God alone is good

The Old Testament describes God as holy and Jesus says that our heavenly Father (God) is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Today, we heard Jesus mention yet another attribute of God.
"And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:18).
As usual, Jesus' saying was a bit enigmatic. Given that God alone is good,  does Jesus admit/claim that he is God? For Christians, the answer is affirmative. Yes, Jesus is God and he accepted the rich young man's salutation.

How do Christians describe their God? They say that God is omnipotent (all-ruling, almighty), omniscient (all-knowing) and beneficent. Very few people bother to challenge the omniscience of God. If God were not all-knowing, i.e. knowing all that could be known, this God would not be God. Again, very few people bother to challenge the beneficence of God. If God were not good, God would be the Devil. Now, people are more interested in undermining the omnipotence of God, in particular, the combination of omnipotence with beneficence. Let's discuss them one by one.

First of all, Christians believe that God is omnipotent. People would challenge the Christian God to create a rock so heavy that even God is unable to move. The logic is simple. They try to put God in a dilemma. Either God is unable to create such a rock, or God is unable to move this rock He creates. Either way, God is not almighty. The Christians lose. Their God is not worth believing. Period. Actually, they don't have to be so creative. Simply ask God to tell a lie. God is faithful and He cannot lie. (I wonder if anyone is able to tell whether what God says is a lie.)
Well, let me tell these winners, the Christian God is really incredible. Have you ever seen a deity that is willing and able to downgrade Himself into lower levels of existence? Have you ever  heard of a deity that is mortal? Ask the Christians. As if people would never be satisfied with mountain-melting, ocean-splitting or food-raining for forty years, the Christian God stuns the believers by becoming a man and later a piece of wafer. The Christian God even died on a cross. The Bible tells us these stories about God who works in a totally different logic system from us (Isaiah 55:8). Logical dilemma or even trilemma? God does not bother.
According to our primitive logic, a being cannot is and not-is at the same time. However, in the more exciting real life situations, there are many grey shades between black and white, true and false, on and off. (For your information, true and false are digital logic and grey is analog. If 3-5 volts mean ON, 0-2 volts mean OFF, what do 2.4 volts represent? ON or OFF?) Just think about what happen when we tell lies. We tell people that we are telling the truth but actually we are telling lies. Is telling lies not a contradiction? We are able to do it all the time. Yet God never tells lies (Titus 1:2). Luckily, the Bible leaves unwritten a lot of things about God, such as the unmovable rock. This allows us to think up a lot of things which God will not do or is not able to do. Perhaps one day, God will show us how to create a rock which He is unable to move, and yet that does not lead to any contradiction. For the moment, rest assured that God is not able to tell lies!

Now, let me approach the more challenging issue about an omnipotent, omniscient and beneficent God and the existence of evil. Adding the omniscience attribute makes God morally responsible. If God does not know, God is not morally responsible for the sufferings caused by evil. In brief, the existence of both evil and an omnipotent, omniscient and beneficent God is contradictory. This problem of evil is attributed to Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) So, this challenge is not anti-Christian at all. Any religion that believes in an omnipotent, omniscient and beneficent deity has to answer this challenge. Buddhism believes in reincarnation and karma. It has no difficulty answering the challenge. Christianity does not allow for reincarnation to purify our karma. It has a hard time trying to answer the challenge. If God is beneficent and omniscient, He should have prevented evil from happening and people from suffering. Yet, God does not stop evil and sufferings. (On October 4, SCMP reported a Lamma Ferry-Collision survivor's claim that her God had saved her family in that collision in which 39 people died. An indignant reader protested and put forth this Epicurean paradox to counter-claim that this Christian God is cold-blooded.) Either God is not omnipotent or God is not beneficent at all. Either way, believing in God is outdated. Frankly speaking, this is a very thorny question Christians have been trying to answer. So far, every answer is flawed. For example, some Christians argue that God allows evil to exist for the greater good of man. Misfortunes make man mature. For example, in the story of the Forbidden Fruit in Eden, God knew beforehand that man would fall into the temptation of the Serpent. Yet, God respected our freedom of will and allowed Adam to breach His command, thus entered Sin and Death into the Creation. Bad as it is, through this evil, man, the mere creature from dust, is able to partake in the eternal life of God etc. However, try tell a surviving girl that the death of her parents in the ferry-collision is a greater good for her. I cannot do this. In this disaster, I prefer consoling the pitiful girl to offering an armchair theological argument. At the end of the day, we have to admit that our system of logic is flawed and suffering is a mystery.

Dear Jesus, You do not need my defence. Just allow me to do good to the needy. Amen.