Text Treatise: Epicurus and the Problem of Error

The Problem of Evil is often easily explained by reference to the ancient Greek philosopher (mentioned by way of identification in the Bible, in Acts, where there were Epicureans and Stoics who wanted to debate with Paul) Epicurus, whose pithy presentation is presented below:

 

The problem with the Problem as stated is that it does not take into account time. Perhaps God does want to destroy evil, and will, but for the time being has a sound rationale for allowing it to persist. This is, in fact, justified by the Bible:

"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." 2 Peter 3:9

There is also the question of evil being a necessary side effect of the free moral agency of mankind -- Love is given freely by an act of will, so making perfectly functioning automatons which lack any aspect of generosity, grace, compassion, or desire is inferior to a creation that includes beings which have the capacity to love others -- and with it the requisite capacity to choose not to.

But moving on from that, here is "The Problem of Error." It is something worth considering for anyone who claims to be Christian but does not regard the Bible as the inerrant, word for word Word of God.

Did God author the Bible, or men?

If God is not the author, then there is no guarantee of its truth.

Moreover, can God lie?

If there are untruths in the Bible, either God lied, or God is not the author. In the first case, such a being is not to be worshiped or obeyed. In the second case, who knows whether the Bible accurately depicts God or His moral Law truthfully? There is no way of knowing, so there is no reason to give it any greater weight than any other human document.

In conclusion, either God is the author of all Scripture, or it has no authority over the activities of men. And if it has no authority, why heed it?

Either the Bible is inerrant, or you have ZERO justification for the authenticity and veracity of the Christian faith. Which is akin to saying that a Christian has no reason to believe Christianity if they don't also believe the Bible. They are like all the false religious adherents in that their "feet are firmly planted in mid-air." They may be saved, but they're still being foolish.

And in many cases, they're not saved. If you believe God exists, how hard is it to believe that God can make sure that His will is known with 100% accuracy and reliability? It really isn't. So non-belief in Biblical inerrancy, while it doesn't force the conclusion that a person is a false convert (i.e. they claim to be a Christian but they aren't saved), but it is certainly strong and worrisome evidence in favor of that conclusion.

'Which is why it's so important for people to think through this issue and get with the program.

~ Rak Chazak

"Pre-Evident Grace" -- a.k.a. The Real Meaning of Foreknowledge

This was a post I made in the comments on one of Elizabeth Prata's recent posts about Calvinism. I had remarked that the Bible itself was the strongest argument for the doctrines of grace, because after you hear all the preachers make their case, you are left with the undeniable fact that the Bible says God elects people for salvation not based on what they do. In fact, the Bible says faith is a gift, so how can faith be something you give to God to make Him save you? It can't.

I ended my first post by saying that those who don't accept Calvinism, ultimately, then, are not treating the Bible as if it is inerrant or authoritative. Someone replied that non-calvinists can believe the Bible's inerrant. I agree, it's possible, but here is what I had to say:


If you believe the Bible is inerrant in theory, then show that you believe it in practice.

When the Bible says this: "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. " (Romans 8:29-30),

then acknowledge that God decides where someone will spend eternity BEFORE the call (contemporaneous with regeneration and initiation of conversion), and before they become a believer who has faith in God (which is justification). The eternal destiny is set before belief begins. How then can anyone say that God decides to save people based on what they will believe? You can say that God knows the future, that is undoubtedly true -- BUT it misses the point that the logical sequence of God's actions from God's perspective are laid out in these verses, and it shows that God follows a sequence.

Foreknowledge is, (and this is yet another exciting proof of the doctrine of Illumination, because I had reasoned to this before) as John MacArthur recently said in a radio broadcast, not a mere knowledge of the future. In fact, the verse specifically does NOT say that it is the *future* that God knows (He does know it, but it's not the context), it is **those He justifies** that He knows.

This is an article from Grace To You confirming my statement about JMac's view.

What then is foreknowledge? God has an intimate relationship with certain people, others He does not. And as a merciful God, He would never enter into close communion with someone and then cast them off afterward. The point of foreknowledge is to show that God doesn't choose people based on their belief in Him -- He chooses people based on what sort of relationship He is going to have with them. Those whom He will be to as a Father, those He will secure eternally for salvation, and ensure that before earthly death, that He will justify them by faith and give them the right to be called children of God.

When I understood this passage, I understood why I naturally comprehended the qualities of God like omniscience, omnipotence, goodness, Biblical infallibility etc, long before my crisis of faith that led to my conversion whereafter I *consciously* apprehended the Gospel and can claim salvation by grace through faith. I was a nominal believer before, but I can see God's hand in my life keeping me from the kinds of behavior patterns (sexuality and drugs being obvious examples) that beset so many others I've heard stories from. I was morally upright, in a limited human sense, and it was by the grace of God, because I was not spiritually regenerate, just well behaved and with a good brain. I believe that God, knowing that I *would* be brought into a right relationship with Him as His child, extended "pre-evident grace" (if you will humor me making up a new word) to me even during the time of my life that I lived without the full knowledge of salvation.

That is foreknowledge. It is not "knowing that I would choose Him." It is knowing that He would choose ME, and ensuring that as a consequence, He would lead me by His Spirit to come to an eventual understanding of the Gospel that I might be saved through the hearing of the word preached.

If someone insists that Romans 8 implies that God saves men based on knowing that they will believe on their own, then they are not honoring the Word and even if they insist that it is infallible, they are not submitting to what it plainly says and are not in practice treating the Word as if it is true, or authoritative.

That is my lengthier treatment of this matter. I hope I neither seemed too harsh or too soft. It's a serious issue but it doesn't make someone a heretic -- it does require your repentance, though.

Thanks for reading.

~ Rak Chazak

"What About the Innocent People Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?"

"What about the innocent man in Africa who's never heard the Gospel?"

If you don't want to watch the video, *spoiler alert*, the answer's after the jump:

Another Candidate for a Poignant Quote by 2080

This one's by Paul Washer, and it goes well with the Ken Ham one I posted in October.

"The church in America is going to suffer so terribly and you laugh now but they will come after us, they will come after our children, they will close the net around us while we are playing soccer mom and soccer dad, when we’re arguing over so many little things and mesmerized by so many trinkets. The net even now is closing around you and your children and your grandchildren and it does not cause you to fear. You will be isolated from society as has already happened, anyone who tries to run for office who actually believes the Bible will be considered a lunatic until finally we are silenced. We will be called things that we’re not and persecuted not for being followers of Christ, but for being radical fundamentalists who do not know the true way of Christ, which of course is love and tolerance. We’ll go down as the greatest bigots and haters of mankind in history." ~ Paul Washer, in speech a year-ish ago at the Master’s College (longer transcript here)

Have you been accused of not being a true Christian? Of not being a good Christian? Of not loving like Christ? Perhaps of having your own arrogant interpretation of Scripture, or of being pride-filled and acting out of concern for your own glory?

Take heart. It's what Jesus told us would happen.

Note, He said 1) we would be persecuted for His sake, AND 2) we would be falsely accused.

So when somebody attacks you for "not representing true followers of Christ," that doesn't mean you're "not being persecuted for His sake." It could just mean that you're being falsely accused. Why would liars tell the truth and admit that they're persecuting you for standing in the cause of righteousness? Think about it.

But search the Scriptures to ensure that you are obedient to the Father.

~ Rak Chazak

Christian Satire, Courtesy of a UK Pastor on the Spiritual Front Lines

I came across this via a post on The End Time. The author is one Andrew Wilson, and it was posted a few days ago under the title "The Case for Idolatry: Why Evangelical Christians Can Worship Idols." I recommend it to you. It rehashes a lot of common arguments that professing christians make in justifying their stance in favor of homosexuality. Note that it is not a sarcastic sneer at homosexuals but a satirical representation of these alleged christians. Their frequent reasoning as seen in far too many editorials etc is reduced to absurdity by substituting the notion of idolatry--made more poignant by the fact that idolatry is at the heart of every claim that "the god I believe in would not condemn [name of favorite sin or family member who is slave to sin]"

I've decided to quote just one section:

With all of these preliminary ideas in place, we can finally turn to Paul, who has sadly been used as a judgmental battering ram by monolaters for centuries. When we do, what immediately strikes us is that in the ultimate “clobber passage”, namely Romans 1, the problem isn’t really idol-worship at all! The problem, as Paul puts it, is not that people worship idols, but that they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (1:23). Paul isn’t talking about people who are idolatrous by nature. He is talking about people who were naturally worshippers of Israel’s God, and exchanged it for the worship of idols. What else could the word “exchange” here possibly mean? ... In other words, when Paul talks about idolatry, he is not talking about the worship of idols as we know it today.

It's genius. It takes the claim that Romans 1 does not condemn homosexuality per se, only that homosexual behavior by heterosexuals is wrong, but homosexual behavior by homosexuals is fine, and shows how ridiculous it is by comparison. But the best and final word on this came from the comments:

James Bejon • 3 days ago   I agree with your reading of Paul, Andrew. It's important to remember that, for Paul, idolatry was inextricably linked to homosexual practices. And Paul's major issue was, of course, with the latter. (See Von Straussenhaus’s important work, ‘Götzendienst, Sexualität, und Ein Haar Ball Großes’.) Idolatry in and of itself wasn't a problem for him.

Did you catch it? It's bitingly insightful. The pro-homosexual claim has been that homosexuality is not what is condemned in the Bible, but idolatry of homosexual behavior. This is supposed to be on parallel with idolatry of food, money, power, etc, things which are not evil in themselves but become so when made an idol. The genius of this commentor was to make the opposite claim for maximum satire: that when Paul condemns idolatry and homosexuality in Romans 1, he's really only condemning homosexual idolatry, not other forms of idolatry. That argument makes as much sense as the reverse.

This by itself is a powerful deconstruction of the faux-Biblical argument to legitimize homosexuality by pretending that Paul is only concerned with idolatry. Decimated, in one fell swoop.

Congratulations, gentlemen.

~ Rak Chazak

I've Been Here Before...Pivotal Moments in My Journey

This will serve as the hub and first entry for a new series, where anyone who wishes can follow along and encounter the major moments that impacted the way I think about reality, and what is true.

My Testimony: Era of Uncertainty

I took a philosophy class in 2009 and chose to do some independent reading in the book I had had to buy for it, covering two chapters that were not focused on in the course. These concerned Neuroscience and Determinism. Determinism is simply the view that everything that happens is directly attributable to the immediately preceding state of the universe, and so on and so on. Reality is a complex machine that runs on physical laws and that's it. Technically, that's materialistic determinism. Determinism that allows for a supernatural aspect to the universe would hold that spiritual beings control your destiny and so whereas it's not all mechanically produced, you nevertheless do not have much of a choice in how your future unfolds. And neuroscience, from an atheist perspective, is often presented as a scientific argument against the soul, i.e. that all of your thoughts, emotions, desires, will, decisions etc are produced by neurochemical electrical interactions between the cells of your brain.

Take these two thoughts together, and what do you get? The idea that I couldn't trust my thoughts to be accurate, because my beliefs might just be deterministic phenomena, artifacts of physical processes in the brain, with nothing to connect them to truth or to give them meaningful significance. What if I only believed what I did because I was organically predisposed to believe it, and chance life experiences influenced my thoughts to produce that result? That there was no choice involved, and no transcendent truth.

Once the thought was comprehended, I couldn't ignore it. I had to deal with it.

Cheeky Response to "God Wants You to Be Happy," Using Selected Bible Verses

I'm reposting this from somewhere on facebook, but in the event that the person who posted it won't prefer to have more exposure of their name outside of where they posted it, I will post it anonymously. That's not to take credit for it. Ultimately, after all, the credit is God's, because it's nearly completely composed of Bible verses.

Victoria Olsteen said that “God wants you to be happy.” These words are in fact in the Bible. They just do not appear in all together in the same place. Below is my suggestion as to which verses these words might have come from. 

The word “God” from Acts 14:21-22. “When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

The word “wants” from Matthew 16:44. “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’”

Alternatively, the word “wants” could be from 2 Timothy 3:12. “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

The words “to be” from Titus 3:1. “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,”

The word “happy” from Ecclesiastes 7:14. “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.”


~ Rak Chazak

About that Scarlet Thread.

I flipped on the radio as I drove up to the YMCA parking lot yesterday, and someone on one of the Christian-radio stations I get in my area was reading from Genesis, specifically the scene where Joseph ultimately reveals himself to his brothers. But first, he tests them.

For those who don't know, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, out of envious anger because he was their father's favorite son. They then deceived Jacob, their father, into believing that Joseph was dead. Benjamin was Joseph's brother by the same mother (the 12 tribes of Israel being born from 4 different women), and the youngest and most cherished of Jacob's children after the loss of Joseph. Joseph, now a governor in Egypt, hid a silver chalice in Benjamin's rucksack and then pretended that Benjamin had stolen it, in order to demand that Benjamin would remain behind as the other brothers returned to Jacob.

It was a clever plan. It would ensure that Jacob would come to Egypt, so that Joseph could be reunited with his father. And even if not, he now had his only immediate brother with him, either way.

Then this happened:

Judah Intercedes for Benjamin18 Then Judah came near to him and said: “O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s hearing, and do not let your anger burn against your servant; for you are even like Pharaoh. 19 My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’ 20 And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age,who is young; his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’ 21 Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ 22 And we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ 23 But you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’24 “So it was, when we went up to your servant my father, that we told him the words of my lord. 25 And our father said, ‘Go back and buy us a little food.’ 26 But we said, ‘We cannot go down; if our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down; for we may not see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ 27 Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; 28 and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn to pieces”; and I have not seen him since. 29 But if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave.’30 “Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad’s life, 31 it will happen, when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. So your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave. 32 For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever.’ 33 Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers. 34 For how shall I go up to my father if the lad is not with me, lest perhaps I see the evil that would come upon my father?”

I highlighted verse 33 for a very particular reason.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2014/02/25/free-ebook-the-scarlet-thread-through-the-bible/
As the above link reveals, the "Scarlet Thread" is a reference first used in a mid-20th-century sermon, and it refers to the existence of a "Story within the stories" of the Old Testament--that the story of Redemption, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is interwoven and echoed or paralleled in the vast majority if not every major Old Testament account. I had heard of this before and accepted the concept, but I hadn't realized its relevance to Judah the patriarch of the tribe of Israel by the same name.

"Now therefore, please let [Me] remain instead of [the one who you have determined is guilty] as a slave to my lord, and let the lad [be free to] go up with his brothers." What is this but the essence of substitutionary atonement and the kinsman-redeemer concept? Judah is revealing to Joseph--unknowingly, since he's unaware that Joseph is his long-lost brother--a drastic internal change, from a man who put himself first at the expense of his brother and his father's joy, to a man who puts his brother and father first, and willingly offers himself to take the punishment he doesn't deserve. Judah has become an illustration of Jesus Christ** in this passage.

Dogmatically Held Preferences v. Preferentially Held Dogmas

I'm very unashamed of expressing what I'm confident is the truth. But, there are categories of truth--not regarding the epistemic value of a concept (in other words, there is not a gradient from falsehood to truth; they are binary poles that contrast with each other and don't overlap), but regarding the way in which the knowledge of the truth is applied.

Explaining Liberty

There's a concept of Christian liberty, which is demonstrated in Romans chapter 14. It's in the context of observing dietary restrictions, but has a wider application. The verse in Romans 14:14 does the best to give a succinct explanation of this concept:

14 I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

In other words, suppose that something is not a sin to do. If you realize this, and do that thing (suppose as an example the drinking of alcohol), then you are not sinning. But suppose that someone does think that imbibing alcohol is a sin; then if they were to do that act, even if drinking it were not a sin, the act of going against one's conscience and doing what one believes to be a sin against God makes it a sin. It's a matter of the heart, as Matthew 5:21-30 explains. Sin begins in the heart, and that's why it's possible that for two people doing the same thing, one is committing sin and one's conscience is clear. 

There are certain things that are unequivocal in Christian doctrine, and these doctrines are called essential doctrines. Then there are foundational doctrines, ones that have massive importance to the faith but which it is in theory possible for someone to be mistaken about and still be saved. Then there are areas of practical daily lived-out faith that fall under Christian liberty, where it's fine for one person to forbid something and fine for someone else to allow it. Paul explains it this way in 1 Corinthians 10:23

23 All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful; all things are permitted, but not all things edify.

This is the basis for allowing Christians to variously persuade themselves to take specific positions on subjects not explicitly condemned or required in Scripture. The idea is that by the proper application of Biblical exegesis, believers will reach the right conclusions. Allowing them liberty in what conclusion to draw ensures the greater positive benefit that they reach their personal conclusion for the right reasons, i.e. that their thought process is reasonable. It would be far worse if, as in Islamic tradition, every minor aspect of life is rigidly controlled, but those adhering to it benefit little because they generally don't understand what the overarching spiritual purpose of those restrictions are.

Liberty to Adhere to a thing Preferentially or Dogmatically

A dogma is an authoritative doctrine that sets forth truth and morality in absolute terms. 
A preference is a choice we make as to what we'd rather do based on personal feelings or opinions.

A preferential dogma is a religious rule that is held, not because it is true and ought to be followed, but because the person judges that it is relevant to his or her interests, essentially that it is useful for them. Dogma then becomes no longer absolute but is harnessed and subjugated by the absolutism of the person's vain preferences. Vast bulks of religion around the world is of this nature. Men who make God a mere tool to serve their ambition have a preferential approach to dogma. They hold to what they feel like because it suits them.

A dogmatic preference is a rule of conduct that is recognized as not-binding on others, but which the person who adopts it is convinced that it follows soundly from consistent application of spiritual truths that are unalterable and may not be dealt with preferentially. Therefore, in his opinion, it is not really a preference, only inasmuch as it is simply the best or better alternative--and if the premise is that we should do what is best, then it is no question but that this thing must be done. But it is recognized as a preference in the sense that others may not be convinced of its necessary association with fundamental doctrines, and that the adherent won't attempt to force his preference on others as an across-the-board rule for all to follow.

Preferential dogmas result in people being forced to follow the opinions of others.
Dogmatic preferences result in people being free to do what they think best and to learn from the experience.

Examples of dogmas held by preference (preferentially held dogmas):

• KJV only true translation
• Anyone who thinks you’re sinning by celebrating holidays or wearing pants of a certain length, etc.
• Making a preference into an article of faith in a church, such as forbidding alcohol
• Frowning upon "interracial" dating or marriage
• The idea that a 10% tithe on income is required to be paid by the faithful to their church

In fact, I'd go farther and say that while you may have personal preferences for a given Bible translation, dress code or fashion, alcohol, beauty, etc, when you go and tell others that they are wrong for not being as strict as you, that may very well be a sin itself! It's not the preference that's wrong, it's when you start to forget that it is just that -- a preference, not the only hold on the truth, nor something that everyone needs to follow lest they be in error -- that you cross the line into religious (do this do this do this don't do this) fanaticism.

Examples of preferences held dogmatically (dogmatically held preferences):

• Making a personal choice to not participate in a celebration because of its association with pagan ideals
• Man asks woman on date, drives, and pays for dinner.
• Individual churches' decisions on how frequently (every week, monthly, biannually) to hold Communion
• Refusal to patronize stores that serve halal meat products
• Lifelong celibacy v. marriage. 
• Whether you are in favor of jewelry piercings

These lists could be enormous in length if I sat long enough and thought about examples I've come across in daily life. But suffice it to say, in general, dogmatically promoting a preference is not wrong, and it's even admirable (so long as your preference isn't totally made up but actually a reasonable induction from Scripture!!), but choosing to promote dogmas merely because you prefer them to others is a dangerous path where you place yourself as the highest authority on Scripture and morality. Since that is not your rightful place, you are bound to become a tyrant, sooner or later, and find yourself deposed from your throne.

Exercise liberty but do it with restraint. And respect the liberty of others.

~ Rak Chazak

Topical Bible Study I -- Righteousness and Goodness

Part of the reason for utilizing a blog is to hopefully bless others through the sharing of my personal experiences. Some of the random insights I've come across are too short to rise to the amount of material necessary for a full sermon -- so there aren't many you can find online about that. And they're obscure enough that the big-name commentary and theology-glossary sites like Biblehub (used to be Bible.cc but they've apparently purchased an easier domain name) and GotQuestions haven't devoted resources to it--or if they have, it's too hard to find among the thousands of pages on their websites. Therefore, be it thus resolved that I'll share some of these insights periodically and call them "Bible Study" or "Word Study" or other names like that, and make a series out of them over time. Here's my first attempt.

Righteousness and Goodness: A Biblical Word Study

The way I think of these words now is probably very different from the way a typical person uses them, because I think of them in Biblical terms. Without getting too technical, let me spell out the distinction between them, and then give some verses to back up my point.

Righteousness is one of two things: godly behavior (what we would usually think of) OR the positional righteousness that saints have because of the Cross--namely, that God considers us to be perfect like Jesus even though we're not, because we've traded places with Him so that our sins could be dealt with separately from us.

Goodness in the Bible can be something we do as humans, indicated by Galatians 5, but it is appropriate to translate the word 'good' as perfection, which is consistent because goodness as a fruit of the Spirit is something that we don't manufacture on our own, but it comes from God. 

Here's my super-simplified idea: No one is good, but some are righteous. Lemme show you my proof-text:

Romans 5:6-8
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

This verse used to make no sense to me. What is the distinction between righteous and good? And why is righteous seemingly placed below good on an apparent grading-scale of holiness? The verses arrange it like so: ungodly-->righteous-->good. If righteous and good aren't the same thing, then what do they mean? And here's the answer:

Good Means Perfect

Mark 10:17-18

17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 19

Jesus isn't saying that He's undeserving of being called good. On the contrary, He's subtly implying that since the 'rich young man' of this passage recognized Him as good, that He IS God. This is yet another example of Jesus' sense of humor, as I see it. But notice what He says--no one is good except God. And God is perfect. So this passage identifies the Biblical word "good" as equivalent to our modern English definition of the word "perfect." Consider this, and we'll look at another example of the same.

Genesis 1:31
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Logically, since there was yet no sin in the creation, everything was still sinless, and thus perfect. So the use of 'very good' at the conclusion of the creation account is to be understood as 'totally perfect.' If I understand the scholarship, the word translated 'very' in the Hebrew signifies completeness, lacking nothing. 

Of interest, since I now have the conclusion that good = perfect in Biblical terminology, I wondered if this would hold up concerning Galatians 5 where one of the fruits of the Spirit in believers listed is 'goodness.' I looked up the word in GotQuestions and cross-checked the word in the Mark 10:18 passage with the Greek interlineary provided by BibleHub and verified that the exact same Greek word was used. Agathosune is the Koine Greek for 'goodness' as read in the New King James Version (the one I prefer to use on BibleGateway because it's less cluttered with hyperlinks), in both locations, and is understood to mean selfless acts for the benefit of others.

What really nailed it down for me was the James 1:17 passage that GQ included which said that "every good and perfect thing comes from God above" (paraphrased the ending), which affirms that goodness doesn't come from us but God, since God being the only perfect being, is the only One who can cause goodness to be done in the earth. 
Out of curiosity, I searched the BibleHub database for the Greek word translated as 'perfect' in that passage, and it is teleion, which appears to be the Greek counterpart in this passage to the Genesis 1 Hebrew word "very." Look at the 7 uses in the New Testament listed and see if you agree. I think a safe definition for teleion would be "completeness." Don't you?

Righteousness Means You're Not Righteous

I'm just being cheeky, here. But when you consider that righteousness is a word that comes with certain qualifications, you realize it's not a word that confers any opportunity for pride to a person. Not in itself, at least. The word "self-righteous" means that you think you are righteous in and of yourself, and this is wrong. The correct way is to be "God-righteous," to be considered righteous by God's standards. So how can we do this?

Isaiah 64:6
"all our righteousnesses [not even our sins!] are like filthy rags."

Titus 3:5
we were not saved because of any righteous acts we did.

Romans 3:21-26

“²¹ But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, ²² even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, ²⁶ to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

I highlighted the key part. Do you see that God, when He justifies the repentant sinner, GIVES His righteousness to them, through Christ? This means that God considers us righteous, but it's not our righteousness that we have, it's HIS righteousness. So that's why it's called 'positional righteousness.' We are righteous by virtue of our relationship to God, and not by any special ability to be good that we inherently have which other people do not. In fact, the whole point is that we don't have the ability to be righteous by ourselves, that's why God has to give us His righteousness. Otherwise we couldn't be saved. That's why the doctrine of substitution is so important. 

This is a repost of the video from "The Gospel in 60 Seconds." It explains substitution from 2 Corinthians 5:21 -- "He made Him, who knew no sin, sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

Summary

None of us are good. The good we do is by the power of God.

None of us are truly righteous. Those of us whom God considers righteous have the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to us, we have no inherent righteousness of our own.

Good to know, huh? :) I hope this was an interesting and informative read. And now you'll know what I mean in future posts if I refuse to use the words good or righteous to refer to someone...or on the other hand, what I would mean if I do use those words.
Also see these previous posts for similar articles:

Jesus, King of Insults
Be Careful What You Pray For
Feeling Bad in a Good Way

~ Rak Chazak