Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

causes must always be good—even if the events contradict those that came prior. In the Discourse on
Metaphysics, Gottfried Leibniz elegantly sums up the problem with thinking that God necessarily embodies
goodness:
So in saying that things are not good by any rule of goodness, but sheerly by the will of God, it
seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory. For why
praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing exactly the contrary.
By assuming the alternative worldview—that life and other actions are good and God recognizes
them as illuminating goodness—religious groups acknowledge a standard of goodness that helps to
determine whether actions are right or wrong. Not only through this standard is one able to determine that
an action is wrong aside from God’s decreeing it as such, but it also holds God accountable to moral
evaluation and critique. Through moral assessment, individuals and groups can measure all objects, actions,
beliefs, and behaviors against this standard—including God. Assessment and evaluation in the moral sphere
are essential in learning to “see” the luminosity of goodness in human actions. In failing to adequately use
this standard of judgment, individuals and religious groups often shift toward the slippery slope of
absolutism. If one refuses to acknowledge that even God must be evaluated, critiqued, and measured
against a standard of goodness, instead believing that his or her own interpretation of God and ultimacy
trumps all, a shift toward what Steffen refers to as the “demonic” is imminent.
The demonic, despite representing “an authentic expression of human religiosity” for Steffen, is a
dangerous alternative option of practicing religion. Demonic adherents are promised by their religion the
same securities and benefits bestowed unto believers of life-affirming religions, but in contrast deny these
same goods—and sometimes life itself—of other religious groups. A powerful example of this type of shift
toward the demonic within a religious movement can be found in the United States through a group in
Kansas called the Westboro Baptist Church. The group garners national media attention with their radical
views on the 9/11 attacks, Jews, Catholics, soldiers killed in combat, and, especially, homosexuals. Fred
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