Is God Good?

Is God Good?

God was unwilling to withhold man’s greatest need. Which is . . .?

To understand the goodness of God.

Hello to all my readers and listeners. Thank you for taking the time to consume this content. I know our minds and attention are consistently pulled in many algorithmic directions, and winning your attention for this long is a blessing.

Here is the question I want to answer in this month’s article. Is God good? Christians often hear that God is not good for allowing evil. How can a good God allow all this suffering? Below you will read how God was unwilling to withhold man’s greatest need, and I will share a few ways that God has shown His goodness. Then, for our champion partners, I will talk a bit about true happiness in a culture that is looking for the next and newest idea to make them happy. It all starts with remembering.

Now I would like you to think back on the best vacation you have ever been on.

With this exercise, you should be remembering some of the most precious moments in your life. Remembering is not only important for relaxing memories. It is also important for us to remember God’s goodness and His communication with us. It is so easy to forget if we do not constantly remember.    

1.      He is a God who has revealed Himself to His creation

We cannot be reminded enough of this bedrock truth. We see the God of the Bible consistently reminding Israel in the Old Testament to remember what they had seen and what God had done for them—pulling them out of Egypt and providing for them. We must remember that God was unwilling to leave us without a testimony to man’s greatest need, which is . . .? Understanding the goodness of God. In understanding what God has revealed to His creation, we begin to get a picture of a creator bringing humanity into existence to communicate and dwell with Him in the Garden of Eden.

Many people have shouted at me over the years, “What about before the Bible was compiled or written? The Hindu Vitas are older writings than the law that was given to Moses on Mt. Sina!” Two big problems need to be addressed when rightly understanding these objections.

First, the carbon dating and the age of some of these documents cannot be trusted, but that sword can  cut both ways. This argument could also be used to disprove the early copies of the New Testament. However, this second point shows the Bible (especially the New Testament) has Non-Biblical historians to confirm what the Bible states, and the Bible is God’s revelation to us, and He can’t lie. He is in the heavens, and He does as He pleases and chooses to reveal Himself to us. For that, we should be eternally grateful.  

Those who have read my work for any amount of time know how important special revelation is to giving us a foundation for knowledge. Without God creating us, we don’t have brains or bodies to process the knowledge He has revealed. From the start, we should be so grateful to God for life. Nevertheless, what if God had created us and made us like a primary animal with no critical thinking ability. We would be missing out on so much; however, God did not make us like animals. He gave us the gift of being made in his image. He gave us the preconditions to enjoy and fully understand what He is doing and has done.

2.      God’s goodness in preconditions

Our amazing creator has given some preconditions that allow us to engage and understand the world around us. The first is our ability to be rational people. We can think and reason and communicate with words that express meaning and value. All of this is made possible because we have souls and bodies with brains that function. In short, we are made in the image of God.

Other preconditions include that we are placed on Earth and are placed in a universe that gives Earth a location of protection from the volatility of the universe. We must have souls, brains, bodies, and Earth. All these are preconditions for knowing our creator. God then gives us the ability to communicate through language, for it is through language that God sets the stage to give His most precious treasure- more on that in a minute. From language, we get the ability to exercise the image of God by being logical. “A” cannot be “Non-A.” When it rains, the grass will be wet. Through logic, we process and triumphally succeed when tackling problems and objections to the truth in life.

One language is so powerful that there were few things that humanity could not do because it untied us. God knew one universal language would make humanity too powerful, so he confused this unity. “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so they may not understand one another’s speech.” Genesis 11:7 

Because of the different languages, man is scattered throughout the whole earth. This had the fingerprints of God’s goodness all over it; now, mankind would need to see their creator as the giver and sustainer of life instead of themselves. In review, the goodness is shown through:

·        Preconditions: Earth, Universe, Bodies, Brains, Souls

·        More tools for engagement with creation, language, and logical 

·        God revealing Himself by putting His power on display through the creation of all the above

One of the most gracious things for me is seeing how God continually sustains His creation daily. I want to challenge us to take time to stop and remember this truth.

3.      God’s goodness is seen through sustaining creation

At the beginning of the article, I asked you to think back on the most memorable vacation you have been on. This thought experiment brought many pleasant thoughts through your mind in just a few seconds. When is the last time you reminded yourself of this truth: if God were not sustaining the earth, your body, and the cosmos, you would have never had this amazing memory with family and friends.

Humans take so many things for granted. As Christians, we should not. Here is what Solomon says about the creative power of God.  “By wisdom, the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding, he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge, the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew.” Proverbs 3:19

God’s wisdom, understanding, and power converge in creation to give us everything we will ever see and touch. This God that created us is the same God that sustains every second of every day. He does not get tired. He needs no rest.

Right now, take time to thank God for continually sustaining you and everything else. It is so easy to get wrapped up in life and not slow down enough to be thankful to the one who gives and sustains it all. Make it a habit of your praise to your Savior every day.   

Now, I move on to one of the most treasured gifts that God has ever given.

4.      God’s goodness through special revelation to know Him and ourselves

God gave us special revelation–the Bible— and this precious gift gives us the ability to know and understand God and ourselves rightly. General revelation shouts that a God exists, while special revelation tells us who He is, what He is like, and what He wants for mankind. God gives us a front-row seat through the written word to show how we were created, and what happened to the human race, and He gives instructs for fixing our problems.

The Bible Is practical and confounds us all at once. God exposes everyone to mankind’s problems while mankind thinks, “Well, I will make my own god to fix my problems.” The garden (Adam and Eve sinning) continually plays like a broken record until humans are confronted with how true the Bible is. “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.” Proverbs 30:5

In the truth of scripture, we see God's goodness reaching out to show us our broken nature.

5.      God’s goodness in showing our broken nature

This good God has given creation, life, logic, and language. Instead of honoring and thanking God, humans choose to take these gifts and praise themselves or other image-bearers of God. God knew this would happen. This is why He gave His moral law to show humans their rebellion against His goodness found in the law.

It is in seeing how good God is in His holy word that we see how broken we are at our core. I am not saying that people are not doing good things in life, but most are done with the wrong self-motive. And remember, all goodness comes from God, even if the person does not acknowledge Him. Instead of Israel obeying God’s commands and receiving the blessings found in the law, they disobeyed and received the curses warned about in God’s law.  

When we see we have a broken nature, just like Israel, we see the need that we have for help. We turn to our creator. God seeing the dilemma that we were in, came to save us from the condemnation of His justice that we all deserve. I will share how His goodness is displayed in two more ways.

6.      God’s goodness is found in the Gospel, and we are to go out and share this goodness.

God has been very kind to give us revelation in general–the cosmos and all within. He then layers more preconditions for us to understand Him, like life, logic, language, and bodies, to engage with His goodness firsthand. Then the last layer of goodness–spoken of here—is His special revelation.

In His special revelation, we not only understanding God in His creative nature, but we also see that we have a broken nature, not wanting to honor and thank Him for what He has given and continually maintains. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21

Israel’s problem in the Old Testament is the same issue that followed over into the New Testament. Humans do not obey, honor, and thank God for all that He has done, is doing, and will do.

In order to still honor His justice and extend mercy, God gave us the cross of Jesus Christ. It is in the cross of Christ that we see the extremes–in a good way–of the goodness of God. We see extreme justice and extreme mercy. This is extreme because no one else could completely pay for sins (breaking God’s just law) other than Jesus the God/Man. “For Christ also suffered  once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”1 Peter 3:18

It was extreme in mercy, because he did not have to die, and all of us could’ve gone to a just hell–but God. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us” Ephesians 2:4. We see the beauty of God’s mercy and love given at the cross. Now we must, through the command from our great King, go out and share this life-changing news. Humans can go from being blind to now seeing. They can go from darkness to light.

Let me ask the question I began with, is God good? Yes. He is good to give us revelation in general; He is good to give the preconditions that allow us to engage what He has created; He is good to sustain all of it so His image bearers can enjoy it, and Him; He is good to give us special revelation to know Him and ourselves intimately; He is good to show us our brokenness; He is good to show us how to be delivered from sin by the work of Jesus, and this in return gives true abiding happiness.

Would you come along for one last point this month? I want to write about true happiness. In order to read this last point, you will need to become a monthly champion. Our monthly champions allow us to stay out in the harvest field, communicating the Gospel through conversations, preaching, and teaching until faith becomes action. Until next month go out and communicate the Gospel until faith becomes action.