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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Why would you call God "good" if it's explicitly not the same thing as human good, and you explicitly cannot understand what God's version of it is? When a blind man hugs an elephant's leg, is he right to conclude that an elephant is like a cylinder, except perhaps not the same kind of cylinder that we know?

It is a lot like the blind-men-elephant analogy. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. We can see how that goodness interacts with us. Our own human goodness has its source in His goodness as well. Since our goodness has its source in His goodness, we can say that it really is something like a goodness we recognize. It's not some kind of alien shrimp colors. But it is vastly beyond our morality as well, encompassing it and exceeding it.

The average normie Christian hugs the elephant's leg and thinks it's just like us. Look, it has a torso to hug! And that's wrong, but not necessarily dangerous. The average normie 8th grader thinks that the Earth goes around the sun in a circle and that's wrong but not necessarily dangerous or impactful to how they go about their daily life.

But those who have reasoned more about it or have further experience with the Goodness of God start to see other parts of the elephant. The goodness of God inspires such sentiments as:

One evening, not knowing in what words to tell Our Lord how much I loved him, and how much I wished that He was served and honoured everywhere, I thought sorrowfully that from the depths of hell there does not go up to Him one single act of love. Then, from my inmost heart, I cried out that I would gladly be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy so that He might be eternally loved even there! (Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux.)

or

St. Catherine of Sienna had a vision where God told her, "I am He who is; and you are she who is not."

Or the desire many Catholics have to suffer, their only desired relief being the presence of mind to offer that suffering to God as a sacrifice for the salvation of souls.

The goodness of God starts to look kind of distorted and weird the deeper a soul dwells in it. A human can reach beyond just a leg and we start to see something immense, kinda scary, but still recognizable and connected to the leg. We have every reason to believe it goes on further and further, beyond our comprehension but still Goodness because it's all part of the same animal, connected together.