The Bible begins with the book of Genesis, and Genesis begins with God creating all things and observing it to be good. The first chapter of Genesis is emphatic on this point, as it records God seeing what He had just created as good at seven various stages of creation (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). What is this "good"? "Good," in its adjective form is defined by Oxford American Dictionaries (so it is called on my computer's built-in application) as "to be desired or approved of" and defined in its noun form as "that which is morally right; righteous." Similar to the latter, a third definition for the adjective form is "possessing or displaying moral virtue." Could it be that God's good creation is not only desirable and met with approval but also moral and right? Is this absurd?
When we look at nature, we are often awestruck. Nature might even be the paragon of that which the word "awesome" embodies, at least in the material sense (and again I turn to the dictionary): "extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear." Could nature also be the paragon of "good"? After all, God is good, and God, even more than nature (i.e. since he is supernatural), embodies "awesome."
Some of us believe the realm of matter to be at odds with the spiritual realm, taking the sinful corruption of "the flesh" to mean even a corrupt quality in the corporeal: Heaven versus Earth, body versus spirit. Plato considered ultimate reality to lie in abstraction, not the physical, material world, which he believed was a hindrance to reality (as the body is a prison of the soul, to use an example of his). I say in reply simply this: How, then, is nature so beautiful, so stirring? Why does my soul yearn at a sunset? Might I actually be yearning for the "good" that I see? Nature evidences God's goodness.
Perhaps nature does more than evidence God's goodness. Nature might be the one thing uncorrupted, the one created thing that is perfect, that is perfectly actualized in God's goodness; and so it is God's very goodness, instilled by God to make His supreme goodness, His glory, seen in the sunset and the distant mountain, heard in the ocean's crashing waves and the rustling of leaves, smelled in the fresh air of the countryside, tasted in the fruits of trees, felt in the warm summer evening breeze. Suppose the many poetic Scriptures on this subject--the words of the psalmist, exhorting all of creation to praise God (Psalm 148), of Jesus, remarking that "the very stones would cry out" if not for His followers' worshipful praise (Luke 19:37-40), of Paul, giving account of all creation yearning for God's will to be done regarding His followers' ultimate union with Him--suppose these Scriptures are not metaphors but are literal.
Consider the tree and how good it is, how moral, how perfect. Consider nature, the work of God's fingers, and recognize His goodness there, how it praises God in ways perceived by all of our five senses, making nature itself praiseworthy. But consider how its praises to God are also God's display of His love for us, that we might, by looking at nature, look from nature to Him, loving Him in return:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)
