Give thanks to the Lord, who is goodness.

Psalm 118:1 (original translation)

Does God exist? This is the fundamental question of religion. People have tried to prove it, and people have tried to disprove it. And all those efforts are meaningless, because the word "God" has no clear definition. So people argue for the existence of God, with no agreement about what God actually means. No wonder the usual result is confusion.

When referring to God, people can mean very different things. Many people think of God as a being, with a will and feelings like humans have, though not necessarily with a human body. So for them the question "Does God exist?" means, "Is there a Supreme Being with these human-like characteristics, but without a body and with unlimited power?"

This understanding of God, however, is not universal. For many people this kind of God is too human, and takes too literally certain biblical references, describing God for example as a "man of war" (Exodus 15:3, KJV), a "jealous God" (Exodus 20:5), or repenting his actions (Genesis 6:7, KJV). A person like us, even without a body, does seem somehow limited, as long as such a person experiences human emotions and regrets. Yet for many such a God is comforting, a God with whom one can have a personal relationship.

My intention is not to tell people how they must think of God, but to ask that we consider more carefully what we mean when talking about God, and to define the question of God's existence in a way that might speak to everyone. When we ask "Does God exist," it seems we are really asking: Are we alone? Or is there a reality beyond the sensible world that is essentially good, that gives meaning to our lives, and that might even bring us redemption?

The existence of God is not a proposition that can be proven true or false. In fact, God cannot even be defined, but only approached through faith. God is too great for anyone to say exactly what God is. But we can consider descriptions of God that aid our understanding. We cannot capture the whole of God in words, but the right description can help us approach spiritual reality.

In our search for this description, let's start with a tale from ancient philosophy. In a famous dialogue by Plato a young man, Euthyphro, for whom the dialogue is named, encounters the philosopher Socrates at the Athens courthouse. Socrates is waiting for his hearing on a charge of impiety - corrupting the youth by undermining their faith in the accepted religion - a charge that eventually led to his execution. He learns to his astonishment that Euthyphro has come to court to prosecute his father on a charge of murder. A field laborer died on the family farm, and Euthyphro claims it was due to his father's negligence.

Socrates, understandably concerned about matters of piety because of his own predicament, wonders whether taking such action against one's own father is an impious act. To have undertaken something so serious, surely Euthyphro must know what is pious and what is not. Would Euthyphro then be willing to teach Socrates about piety?

Euthyphro takes the bait. Sure of himself, he tells Socrates that piety means that which the gods love. Socrates replies that this cannot possibly be true, because the gods disagree and fight among themselves, and what one god loves another may hate. This would make the same act both pious and impious, a clear contradiction.

Euthyphro admits his definition must be wrong, so with Socrates' guidance he changes it to say that piety means that which all the gods love. Socrates responds by turning the conversation around and asking the critical question: Is an act pious because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is pious?

Euthyphro is forced to admit that a pious act is loved because in itself it is pious. It is not pious because it is loved. In fact, it would still be pious even if it were not loved.

Socrates now takes the discussion in a new direction. He notes that a pious act is a just act, and so piety must be a part of justice. He wants to know what distinguishes piety from the rest of justice. Euthyphro responds that piety is distinct in that it means doing service to the gods. It is what the gods love. Socrates catches him: this is the very definition of piety with which we began, and which we rejected! So poor Euthyphro and Socrates find themselves back where they started, wondering what piety is really all about.

Let us focus on the key idea in this dialogue: that piety has intrinsic value, which is independent even of what the gods will. Now let's translate it into our own context. Socrates observes that piety is a part of something greater, which is justice. We can go even further, to say that justice is a part of something greater, which is goodness.

So instead of talking about piety and the gods, let's talk about goodness and God. Does goodness have intrinsic value, independent even of what God wills?

This question seems strange. It is generally understood that the God of Judaism and Christianity is good, and cannot will anything but good. But is the good that God wills good because God wills it - or does God will it because it is good?

The question is not as trivial as it may sound. For centuries people have believed, and many still believe, that whatever God wills must be good simply because God wills it. Our limited notions of what is or isn't good simply do not apply. There is some truth to this - we cannot always reliably tell what is good, and often what seems good to us may turn out bad later, and vice versa. But this truth is not absolute, as the Bible itself makes abundantly clear.

Just as we cannot always reliably tell what is good, so we also cannot reliably know what God's will is. We often identify God's will with what we have been taught as children. We can feel certain about God's will, and closed to any questioning. This was the attitude of the friends of Job. They knew the answer to Job's questions: it is God's will that Job suffer as punishment for his sins. Job's limited notions of what is or isn't good simply do not apply. This is the response of traditional religion - and in the end, God condemns it.

Job's understanding is limited, but his quest was just and good - that is God's final response. We have not only the right but the duty to search and inquire and exercise our human sense of goodness - as long as we remain cognizant of our limitations.

There is a standard of goodness over and above any human understanding of God's will. This standard cannot be known with certainty - and that should keep us humble - but it does exist. Religion has often fallen into the demonic because of our failure to investigate and apply this standard to the best of our limited ability. If we have been taught that the cruelest belief imaginable is God's will, then that is sufficient: it is God's will, it must be right, and human notions of goodness do not apply. And so many fundamentalist Christians and Muslims are convinced that people who do not believe as they do are forever condemned to suffer at God's hands - and this must be right, because it is God's will. But how can a good God endlessly torture people who have lived good lives and practiced kindness to others, just because their beliefs are different? It is a mystery, we are told, and it is not questioned because it is God's will.

Because God's supposed punishment of the righteous nonbeliever is eternal, there is no conceivable good that could come from it. In this kind of situation we cannot afford to ignore our human sense of goodness. What we learn from Plato is that if God's will clashes fundamentally with goodness, then it is the former that must be questioned. If there is no possible way to find goodness in what we think is God's will, then either God's will is not good, or it is not really God's will. This means there must be a standard of value that is above our understanding of God's will - and that standard is goodness itself.

Of course, a good God can will only what is good. But that is not what makes it good. And we human beings are not completely helpless. We cannot always have certainty about knowing the good, but we do possess a limited sense of goodness that guides us if we choose to attend to it.

This finite sense of goodness has been implanted in us by something beyond ourselves and greater than ourselves. We cannot totally encompass what this is, but our sense of goodness is witness to its existence. Whatever it is, we can call it God. We cannot define God or capture God's essence completely in words, images, or ideas. But we can offer a description of God that may provide a hint of an understanding. And since, as we have seen, goodness is good even prior to what God wills, perhaps goodness itself is where we should be looking for God. And so we can refer to God as Absolute Goodness.

While goodness cannot be completely defined, it can be extensively described. It is not an empty abstraction, nor is its content arbitrary. We will have a lot to say about the specific attributes of goodness in succeeding chapters. But we can begin with this fundamental statement about goodness:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

Something inside us must resonate - justice and kindness are good, we know they are good, God has told us they are good, and even if God had not told us, they would still be good. Goodness is not arbitrary.

Goodness also inspires love. We are commanded to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5). Loving God means more than loving an unseen person. God is Absolute Goodness. Those who love goodness for its own sake, goodness itself and not just what is good for them, love God. The pursuit of goodness can be a passionate undertaking, infusing one's whole life with meaning. Sifting true goodness from personal desire is a formidable challenge that perhaps no one can accomplish perfectly - but striving to do so is what it means to search for God.

There is also power in goodness - this is the Bible's message. As our hearts fill with goodness going beyond self-interest, we more closely conform to God's image, and God responds as though recognizing God's own image within us. And so even in the most extreme circumstances we may still be supported by God's presence - we have many testimonies to this from survivors of the world's worst tragedies. God is not merely a remote, sympathetic but powerless observer, even though portraying God that way has become popular in some contemporary expressions of religion. God plays an active role in our lives, guiding us and influencing the course our lives take. This is what is meant, even in the Bible, by divine power. It cannot be proven. But we can try to discover it and test it and live it.

That God's power cannot be proven makes it a matter of faith. Faith is more than simply belief. Faith is the growing awareness of God's power in our lives. We never get a complete answer - some things must remain hidden (Deuteronomy 29:29, Hebrews 11:1) - but we get little clues and inklings of this power, which help us gradually learn to trust it.

The path of faith is indirect, and full of obstacles. There is so much in our experience to make us think that indeed we are alone, and that there is no power beyond human power and the mindless power of nature. Jewish and Christian tradition unite to tell us there is more to the story. As we find the place where these two traditions meet, the mystery of faith begins to open to us.