Value of Value Judgments

Transcript

add but it it can also be uh considered uh ex accepting or rejecting positive or negative

value like the word related cognate word veilance talks about uh something on the say that we talk about you know valences in chemistry is something positive or negative charge uh you can think of value in that context too it's something it's is it good or is it bad we call things good or bad

the value judgments are of course subjective they aren't uh anything inherent about any situation it's just how we feel about it how we think uh hence the word judgment it's just our our position on something that that happens so give you

a few uh examples here in a minute but another key key idea key thing to keep in mind is any value judgment uh to to call anything good or bad implies there is some

basis a

reason a uh some kind of say you have a protocol in your head an algorithm or something says I label this as good or bad based on something and that basis is going to be a key part of the story is as as we uh continue here

tonight so here's just to uh make this a little more tangible what are some of the things which we typically would say this is good this is great this is wonderful this is positive or you get a promotion at work uh your car starts when it's 15 below am I going to get home or you know am I going to get to the uh they got okay no nothing on the MRI I remember that one when they did one of my head when I was having migraines and the guy said yeah we did an MR your head and we didn't find anything you know it was it was encouraging I think but I they meant it that way

um there's somebody in the meeting you know that okay this is good this guy's you know this is great uh daughters engage somebody really good or your neighbor with the uh who starts his diesel pickup truck at 5:00 every morning and lets it warm up for 20 minutes Steve is laughing like he's got that

neighbor Harper SE yeah and he gets transferred to Trenton so w these are all things which are likely to be great and on the other side the corn thing coin things that are likely to be bad is uh you don't get the promotion but some incompetent coworker gets promoted ahead of you

the car doesn't start triaa says they'll be there in half an hour but it's an hour and a half and you missed your appointment it's been booked for six months stuff like that so this is more than bad this is where words come up that we might not use elsewhere you get a positive on show something you got to deal with uh some some

issue your flight gets cancelled but not for your baggage that that ends up in Omaha anyway you don't go any place here you're still in the airport but uh someplace you find out a week later that your stuff is actually in Omaha and it's not your jerk neighbor that get sent to Trenton it's you get transferred to Trenton

so this is bad news so the these are the type of thing I'm uh talking about and two things to note about these uh one

is circumstances that happen to us not so much I'm talking today about these uh choices of life you know we get a lot of exhortation and needful exhortation about choosing the hard way not getting sucked up into materialism the easy life not really talking about that type of good and bad of things you know our way of life it's just stuff that happens to us that we tend to label good or bad the two overlap it a little bit but I'm really talking about so stuff that happens to us the other important Point remember is anything we call it good and bad is I'm only concerned with the value judgment part we're not saying that something might be inconvenient something might be painful something might be costly something might be a nuisance something might be embarrassing there's all kinds of other things it's the label we put on those this you get the value judgment there's a big story about value judgments here about why we even have them in in our life uh you know where they come from why do we make them what's the basis that's that's what we're get uh getting at

here so let's look at a little Biblical history of value judgments because there it's not just to say psychological emotional thing there there's a a this is primarily a theological issue it's not primarily there's a big psychological component to it but this is a the logical issue so what is the first value judgment give you hints in Genesis 1 where do you think it comes

from very first value judgment is where

it's only four verses into Genesis where God calls the light

good that is a value judgment and I'll explain why in a moment uh it doesn't stop there as you know there's a six other

places uh six places where God saw some aspect of creation that which was good and then finally at the end of everything the whole uh United the working together the the harmony the the environmental synthesis of everything he says this is very good it's just good stuff those are value

judgments uh so the question is or what the questions we start asking about this is

uh some questions you should be asking are remember one how do these statements fit in the creation account what do they do do they Advance the work in other words is anything created or separated or moved as all other God's activities are When God says he saw something and it was good

well it doesn't the important point is those statements could be eliminated entirely from Genesis and you'd still have exactly the same creation account there could be maybe just one at the end where God says God made everything this is very good but it's repeated insisted that what God made was good as if it could be otherwise but the the point I want us to think about is those cat atory of what type of statement that is amidst all these other statements about God said this let this happen this was created God made this God put this here all activities but these statements do no work they do not Advance the work and they so they don't

add

uh uh progress to the work but what do they add they're they for a reason it adds something and uh again I don't know if I'm going to answer this fully right now but it's it's it's important to think about these statements is as seeing these uh value judgments that God makes are there not to deal with what happened but to add an overlay to what happened called a

valuation a not an eval A and A

valuation there God is putting a value a positive value in this case because God says it was uh

good and the same question uh I posed a few minutes ago anytime you think about

a value judgment you have to ask the the question what is the basis of for God declaring that that was good uh this might seem pretty obvious it's good because God just made it and it came out obviously it wasn't going to be uh

bad was anything that God created not good does the word evil show up or bad or flawed no nothing like that shows up but uh was there anything not good so again you ask the question if everything is good what's what's the point of saying all this and we'll find out there's a couple points one is that God makes value judgments value judgments are the territory of

God we're going to visit that

uh a little later many times this is the say strictly the territory of God and these statements like I said these are called value

judgments so that's all good literally it's all good uh where is the first place we find something that is not good or evil well it's in the the knowledge the tree of Good and Evil that's the first time we we come across this so now we learn that everything that God made was good but there's an opposite there's something else that is there we don't know what but good and evil shows up it's in the context of what God has already said another kind of really important uh theological Point here here is the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil shows up after God has already said this is good this is good this is good this is good this good that's that's one of the

context so far everything has been good and in Toto together it was very good there was one thing however that was labeled not good it's not evil but it was labeled not good and you probably remember that that was uh the man that God made was without a mate among all the pairs of animals male and female created them but there was not a female for Adam and God said it's not good the man should be alone so he remedied that that situation was not

good it was not wait let me get this let my tongue tongue lined up here right it was not evil but it was not good he used the word not good rather than

evil okay so the first mention of actually the word Hebrew word evil or English is in when the uh tree of knowledge of Good and Evil is introduced that's the first place first mention of

that it

comes in it's it's introduced and it's introduced with I would say U A Wrinkle uh

everything God made was

good including this it's the knowledge of Good and Evil there's something that's that's the opposite of good no one knows what it is uh if you imagine you're a first time reader you're you're W it's really hard to read Genesis this way but uh stuff we're so familiar with but you really want to say wait a minute everything is good but now there's something called Good and Evil Evil's never been mentioned we have no idea what means except it's something that's

both the opposite of good and it's something that's a different kind of evil than Adam being alone because that was just not good that was not evil so there something else here and then God says no you can't you can't go

there it's not not not not not for you it's it's it's there but it's forbidden it's it's out out of your uh what they say stay in your lane you don't belong here this is

forbidden so the

uh next question I think that comes up is why what's the purpose of any prohibition God prohibits this there's got to be a reason uh you take any any prohibition here's a a common one you'll see no jumping no diving no passing no uh

speeding no you know don't walk on the grass don't we live out here when we go hiking in the mountains and you will especially when you get up to very high elevations in the tundra zone over 10 12,000 feet

and extremely fragile and slow growing ecosystem up there you don't step on anything out there you stay on the trail you stay in your lane and there science do not you know you step on a plant might be 50 years until that thing grows back and it's only this High uh well just to protect it so safety of the plant safety of you this this uh sign here is obviously for your safety uh there could be prohibitions for Courtesy that is this is for somebody else this this section of the lake is reserved for boers let's say uh security uh I don't know how that would be an issue in Genesis but that could be a a reason to establish some kind of order you know line up here don't go here we have to keep everybody in the right spot line starts here not here uh

oops verifying

obedience that's clearly one that comes to mind when we uh talk about the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil is you know it's a often said it's a test of their obedience is either obey God or trust God and that's that certainly is uh a part of it I'm going to go a different direction but that's certainly not to be

uh

ignored so you got that was backwards for words okay so what was God's purpose it wasn't for their safety the tree it wasn't poisonous uh it wasn't courtesy nobody else is around there that they have to share it with you know it's like

so so uh there's there's some purpose there we're going to look into

that was the Prohibition connected was it something inherent about the tree

itself or was there something inherent in is about the

command like don't eat this tree because this tree has some

whatever it tastes bad I know it's the one of the it was the best tree that was out there so that's another question to look

at yeah did God for was there something special or and obviously this is where I'm I'm going the or did it become a symbolic tree because it was off limits and I you say the tree of knowledge of gevil was was just another really nice tree in the garden there was nothing absolutely nothing special about its fruit except it was was enticing it smelled good that you saw it was good it was a really nice looking tree we don't have any information about the aroma the smell of just standing there with oh boy that's that's tasty that's likely she saw was good for food but the uh you can get carried away with that but what's

Genesis is if we follow this them of God making a restriction God saying everything is good this tree is good but it's got something about it that I'm labeling it good now and evil I'm introducing this idea and because it's forbidden like you can't go there there's a

reason why I'm doing that and because I have set that reason now that makes this tree something special there's nothing that say inherent about the tree itself but it's fact that it's restricted becomes it's uh let's say it's it's it's a calling card

here so what a few more question to ask before we get to the I think the punchline here how are we doing on time it's a time yes okay we're we're moving fast

okay uh have to back up a little bit I've talked about Good and Evil uh these words which together occur nearly a thousand times in the Hebrew text just just a rough approximation counting inches in the concordance uh I wasn't going to count each one but uh it's about five 100 a little more over 500 to where the word evil occurs and maybe 400 plus uh for uh the word

good multiple meanings multiple meanings it could mean something physically bad happening there something essentally pleasurable that's good uh something material but is it moral yes it's used for moral it's used for Spiritual these words

are uh say the word evil is abundant

uh just to get a flavor of it if if you look at Jeremiah 48 I think that word shows up about at least 15 times and about half of them are about the evil of the the Israelites that Jeremiah says you did evil God will bring evil on you of course the evil is the Captivity and the destruction of their country so it's used in these these two ways they're connected but uh it can be for discomfort a lot of you just you know scan down uh uh the entries in in in in in accordance and you can see like many Hebrew words it's got a wide range of sem wide so what we call wide semantic

range uh good can be used I will do good for you it's God's blessing could be abundance it could be about right Behavior doing right good thinking so there's a little bit of ambiguity here in your left uh good and evil well what was good so everything was good it was good because God made it it was good because it was moving forward toward God purpose it was good because it was pleasant all the things uh so there's a lot of ideas floating around here I'd say I'm Loose Ends let's say there's a lot of loose ends so far and then there's this tree that has something about evil but you can't eat it why not it's not stated

so uh a logical next question if if there is a Prohibition which sense of those would it be a appropriate for Adam and Eve to not know

about if God says that you can't know this kind there's this tree of knowledge but you can't know about it which sense and that's not so easy to uh well they certainly would have known what pain was if they you know walking through the forest they whack into a log or something but uh probably something more in the moral sense but I I think the answer comes uh uh as we move ahead but it's again another one of these questions you have to ask uh what kind of good and evil is God talking about

here the

ambiguity of the word the concept is going to be another of these key issues as the narrative unfolds because as it turns out God kind of meant one thing but when they ate it turned out to be something else

so this prohibition or say this limitation I'm going to change the word prohibition now to

limitation and that's going to be a key word

here there's a context God had already provided abundantly for them he given them so many Trees Deep from those uh not a matter of them being hungry there's plenty there

but what's going on

here and this is the there two two key words that I hope you remember from tonight one is this well limited Limitless this is one

idea that this becomes a symbol the tree the prohibition is a symbol a tangible symbol for Adam and Eve to

understand that God is Limitless

they are limited they were created they had a beginning they don't have all Divine knowledge and so forth they are limited and this is the basis for their relationship to God so we are the created you are the Creator it's the it's the basis for our relationship it's the basis for it starts here there's one God and I'm not it kind of

idea and if you put it in the context or the uh describe that that with the word limitation as being another way of saying prohibition the tree is limited it's off limits because you are limited people and to demonstrate this to you I going to take one arbitrary tree and say just don't go there that's for you to understand that I have no limits I the I Am The Creator you are limited and if you can understand that then we have a basis to begin our Rel

relationship so the tree of knowledge what it represents is the State of Affairs the relationship between Adam and Eve as limited created beings and God the unlimited Creator

being David I think I remember in your book and you mentioned it briefly in your comments um but you had said that Adam and Eve had to learn an important lesson

one was that there was a God and two was that they weren't God right yeah right and that just really struck that that's that stuck with me for a long time um and is that that's sort of what you're talking about here with the Limitless and The Limited exactly yeah yeah this this the idea of say just take the word the prohibition do not eat

and frame that as God limited Adam and Eve to demonstrate to them that they are limited creatures I make the limits you follow the limits that's the beginning of our relationship of everything else that would happen of our trust in God and faith that everything else need for God starts with God is God and by definition God is limited L God's a Creator and we are not that and we have

this position before

God so the the good and evil

now uh we can interpret it say what what was evil eating it was the

evil why why is evil not been mentioned in Genesis 4 because this uh you could say this situation hasn't risen but if they even if they eat it that's evil if they abstain that's good this is the sense of Good and Evil evil when it talks about the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil so as we

know uh the respect for this limitation was uh not

maintained and God's estimation of this situation was well the humans now know good and evil they become like one of us but really did Adam and Eve become like God they became some something changed something happened their eyes were open so forth but were they

Eternal

no were they

omnipotent no were they omniscient like God were they

omnipresent no they

have they're not God okay

so are they they have the characteristics of God ver no you're human beings but you have transgressed this uh symbol of relationship and

obtained the we just say knowledge of Good and Evil but in a human context you you're human so there's a real problem here because as we saw earlier in Genesis God said this was good God's value judgments knowing good this is God's business not your

business so we have this uh

predicament a dilemma a uh uh you might say the the the the point of if this was a uh not of was you know just in terms of literature or you

know what I call that the uh climax of you got a problem here to resolve you have this is the story has come to they have the awareness of Good and Evil but they're not God

if this is God's so how's this going to sort out how's what's how is this conflict going to be

resolved well there's a legacy here and I'm not going to say go into Adam and Eve's personal thing I talk about humans in

general

uh what I call the legacy of being like God in the sense of knowing good and evil but we actually not God so our human nature you you if you're a human we

have I'll call it the biased inclination tendency habit we do make value judgments as I had in one of those opening slides this was good this was great this was awful this is terrible this is wonderful we do make value judgments which is an attribute of God but unlike God we don't know what's good or bad so so

we value things as good or evil good bad favorable

by what we have available to us say physical Financial social emotional measures you know this is inconvenient this is cating this is painful this is embarrassing this is uh you know just UPS messes up my life so we

take the facts of what happened and put a value judgment remember the value judgment is something added it doesn't change uh what happened it's just this label that gets put on it or emotional

label the fact

is a lot of what we call evil is likely to be good in God's view and we'll now we're getting to that familiar territory that I said in in the blurb for today's class we would get to when we're done

so let's uh summarize all this and then move into the kind of the Practical ideas but before that questions that lose anybody so

far everybody any specific just on kind of following this we'll have time for questions afterwards because I think we're moving in a good Pace here so so David how was it that yeah help me draw the connection between Adam and and Eve eating of this tree and them

knowing um Good and

Evil like yeah that's coming up okay all right I think it's in this slide yeah yeah okay all

right

okay if if if it's not here I'll I'll make sure I go over that again because I have a highlighted

point on that I think okay so Adam and Eve say they When God says to become one of us it they they attempted to they didn't really but they attempted to become Limitless creatures on their own by saying no we can eat of this tree it's okay they make their own limits no that ruptures their relationship to Creator God he's only the unlimited Creator is Limitless they are limited so that's that's kind of the first step of try to uh usurp God's prerogative of or the God's Not prerogative but God's

uh uh

picture

his tangible demonstration of limitlessness was you here's this tree don't eat it that means you're limited I'm not and that was uh

ruptured or yeah the ACT disrupted the relationship between Creator and

created the legacy of this is they knew good and evil but there's still limited creatures that didn't change nothing changed what did change is they became aware that they had done something wrong and they were going to suffer for it and I said you know limitations limit the IDE of limited is a key word here and this is the other one I call it a surrogate understanding of Good and Evil we don't have God's perspective on Good and Evil that's something that only an eternal being

knows but we'd have to judge by our own limits within a mortal frame and that comes to some say pretty uh as I say Mortal parameters like how much did it cost does it hurt

only God knows what's good for us what advances go way back to those statements I said about Genesis 1 what made it good when God said something was good it was good because it was moving towards God's

purpose God knows what moves Our Lives towards his purpose from his eternal unlimited perspective that is uh God's domain and not to be transgressed or entered into by people making a making judgments and two doing it the wrong way uh does that help

Steve does that answer your question yeah I I think it does I mean when when we Define

good we tend to Define it as what's when I say we man Mankind we tend to identify what's good as what's good for me and my family and my tribe even the expense of you and your family and your tribe yeah in the immediate moment yeah and and I think what you're saying is

God defines good not in the immediate moment but in the Eternal moment what's moving us and his creation towards the Fulfillment of his plan

exactly yeah thanks Dad all right

good so because this uh relationship

was corrupted disrupted with you know some word there broken and God still wants to restore it and to teach

us but the the uh upshot of it is

it has to use what we call evil to teach us to be

good and the first instance of this came of course in Genesis 3 where God pronounces you know we call the Judgment of the sentence you know about the sweat and the thorns and the thistles and the pain and all that kind of stuff he said that's to teach

you because you didn't learn you didn't respect this to teach you you're a limited being and I'm not I have to speak to you on your human terms now which is everything that you think is bad like weeds in your garden and pain and sweat and all the things that if we're working out say oh this is horrible this is bad now God says no it's good because that's what that's what I'm using to bring you back to me therefore it's good in the same sense that when I created things I called them good because they're moving towards what I wanted in creation is the physical creation God didn't have to deal with them Mor you know the otions and the Animals everything just did what God did with humans it's different Free Will and all the stuff so God now has to take the extra step I just can't say you do this and I make it and it's good oh you g to go this way so the the

uh the story continues with us uh Genesis 5020 I call it the iconic statement of God working good from Human evil this is uh when Joseph

uh comes to you know with his brothers and they're talking about all the stuff they did to him and and he says you know you meant evil but God meant this for good

uh so let's look at this and ask some of those questions we had before were Joseph's brothers intentions morally

evil I think we'd all agree they they want to kill

him okay we say that was evil in the moral

sense were their actions unkind to the family absolutely this is what Steve just said you know what's good for us it wasn't good for Jacob it wasn't good for anybody

else but okay so that was evil

there was it physically evil with the uh Joseph went into the pit we don't know that I'm guessing it was

just it said there was no water and I don't know how long he's there but it couldn't have been physically fun to to been I don't know thrown in pushed down a ramp there's probably some physical certainly was emotionally horrible for Joseph because for all he knew he was going to die of of exposure and dehydration in there when he was first thr and was terribly and he's screaming and and they're just eating dinner and ignoring him and was you know horribly emotionally traumatic for the father you know for

Jacob so this is evil evil evil evil evil did the brothers suffer emotionally afterwards absolutely we know that they talk about their guilt uh at least two

occasions what they thought was expedient way of getting rid of of of Joseph and and and and covering it up with the uh blood soap the

cloak that weighed on them so that was emotional evil so it was evil everything about this was evil selling them uh selling their brother say it's just evil bad bad bad right down the line but then Joseph says well you meant evil and it really was in many respects but God meant it for good so that means God's valuation is not ours and our

valuation is it's kind of limited now some things we would both agree the the intentions the moral evil that's that's absolutely you know uh certain that anybody would say that but they did it but the physical there's so much about this it's wrong but yet God says it was good so there's uh then you can take every one of these things too and probably apply an even greater sense to to the crucifixion you know everything about it was uh evil that the trial you know the arrest the the pain it was bad bad bad but necessary so God would say this furthers my Plan of Redemption it was

good I could have given this whole class the Marcus aelius of course one of the great stoic philosophers from a stoic philosophy perspect perspective the the background would be totally different but a lot of conclusions are the same uh there's nothing Stokes are very fond of this idea that there's nothing good or bad it's just what happens it's only how we react to things that can be labeled good or bad one statement of this there's no Misfortune that is nothing is evil but to Bear it nobly that is a good fortune

so the basis of good in Genesis 1 was advancing God's purpose in creation and what is God's good for us how does God how is he advancing his work in us with the new creation as I just said it's not as simple as just making trees and whales and things and putting there and and they show up and it's good and they're in place dealing with people it's a little Messier

so God wants in US is developing the fruit of the spirit Godly character many many ways of you know putting this Faith love and so forth

specifically when God works with us uh with adversity and with like what happened to Joseph or and this is the The Familiar territory I say I talked about in that blur we're getting that bright oh we know this we've heard this so many times about the value of Trials and and why James says you know count it all joy when you meet various trials because because why because this is how you learn

patience and empathy for other people gratitude for what you do have dependency on God trust in God humility uh respecting that relationship

of God's

limitlessness priority what's really important these are the only way you can learn Le these things is through that evil part of that tree of knowledge and Good and Evil