Objective and Subjective Goodness

I haven't been blogging for the longest time. My laptop fan is getting cranky and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Been procrastinating about bringing it to the service center so often, but can't bear to since the exams are coming and all my notes are inside.

As I look back during the course of this week, I realize that my actions have been quite... mean. What I mean to say is that instead of the usual cheerful disposition that comes when I try to do things, my perspective of life suddenly took a slightly negative dip, and I find I've been complaining a lot. My QT material, as it always has been, had perfectly timed lessons about the tongue, to remind me of something I learned some time ago: That it is not always negative thoughts that spout off hurtful words, but hurtful words that stir up negative thoughts, from which even more hurtful words precipitate.

But it was on a usual bus ride to school on a Friday afternoon that God suddenly spoke to me again. I was humming the tunes of worship songs, albeit not exactly in a worshipful mood but more like an inclination to see if this Sunday's worship would go smoothly. The other half of my mind was thinking about my own life, and how often things would be better if things went this way instead of that way etc. Suddenly, a thought crept into my head. I can actually worship and complain at the same time! How terrible is that? It's so terrible it's scary.

This led to another thought. How often is it that I forget God's goodness to think that He's allowing life to treat me so "badly"? That thought plagued my mind on and off, until just today, when the usual 5km run around the neighborhood allowed me some time off from the remainder of my readings to ponder over this issue seriously.

Let's admit it. Despite God being so good to us time and time again, and it's really concrete stuff, like our exam results, or healing of sicknesses, or mending of relationships with our friends etc, there are ACTUALLY occasions when we will doubt His goodness. From my experiences, it usually hits us when we're down and out, feeling a little more "low" than usual. Our mind will suddenly rationalized the occasions when God had been really good, to events of coincidence, natural forces, our own abilities and hard work etc.

So now that we agree that such things happen to all people, let us think about why this happens. From what I am able to draw out of this phenomenon, it has its roots in the difference between objective and subjective goodness.

It's not so much a matter of perspective. After all, perspective is in the realm of subjectivity. Objective goodness means experiencing God's goodness, and remembering it as such, preferably through writing or testimony. Subjective goodness is more complex.

Let's use my favorite topic as an example.

For those of you who have been in relationships, you'll see that the character traits of both yourself and your lover can be subjectively interpreted as good and bad, depending on the situation. This is a much-discussed topic in interpretive sociology, but I don't intend to go so deep, nor is such level of analysis warranted. I believe that if most people cannot understand, it's not really valid besides on a theoretical or abstract level.

Let me show you some examples of subjective goodness from my own experiences in the few relationships I've had.

Sensitivity <--> Emotional
Strength <--> Rashness
Humility <--> Low self-esteem
Meekness <--> Weakness
Knowledge <--> Busybody
Intellect <--> Eccentricity
Kindness <--> Gullibility
Confidence <--> Egoism
Faithful <--> Close-minded
Care <--> Manipulation
Encouraging <--> False hope
Predictability <--> Boring
Unpredictability <--> Unstable

The list could go on. Essentially, it answers the difficult question of why "love" can become "hate" in a day. For those of us who have been the "dumpee" or the victim, we often ask ourselves how someone could love us like crazy at one time, and after that hate us like mad at the end. Even worse still, the greater the infatuation, the more explosive the hatred. I've been complimented for all the traits on the left, and likewise accused of almost every trait on the right. But stranger still, I believe most people reading this who had been the "dumper" in the relationship don't really get it themselves, or have not put it in words, so let me theorize it.

The term "subjectivity" means a matter of perspective. The very same movie can make someone cry and another laugh. Likewise, some actions perceived at that moment in time can seem really nice, giving us all the wonderful feelings and emotional "highs" of being in love, but when it's all over and done with, seems like a horribly manipulative act riddled with deeper intentions and deceptions.

How does this link back to the topic? Simple. Most of us who do a basic level of reflection will agree with me that despite all the times God has been so obviously good to us, when all hopes were lost and yet something fantastic happened that turned the entire situation around, and to top it off, the multiplicity of such events in our life, WE CAN STILL EXPERIENCE OCCASIONS WHEN WE THINK THAT GOD ISN'T GOOD. That's a fact. It happens, and so I write because I know some of you reading this might be going through a tough time and you're wondering about this to yourself.

So how do we remedy this situation? We look back at some of the times when God has been good (even those we're not sure about) and take "perspective" out of the picture. We have to realize objectively that these are events in our lives when God has indeed been good, and that there was nothing coincidental about it. Nothing about our own effort, nothing about natural forces whatsoever, it's God, God, God.

But thinking is not good enough. Writing, recording, giving testimonies; these are ways in which thoughts become embedded in our memory and knowledge systems. As I have posited above, bad thoughts don't always lead to hurtful words. Hurtful words lead to bad thoughts too. Likewise, what comes out of our mouth affects the knowledge that we have. And by speaking and writing so, when we think back, look back at how He has been so gracious to us, we will understand it not with the subjective lens of goodness, but with the objective knowledge of His goodness.



For those of you anti-Christians who might be reading this, it is easy to think that I am promoting a psychological practice to firmly embed "good thoughts about God" into the minds of "feeble" Christians who need a "feel good" booster shot into their bloodstream of faith. From the perspective of a world where God doesn't exist, this will be the case, no doubt.

But then again, that's a perspective, rendering it subjective, and committing the entire fallacy that this post is focused on. Because objectively speaking, God does exist. And looking back on our lives, the Chosen Ones will find that their lives are intimately filled left right and center with the hand-prints of this Everliving God.




I am still confident of this: That I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. -David (Psalms 27:13)

For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge. -Peter (2 Pet 1:5)