God Didn’t Do Anything to Earn Being God, So How Did He Become So Judgmental?

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God Didn’t Do Anything to Earn Being God, So How Did He Become So Judgmental?

May 15, 2025

Questions about how God became so judgmental if he didn’t do anything to become God, and how we can think the flood really happened if no definition of a god includes the idea that he can get so angry he drowns every dog on earth.

* God didn’t do anything to earn being God, did he? How did he become so judgmental?

* We don’t think the flood really happened, do we? No definition of a god includes emotion, let alone getting so angry he drowns every dog on earth.

Transcript

Welcome to the hashtag SDR-Ask podcast. I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Koukl. And today, Greg, we have questions about God's, God is a judge.

So this first one comes from... My favorite top. Go get him God. This first one comes from charisma.

God didn't do anything to earn. Earned being God, did he? How did he become so judgmental? My head is resting on the microphone. I'm thinking, that's like, to me, this question falls into the category of, I didn't ask to be born.

Well, you couldn't ask to be born before you were born. It's a nonsense question. So what does that mean? So now you have no responsibilities since you're born.

You didn't give your permission to be born. The same kind of thinking applies to this. And that is, God didn't deserve to be God.

So why could he be so judgmental of others? Here's the deal. God is God. That is the metaphysical reality.

Now, look, if there may be a question, you don't mind whether it's God or not. But if there is a God, or at least the God we represent, since charisma is asking you the question. By the way, charisma is a great word because that means grace.

So I don't know, Christmas, a Christian or not, or she's voicing something that she's been challenged with. But God, the nature of God is that he's a perfect being. He has no imperfections, which includes moral imperfections.

And so God is perfect. You know, I'm just trying to think of analog here. Maybe there is none because there's no analogy to God, but God is perfect.

And we are imperfect beings and we look at his perfections and we recognize the nature of the perfections as being glorious and good. Now, of course, one of those perfections is a moral perfection. And because he is morally perfect, then there's a difference between him and those who are not morally perfect.

So when he judges, he's judging appropriately those who are morally less than. Some folks don't like that phrase, but it's appropriate. Okay.

So the fastest runner in the Olympics is the fastest and others are less fast than he is. So he gets the prize. I mean, we use these kind of terms all the time and it's nobody fusses about it, but in this case, there's a fuss.

And the reason is, is that we in our behavior, we are in our behavior is under the microscope and God's looking there and we don't like that. So who is God? This is, I'm paraphrasing here, but this is a sense. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you can respond, but who is God to judge us because he didn't gain what he has as if that would justify his being able to judge us.

I don't, I don't follow that either. So how can he judge us? He could be so judgmental. My point is looking, he is just morally perfect.

He is the standard. Everybody else falls short of that. Now, whether that creates the kind of culpable liability that seems to be the case and certainly in Christianity, maybe another discussion, but why are we faulting God because he didn't choose to be God? There was no when that he would have chosen to be him.

He finds himself forever and ever. He doesn't even find himself like, Oh, here I am. Oh, what do you know? I'm perfect.

He just is. He's the metaphysical foundation for the entire universe. He's the ontological, the source of being of everything else.

He has made everything else out of his perfections, including moral perfection. So I don't know why there are some kind of fault with God, which the question seems to suggest. I guess I just don't follow that.

Maybe you can help me out. It's hard for me to understand what the objection here is because I think the understanding of God is so flawed in this question. I have gotten it before and it's hard for me to know if it's the same person writing into different names or if somebody out here is actually using this objection and so people are asking about it.

I'm not sure which the answer is, but if it were the case that God earned his authority to judge, that wouldn't make things better. That would make things worse. That would mean that there's some other source of authority higher than God.

That doesn't help. That doesn't help the case. It means so much more to say, by his own nature, by nature, this self-existent being who did not come to existence, who did not earn any sort of authority, but who has authority by his very nature, by nature of what he is, which is not just the creator of everything, but the perfect being and the morally perfect being and perfect in every way.

But when it comes to justice, it's the moral perfection that matters here. Now, if you want to say he earned something, I guess you could say that because he's the creator, he has a right to judge. But I think it goes beyond that.

But that isn't earned. Right. It isn't earned.

It's not accomplished. It is. It's right.

It's the nature of this. He is the creator. Therefore, he has authority to judge.

But it goes beyond that because it's his very character that gives him the authority to judge because he is the perfect being and the only perfect being. And because he cares about justice and because he loves and he hates evil, therefore, he judges. Every judge who is judging in this world, who's awarded their position, is granted some authority, which I think ultimately comes from God, according to Romans 13.

And they are acting in God's place in that they're trying to reflect justice and they're trying to bring about justice. God does that perfectly. God's the perfect judge.

He didn't become judgmental. He cares about justice because justice is good. And I don't understand how people lose sight of the fact that justice is a good thing.

And I've said this over and over on this podcast, but all you have to do is read through the Psalms and you'll see that so much of the worship of God comes out of their witnessing him judge because the judgment of evil is a good thing. And it's something we all long for. And I guarantee even Christmas longs for that when she sees something unjust.

The irony is the question is a veiled judgment against God himself. You know, who is he anyway? He shouldn't be doing that. That's a judgment.

You know, where does he get the right to do that? I'm not looking at the exact wording of the question, but that's inherent, I think, in the question. And these are, this happens all the time. When people raise questions like this, they end up doing the very thing that they seem to be implying ought not be done.

So this is a judgment against God because God didn't earn the right to judge. Well, how did, and again, I'm not sure of Christmas. This is her question or she's parroting something that's been offered to her.

Where did the person who asked the question get the right to judge God? Where is their authority to judge God? Now they may be able to make sense of that, but I'm just, there seems to be little sensitivity to judgment when the challenger is laying the judgment out towards God or others regarding judging. Oh, judging bad, bad, bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're judging. Well, what was that? You just judged all of us bad by what authority did you do that kind of thing, but it doesn't occur to them.

I think the root of this problem is an inability to see the beauty of justice when it affects you. Because honestly, I will hear the two opposite challenges. Two opposite challenges from atheists.

And the first one is why does God let all this evil go on? He's a bad God. He must be a bad God because he's letting all this evil go on. And then they turn around and say, why does God judge evil? Why is he so judgmental? And the reason why is because we're kind of torn because we love justice as human beings made an image of God.

But we don't like it to hit us. That's right. And that's where the problem comes because you think, you realize, I can't stand up under perfect justice.

I don't want to God who sees everything. That seems, and I'll get complaints about that. God's like a dictator.

Well, how is it good that God we even had a question about this on the show? How is it good that God sees everything? That's a terrible thing. Well, no, it's only terrible because it's you. That he sees doing naughty.

And you actually love justice. You just don't want it to be directed towards you. But of course, the answer is God's grace.

Jesus death on the cross that means we don't have to be in fear of God. We can know God. We can be around him despite our sin because God is perfectly just and he paid perfectly for our sins.

He didn't deny justice. He didn't lower his justice. He fulfilled it so that we can be around this perfectly, holy, righteous God and not be destroyed.

He is just and the just a fire of the one of his faith in Jesus. By the way, the contrast you showed, you mentioned just a few moments ago, the way atheists raised these contrary objections, they seemed to oppose each other. Those who read tactics might recognize this sibling rivalry suicide.

You can't hold both together. You have these siblings in rivalry. They're fighting each other.

So either, you know, either one is true and the other is false or the opposite, but you can't hold them both together. But that does happen frequently. So this next question from Candice follows along the heels of that one.

We don't think the great flood really happened, do we? No definition of a God includes emotion, let alone getting so angry he drowns every dog on earth. Must be a animal lover, Candice. Well I think there is a point, a theologically, that classically God is considered impassable and impassable or impassionate.

That means he doesn't go through phases of emotion. So we see in James chapter one, it says in whom the talking of God, in whom there is no variation or shifting of shadow. Now this is a little bit of a controversial view, but classically the idea is that God doesn't have these episodes of emotion.

But I like the way, what's his name, from Park City Church, the reform guy? Is that Alistair Begg? Alistair Begg put it and he says that God has settled dispositions regarding things. And the point of he has dispositions, but they're settled. They're not, they're not in flux, they are always there.

So God always has anger towards sin. That's his nature, and his nature is just, which then as a fixed disposition dictates certain consequences for people's immorality, all right. And so, by the way, all dogs die, animals, animals, this is their, this is their lot in life.

They are always trying to stay alive and sooner or later they die and generally something kills them or they maybe die naturally. I always wondered, where do all the birds go? They're all over the place, but you never see dead birds anywhere. Part of the reason is probably because once they die, they get recycled within 24 hours of God's system.

We have a place next door, kind of a vacant lot, we call it the boneyard. So when our cats catch a creature, we just toss in the boneyard, we know it's going to be gone in a day. We don't put it in the trash and it stinks for a week.

Anyway, I don't understand this, the concern for dogs or anything like that. This is punishment of human beings. God's starting all over, but it isn't necessarily this would be one way to understand it, this shift in emotion, but those who think that God is impassable will say many things like Alisherbake said that he has a settled disposition regarding these things.

And so there's not any shifting shadow in God. He's just in a certain sense, acting out a certain settled disposition that's always there, the circumstances outside of changed. And so he responds based on this settled disposition to the changing side.

He's not like a human being who is controlled by emotions, who gets out of control and therefore that the anger is causing him to do things that are irrational or whatever. There are statements in scripture that sound like that. My suggestion is that these are anthropomorphisms.

These are kind of literary ways of expressing God's anger. But when you get to the heart of it, what Amy saying is true. So here's what I would say to anyone asking this question.

I think what I would do is say, imagine. Imagine, imagine someone said to you, Oh, I cannot believe the allies were so angry that they took Hitler out, that they, that they destroyed his regime. I can't believe anyone would be that angry.

And then you ask them, Oh, I'm sorry. Are you saying you're not angry at Hitler? Oh, no, I'm not angry at Hitler. Okay, now my question is, is someone who's not angry at Hitler a good person? Oh, good.

That's the question I would ask. The answer is obviously no, being good entails being angry at evil. That's part of being good.

And so if God is perfectly good and he's the perfect judge as we just talked about, then he would be angry and he would be very angry at a lot of evil. And he would even destroy the culture and would have a right to do so, especially since he's the creator and he's not a human judge. If we say it's right for the allies to destroy a culture, a regime and remove them because they're evil, then how much more is that true of God who knows everything and knows the result of everything and is the rightful judge of everybody.

So I'm going to make an adaptation of your excellent point regarding Hitler. In order to unseat Hitler and win that war, there needed to be an invasion, normally invasion June 6, 1944. Can you imagine somebody saying, I cannot believe the allies did that invasion? Do you know how many dogs were killed when they bombed the Normandy coast and all those tanks and people? So there you go.

There's a parallel to the question. I mean, that's even more ludicrous. It is when you put it in that context.

And the truth is, all of creation was subjected to futility and that is on us. But there is a difference between the value and significance of human beings and the value and significance of animals. And it's terrible that because of us, they have suffered.

But because we are the head of the creation here, they have suffered. But when God is dealing with us, we are the more significant. Just as your illustration shows perfectly, we would think someone was insane who said, what about the dogs who will die? There's something more significant going on here.

And so, yeah, I think that's really helpful. And the horses too. I mean, even in the First World War and the Second World War, they were still using horses, especially the Germans, and lots of horses died.

You know, it's just anyway. But your point is exactly the point we ought to be thinking about, and that is the relative importance of animals to human beings. And the goal is to deal with the human problem, evil.

In both cases, whether it's the fall and the flood, or whether it's the Normandy invasion and Hitler, it is trying to suppress and deal with the problem of evil that is rampant, that needs to be checked and corrected. All right, Greg, thank you, Karisma, and Candace for your questions. Evil questions are always interesting.

And I think a lot of people are thinking about them. I can say that when I go to our youth conferences, about 75% of the questions I get have to do with the problem of evil, and whether or not God is good and things that happen in the Bible. And they're theological questions about evil.

So these are great questions. And that brings me to the point that we would love to hear your question. If you have a question that you've been thinking about sending us, we would love to hear it.

We're actually, we often get ahead and do episodes ahead of time. And so we go through a lot of questions at once, so we're always looking for good questions. And we'd love to hear from you.

All right, thank you for listening to the hashtag SDR-esque podcast. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coco for Stand to Reason.