Audio only:
Joe, Mike and Vanessa tackle the question “Do We Need Go to Be Good People?”
Joe:
Alright. Alright. Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Meyer and I’m having a cup of Joe with Vanessa Parrish. That one Catholic girl as well as my producer metal. Mike, good morning to both of you.
Mike:
Good morning. Morning, Joe.
Joe:
Alright, well why don’t we do this. Mike, do you want to explain to everybody how this works? I know this is still a new format for people, and then we will talk about coffee and then kick off the actual theology.
Mike:
Absolutely. Good morning everyone. Hope you’re enjoying your coffee. Along with us, these streams are focused around a specific kind of apologetic question or topic, and we would love to have your guys’ engagement in the chat and contribute to this conversation. Want to make sure we are focusing on questions that pertain to the topic. So even if people super chat in, if it’s not specifically to the topic, we’ll throw it on screen, but we’re not necessarily going to answer the question. And thank you in advance to everyone who’s watching and everyone who does super chat.
Joe:
Alright, wonderful. And as I said, we’ll talk coffee, then we’ll talk theology. So one thing that, because it’s Kapa Joe, each time we have some kind of coffee this time I have roastery. I’ve got their super Tuscan blend. This is a preferred favorite. And so let’s talk about morality with God. Vanessa, you want to start us off?
Vanessa:
Of course I do. So a question that I’ve been pondering a lot and I get a lot is, do we need God to be good?
Joe:
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s one that I think in some ways we have to make a lot of distinctions and that always sounds like a dodge for people. Let me just read this comment that this I think captures a certain atheist way of viewing the question and exposes one of the problems with maybe how we’re thinking about it. This is a guy named Jonathan Lloyd. He says, morality depends on choice. We are good because we have made a choice to do good acts. At the core of goodness is empathy. But this is another question entirely. I would not agree that the core of goodness is empathy. But I’ll leave my thoughts to the side. He says, if we choose to do good merely because we fear retribution from a God, then that choice is not entirely freely chosen. It depends on the possible punishment if we choose differently.
Here we choose to avoid punishment, not to choose to do good acts for the sole purpose of doing something good. So if you think you’re a good person because you do good acts due to a God’s threatened punishment or his reward, then can that be considered good? No, only a good act chosen freely can be considered a truly good moral action. An action done to achieve a reward or to avoid a punishment. It’s too far removed to be considered good. So you do not have to be a good human being. You can choose to be one, but only if you do so apart from any God reward or God punishment. So in his view, not only can you be.