true. Almost nothing but seeing your grandma alive would sway you away from believing the lie.

So, we see that not only does actual good and truth hold power, but falsehood can have power to the degree that it appears true. This is exactly the ploy that the enemy (the devil, or “Satan”, which means “adversary”) uses to gain power over human beings. He uses lies like “no one loves you” to bring depression, but the power only comes when you believe it. He will try to prove it to you, by reminding you of all the times you got picked last in kickball, all the times someone ignored you, all the times the world was cruel to you. Hence the final note, “goodbye, cruel world.” He uses lies like “you’ll never be everything you’ve tried to be”, to get people to either give up or to overexert themselves to a breaking point (whichever is your tendency). He even lies about God and himself, as he did from the very beginning. The serpent told Eve that God only wanted them not to eat from that tree because they would become like Him – that He was holding out on them, that He didn’t love them enough to give them everything. In truth, God only wanted them not to eat from that tree to keep them from an unnecessary knowledge of evil and lies, which would only tempt them further to become imperfect, fallen. The existence of the tree in the first place was for the purpose of giving mankind a choice, a free will. Without the option of disobedience, we are merely robots, and robots cannot love God or anyone else, which is ultimately our purpose. It turns out that the option, along with the serpent’s lie that appeared true, was enough to do mankind in. The naïveté of Adam and Eve was not a blatantly evil choice – it was merely their first introduction to the difference between true Truth, and the lie that appears true.

That one appearance of truth had enough power to bring down the ones who had walked, lived, breathed, and spoken with God in person. Choosing the lie over the truth brought imperfection. Imperfection brought fallibility. Fallibility brought impotence and death. Today we are utterly dependent on the only One who is good and perfect for our very life. We each have an expiration date, and during that time we can never hope to achieve perfection on our own – anything that has ever been imperfect will never be truly perfect. It must exist perfect at all times, unless is can be perfected by something or someone that is perfect. The only way we will become perfect is by choosing Truth over the lie, letting the Perfect One work to perfect us. By choosing Truth over the lie every day, we submit ourselves to the power of God, which is His truth and goodness. His absolute power and goodness works in us to make us like Him. Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no shadow or turning (that is, He never changes or flickers). Every lie comes from the father of lies, the prince of darkness, the one whose light and truth were stripped from him because of his treason, and who wants nothing more than to create havoc and trouble on mankind as much as possible before he is destroyed. He has no real power – he cannot do anything you do not allow him to or he does not have a right or permission to do. His only power is his lies that appear true. The Bible says he prowls about “like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” That does not mean he is a lion – no, Jesus is the Lion of Judah, the true king – but his lion mask is pretty scary to most people. Especially to those who have never met the real Lion. How would they know how to spot a fake lion if they’ve never seen a real one? The appearance of a powerful being, to a sufficiently naïve person, has enough power to scare and control. But, when the True Lion comes to fight the fake one, who will win? It is not a fair fight! The fake lion has no true power against the real one, and the power of the lie is also broken because the formerly naïve person has seen the truth.

The point.
And so it is with truth and goodness, with good and evil. Anyone who has been shown the truth needs not fear the lies – they have no power. Anyone who has never seen the truth will be captive to the lies until the truth comes. If no one can ever find the Truth, then there is no God, there is no good, and therefore there is no evil, no sin, and no punishment - and no hope and no point to life. But if there is any good in this world, there must be a source; and if there is a source of good, that source must be absolutely good. And if that source is absolutely good, then that source is absolutely powerful. And we know this omnipotent source of good as God. So if God exists, and He is absolutely good, then there is indeed a way to find the Truth, and the power of lies can be broken.

And if the power of lies can be broken, there is hope.