Does God make us good? Yes, and here's why.

Introduction and terms

On this Pilgrimage, beginning in the Mind of God then arriving here on Earth through labor and birth, it is Perfection that God seeks, but Progress that He tolerates. With mercy and with grace, He promises to all those who follow Him in earnest that He will give them His own Spirit to be Workers of Righteousness.

To answer this question in any meaningful way requires first establishing which God we are talking about and what we mean by good. For the purposes of my statement, I will be speaking of the Christian God - a single triune deity comprised of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit; omni-benevolent, omni-potent, un-created and who redeemed a fallen man-kind by emptying Himself, taking the form of a servant made in the likeness of men, and become obedient to a cross in Calvary; rising after three days, overcoming death and taking upon Himself the iniquities of all. “Good” in this statement will mirror what God Himself defines as “good” which would be His Own Character and for us, the mark of Goodness being the voluntary submission of our will to Christ for the purposes of acting, thinking, and feeling like Christ. As for the “us” used in the original question, they will be the ones who follow after Christ and the rest of mankind still afforded the opportunity to. I may reference followers of other faiths sparingly as some research fails to distinguish between religions.

With these terms: Yes, God does make us good even before we are perfected after our pilgrimage on Earth ends. By both biblical command - where God establishes the heart-change that allows followers to be good - and extra-biblical evidence like volunteerism, charity, and adoption rates, it is clear that becoming an earnest follower of Christ will make one an objectively better person.

Biblical command

Mankind painted a rather bleak portrait in the Garden of Eden - unfettered communion with God in Paradise cast away for an apple. Ever since, humanity has been stained with that original sin, giving each of us a propensity towards rebellion against our Creator’s design. God shows us this portrait in Romans 3 where he says that none are righteous, none are good, and all have fallen short of the glory of God. But in the same chapter, He also declares his remedy: that we are clean through the redemption Christ provided for all man-kind as a propitiation by His blood, received by faith. And to those who do receive earnestly, God’s judgment passes over them and in His sight our failures are replaced with Christ’s perfection. We are made good by God.

Even before we are judged upon death, He strengthens His followers to carry out His perfect Will interwoven with love and justice and mercy. He promises all his followers the Holy Spirit, who works in us to regenerate and renew the heart of stone that propels us to a lesser good towards sin. From His Spirit working in us, followers can do the things that they could not do on their own: to love like God. There are countless stories of great men of evil, renewed and redeemed, set forth on the path of divine good. The Apostle Paul is a great example of this, going from the Persecutor of the Church, slaughtering Christians across Israel, to one of the greatest evangelists, planting seeds of the Church across the Roman Empire and authoring most of the New Testament. The same miracle that happened on the Road to Damascus happens to every individual who puts their trust in God, has their sins washed from them, receives the Holy Spirit, and makes the Perfect Christ their compass.

Extra-biblical Evidence

In Galatians 5:22, God shares the Fruits of the Spirits, qualities of his followers that evidence the working of the Holy Spirit in them. These being: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Even the staunchest atheists would agree that these fruits are good. Hundreds of researchers have studied, surveyed, and observed God’s effect on human behavior, and the corpus of results gives credence to God’s own Word.

Researchers from the Netherlands found that members of Christian churches dominated voluntary work in both religious and non-religious organizations.[^7] Another study by Clerking and Swiss, found that, religious individuals represent a disproportionately large share of the volunteers for all non-profit organizations regardless of religious affiliation, and were more satisfied in their volunteerism than secular individuals. (Clerkin and Swiss, p. 17)

As for the fruit of self-control, studies agree. When looking at the effects of religion on HIV prevention in Ugunda, researchers concluded that religiosity was directly correlated with lower risks of acquiring the infection. They explained this as quote: “religion acted as primary regulator of human behavior, controlling impulses towards short-term individual gains for the long-term good.”[^2] In anther study, researchers concluded that, “highly religious individuals possess greater self-regulatory ability” and that this was especially the case when those individuals had their self-regulatory resources weakened.[^3]

Psychologists from California, Michigan, and Iowa studied the effect of religiosity on family functioning across generations, one of the few inter-generational studies on the matter. In the first generation, religiosity correlated with positive marital interactions and positive parenting. For the second generation, religiosity correlated with positive romantic relationship interactions and positive parenting towards their children. The researchers concluded that religiosity is “positively associated with the quality of family relationships” and “promotes positive family functioning”.

From Indiana University, researchers reviewed 77 studies to know if religiously-motivated charity is exclusive to in-groups or extends to out-groups and secular organizations. And what did they find?: “religion—measured as group affiliation, values, beliefs, and the importance of faith to the believer, as well as religious service attendance and private prayer—most often positively relates with giving to out-group and secular organizations.” They even found that the more an individual has a traditional concept of the living God, the more their religious attendance correlated with increased levels of fairness and reciprocity, leading to higher increased out-group giving. Similar to the inter-generational study from before, this review discovered that when religious traditions are transferred from one generation to the next, that it serves as a predictor for those receiving generations to give to secular organizations.

Research from Barna found that Christians are twice as likely to adopt than the general public, evangelicals in particular being five times as likely. And, Christians make up more than half of all foster parents in the United States. In the beginning of Christianity’s sprouting out of Jerusalem, we have accounts from E. Diehl’s Ancient Christian Latin Inscriptions and Saint Augustine’s Epistle to Boniface[^5] of early Christians rescuing abandoned babies from the streets and rivers of Rome[^4]. Too many of these children died within days of their rescue, but these early Christians did not cease. Instead, they plucked them out and cared for them before their untimely death, buried in cemeteries those same Christians built. Over 700 years after Christ’s death, Archbishop of Milan would open the first asylum for abandoned infants, giving any child left at the door of the Church medical care, spiritual care, and love.[^6]

Christians, and more broadly the religious, give more to charitable causes, possess greater self-control, volunteer more, and adopt and foster at a higher rate. None of this would surprise someone transformed by God. I think you’d agree that these are right things to do and it would be difficult to find a citizen of any nation who'd object to more charity and more adoption. So then, why is it Christians that do so in larger percentages. Because of God.


Objections

Now, for some objections.

What about all the people that commit objective evils in the name of God, be it Jesus, Allah, Krishna, or what have you?

Certainly not. While this criticism is often lobbed at theism generally, I will only speak for Jesus and the Church. As for the surrounding world religions, I may even agree with my non-theist friends, there are certainly problematic doctrines that have disqualified them from the protection of my defense and their inclusion in my terms.

We don’t blame Mozart when a musician fails to play his music properly. If we accept that people can poorly play a beautiful song, then it is reasonable to accept that people can poorly follow a beautiful faith. Because of free-will, God cannot be held accountable for Adam’s failure or ours. Free-will is what allows for evil in spite of God’s handiwork, and likewise, allows for love in spite of our ruin.

Are you free to be good if you’re under threat by Hell?

Hell is a weak motivator. We have had it since the Garden, failing to stop Eve and failing to stop mankind since. Without belief in God, there is no belief in Hell. It would be like threatening a Russian with American jurisprudence - they are not under that law. Only upon leaving Russia and moving to the United States would American punishments deter certain behavior. Likewise, only when someone declares Christ Lord, would God’s punishments deter their evil behavior and align them upwards towards the Divine Good. Fear of punishments can only come after a free choosing to recognize the authority of the Lawgiver. Fear does not precede faith.

Are you really good if you’re just trying to get into Heaven?

Like Hell, Heaven on the surface is a weak motivator. Unlike a kid doing his chores for a weekly allowance, Heaven has no material reward. All you gain is complete, unfettered communion with the Living God; your reward is Christ. Without the type of genuine faith in God that grants the faithful the Holy Spirit to do good, there is no reason to aim for Heaven.

Lastly, does the Christian God really make us good if there are numerous atheists, hindhus, muslims, buddhists, and more who are “good” by both the standards of the world and arguably by Christian standards?

God supplied our consciousness to aim for Him amidst our propensity for rebellion. and so I expect to see non-believers act “good” in one way or another. But all will fall short if they are abiding by an incomplete standard. Goodness includes communion with the Creator, those without it would not fulfill their capacity for good.

Undergirding this objection is the question C.S. Lewis asked in Mere Christianity: “If Christianity is true why are not all Christians obviously nicer than all non Christians?”[^1] My answer will be his, that we mustn’t look at vague generalities of All Christians and all Non-Christians but rather at the improvement someone makes upon putting themselves under new management given former post. God is much less concerned with how we rank amongst each other, rather He is concerned with how we rank amongst who we were before Him.

Closing

In closing, God gives us His own power to do the good we can’t on our own and cleans us with His own Sacrifice too make us good. And as a result, those running after Him have better family relationships, adopt more, volunteer more, donate more, and possess more self-control. With God, the same mankind whose virtue is stained with vice can do good, be good, and hope for ever-lasting life.

Footnotes

• [^1]: Chapter 10, Pg 110 of [[Clive Staples Lewis - Mere Christianity - 2009-06-02]]
• [^2]: Kagimu M, Guwatudde D, Rwabukwali C, Kaye S, Walakira Y, Ainomugisha D (2012), Religiosity for HIV prevention in Uganda: A case study among Christian youth in Wakiso district. African Health Sciences 12 (1):17-25
• [^3]: Watterson K, Giesler RB, 2012
• [^4]: Infanticide Common in Roman Empire
• [^5]: Title Unavailable | Site Unreachable
• [^6]: How medieval Christians saved abandoned infants
• [^7]: [[And Who Is Your Neighbor? Explaining Denominational Differences in Charitable Giving and Volunteering in the Netherlands]]