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[ Is the Bible Really God's Word? | Is
God Really Good? | What
is Worship? - The Juggler | Is
Jesus really God? ] Is God Really Good? Do you suppose that every Christian believes that God is good? Many (perhaps most) would answer with a strong "Yes!" On the other hand, don't we often question the rightness of situations in which we find ourselves or family? Is the questioning just "thinking out loud?" Perhaps it an expression of doubt or even an understated accusation or qualification of God's character. Let's say for instance, that Bob wrecks the front end of the family Ford by driving too fast over a horrendous set of potholes that are spaced just so they can't easily be avoided (do you think someone actually spaces these things?). He takes it in stride, until he finds that repairs will cost about $976.00! This expense comes on top of medical expenses for his child, Mindy, of close to $500.00 for a visit to the emergency clinic when she fell on her upper back and neck (producing tingling pain in arms and legs). All in the same month! As he contemplates how to pay for these added expenses he becomes aware of a question lurking (doesn't this word sound sneaky?) about in his mind. "If God is good, why did he let this come all at once?" Isn't this a question that implies God could have prevented some of this, but didn't? Or perhaps it's a variant of the former question such as, "Why hasn't he...?" A question in this form might imply that God hasn't moved your employer to give you the raise you were praying about two months ago, and if he had, you would be able to pay these extra costs without so much sweat. Here's another possible lurking question: "Why won't he...?" Perhaps you think God should have directed your driving more efficiently or just kept Mindy from falling (Doesn't Jude say as much: "...unto him who is able to keep you from falling..."? Perhaps this is a misapplication of scripture?) Also, just as a sidelight, couldn't the Creator of all that is, keep potholes from forming? That would have saved the expenses in the first place, and ingratiate him to the County as well! All of this sounds a bit flippant, doesn't it? This is the way we think, well, at least it is the way many of my acquaintances say that they think. David Hazard, writing in a short article entitled "Truly Transformed" (Discipleship Journal Mar/Apr 98), has said that we humans like to imagine the best possible course for our lives. Then we decide (unconsciously?) that it's God's job to go out there and make it happen! (This based on what our friends think, and contemporary marketing techniques imply!) When it doesn't happen, we chalk it up in our experience warehouse as one of the things we should worry about now, or wonder about later. When we hear the speaker at the next "Faithful God, Faithful Women" event say that God has been so good to them, we begin to rifle through the lurking questions in our warehouse to see if that statement is really true in our lives. We add up 2 and 2 and come up with some apparent inconsistencies in actions God has taken in others lives and what he hasn't done in our own! Could it be that we often base our idea of God's character on our personal experience in real life situations? Personal experience, to learn from Dickens character "Scrooge", may be based on something as transient as that due to a piece of undigested beef. If we are not to learn whom God is based on how we feel God acts, then, where will we learn this? Additionally, from where does trust, patience, and confidence to let God be God come? It must come from our knowing that God is good. God is good, but by whose definition? Webster gives as the first definition in the adjective category that good is "having the right, or desirable properties". The second yields "right, proper, or expedient." The third reads "morally correct, or virtuous." Others speak of efficient, thorough, etc. Admittedly these are not theological definitions, but we are not all theologians, are we? Some of these breed uncertainty, and can be a little scary. For instance, having "desirable properties?" That could mean that we decide who God should be on the basis of our desires. "Expedient?" Kind of a "just get it done" God that is devoid of compassion? We have all been the squirming subjects of the "pulpit surgeons" knife as he slices and dices our character flaws with culinary precision and delight. Surely though, God does follow Hosea's description of healing and binding our wounds after purposeful injury? (See this description of God's dealing with Israel in Hosea 6:1.) Continuing to look at definitions under the noun category is not particularly helpful either. "Morally right, profitable, having a kindly disposition, willing to humor others, of benefit to," etc. In this day, morally right takes on the meaning that we humans apply to it, rather than an across the board meaning that extends from the reality of God's character. It is true. We live in, and perhaps are a relative culture. We have the luxury in the United States to make most decisions without the interference of advice from others. Yes, there are laws, but few that specify an internal morality, and even fewer moral guardians to catch us in a purposeful lie. This is especially true if we are just lying to ourselves. So, since no one can catch us, our decisions can be built into a straw building of our experience/feelings without many problems in the short-term. The difficulty comes in convincing people that straw is a poor support for later additions on our moral houses. Christians should not be caught up so readily in this dilemma. Perhaps rather than decide who God is on the basis of how we feel on any particular day, or as a result of personal interpretation of our past experiences, we should be ready to share with others why we believe God is good in spite of tragic or inconvenient circumstances. Our answers will be the result of continued and serious study of God's Word recorded through thousands of years of his interaction with us. Additionally, our experience and the experience of others that we have cultivated as friends and mentors will serve as dependable material. Millard Erickson, in his Christian Theology lists purity, integrity and love as the essence of God's goodness. We are fortunate to have such a God! He is certainly unique, for he is separate from everything that he has created. He is perfect, and as such he has no fault, nor can he do anything less than perfectly. This must be at least a partial definition of purity. Because he is, in himself, consistently right, he can enforce any action he takes and always be right in that enforcement. We find him to always do right, and also to judge our actions rightly. "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). Of course, this is precisely where our trust in God runs aground. The clash seems to be between our intellect and our emotions. His rule in the circumstances of our lives sometimes appears in our experience as capricious and unjust. Many who do wrong, (in our judgement), are not punished by God and those that do right often seem to get the short end of the stick! (See Psalm 73.) It often does not help us right now to know that eventually God will even this out by destroying the wicked. Today we are making our decisions on what we feel, and today we feel bad. What conclusions would you draw from these circumstances? God is bad? God is just not interested in you? If you were to construct a god to worship, would it not be a god that represented and responded to your feelings? That is, would this god disagree with you on anything? The Biblical God embodies truth. He is real, the genuine God. Faithful to himself (and consequently to us), without any artificiality. He often disagrees with us! This is part of his goodness. If you could see him close to you, and performing actions that enveloped you, that might help you understand why he is different than you expect! Except we can not see God! We can, however, see his actions in the cosmos, world and in our lives. With careful observation the order of all around us speaks of his purposeful design. The deepest, most intricate details of our physical life and the life of other plants and animals are functional, purposeful and reliable. Each of these three point to the involvement of the One that is integral to our lives, as well as the day to day administration of the universe. Because he is genuine, he not only tells the truth, but actually is the truth. This is demonstrated in the reliable administration of what has been made. Things that are true can generally be depended on, such as the way gravity functions, or the strong and weak forces work within atomic structure. We rely on their purposeful presence. The same is true in the spiritual realm. We also see consistency in the numerous cause-effect systems of our world. A popular saying: "What goes around comes around" might represent a mystical force present in nature to some of us acquainted with Eastern Philosophy. On the other hand, the popular expression, "You will reap what you sow" is more to the point, in that you can be aware of what you plant, and the yield or results often increase with care. Rather than a circular return to the same place, we head towards a productive future. Paul writes, "The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatians 6:8.) God lives his life and love out in those lives given to him. The chief demonstration of his willingness to do this is the death and life of Jesus Christ on our behalf, so that we can have his life in us! Paul writes to the Colossians that it is "...Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Colossians 1:27.) He demonstrated his love for us in this act taken on behalf of sinners that thought themselves good! In other words, we do not think he is good, as we often haven't realized the extent or the intent of his love given as he took this step. We remain ignorantly moving the wrong way on a one way street of God's plan. Thinking ourselves wise we continue to make decisions based on our ability to carry out whatever action purely on human strength. We end up trying to do God's work our way (using our strength), or doing our work God's way (It just looks better to us if we give our actions a "godly" spin!) How much better to do God's work, God's way! His goodness will begin to be seen. It is awful to "wake up" at the wheel of a car with a start, suddenly realizing that you are going the wrong way! You are helpless, and out of control. You need direction, guidance -an emergency way out! It was not until we realized we were going wrong, that things even looked amiss. It might be that we recognize evil that way as well. Evil often is not noticeable until we see contrasting a good (God's "one way" sign). Suddenly we notice it! It has been there for quite a while but the threat of going the wrong way was not intense enough to wake us. It might also appear that what evil there is, is the fault of someone outside our own vehicle. For example, a man's wife called him on his cell-phone to tell him to be careful on the freeway as she heard via TV News that someone was driving the wrong way. He replied that there were hundreds going the wrong way! Do we blame God because we are going the wrong way and want circumstances to conform to us? Do we realize that we may have chosen the wrong direction? God and his goodness are not at fault in this instance. We have applied to him that which rightly belongs to us! Are there other instances that trouble us as well where it seems God is to blame but it is really our own fault? Is it too far off the mark to suggest that making decisions (sowing) based on our desires and emotions produced by personal experiences might be more in sync with our sinful nature than God's Spirit? Especially since self-centered humans wish to be seen as strong, competent individuals? The Bible teaches that only in our weakness can we truly be strong. (See 2 Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 4:13.) As a matter of fact, basking in our strength is seen as sin. The strength we find in this weakness doesn't come from more devotion to intensive training in doing good, but from a realization that good is something we cannot do with our own strength! It must come from God! Isaiah said, "...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags..." (Isaiah 64:6.) If we cannot do good works without God doing them, then we must not be as very competent. This is a problem because the world seems to say we should be terribly competent, all on our own. Yes, we admit to a need for time to become educated and then practice till we are strong. This would normally result in competence, self-reliance and the ability to do good, at least from the world's point of view. We hardly ever hear or see that weakness is something that should be cultivated and lived with for a longer time. We do not want to be weak forever! We may agree to initial weakness so that God can work in us, but we feel that eventually we should be strong enough to deal with issues of life without dependence on anyone all the time, God included! After all, in all other strength gaining exercises the goal is independent ability, or at least the ability to help without always needing help. However, the weakness in our flesh and spirit that makes way for God's permanent goodness in our lives is a permanent and enduring weakness! Notice that the word is permanent, and not eternal. I mean permanent to be applied to our fleshly bodies, and not our eternal ones! God will change us from corruptible to incorruptible when he comes again, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15. But that is future! This permanent good that we become aware of now, in this life, is the good that describes the function of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those given for his use and purpose. Why is it not easy to move over in our minds and heart and let God have his way? This is a real struggle of our flesh (that wants desperately to succeed on its own), with God's Spirit. (See Galatians 5:16-18, 25.) Perplexity and pressure often accompany this struggle (as outlined by Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12.) Not realizing that this struggle is a common one that Christians experience often, we decide that God is just not keeping his promise to be with us, to help us or answer prayer. Can you see that not wanting to be always dependent on him places us in the position of blaming him when he doesn't come through for us? Put simply, we want to be strong on our own, God does not allow this, and we are angry. Our perspective once again places God at fault. Why shouldn't he want us to be strong on our own? Why should we have to "walk by his Spirit" continuously? (Paul indicates "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." We do this because we have "...crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires." -Galatians 5:25,24.) Will we never be able to walk on our own? Perhaps it is because our minds are not continually fixed on his plans or timing. We do make horrendous mistakes. Would these mistakes not cause even more damage if he allowed us his strength with our own judgment? We might ask ourselves at this point if it is not too much trouble for God to love us at all? God does love us. This is another statement about which many Christians would agree. Love, though, does not seem so good in a painful situation. Take for instance, "Dental" love. The pain of dental work produces a result that is worth the "bite" of pain. Some things in this fallen world hurt, but a greater good comes through the pain. We ask, "Shouldn't love always be painless?" -Only in a world that is devoid of the ability to make personal decisions. One must be able to choose to love, or it is not love at all. Choice involves the risk of rejection. It involves the risk of choosing wrongly and living with the results. Freedom of choice in this world is found within God's love. He considers our welfare and gives us grace and mercy in the amount we need. His love (grace and mercy) comes without strings attached, but with his desire intact for us to choose wisely. He gives us freedom, but this is not freedom to do whatever we want. This freedom is being responsible before God. It is being responsible for living with our choices and resulting actions. Responsibility means that we can and must make decisions about the relationship that we desire with our creator. Do we want to live his way or ours! The difficulty of establishing a relationship with God is that this does not take place in a vacuum, but in a world already troubled with the results of previous wrong decisions. We hurt from viruses caught from others, famine, floods, poor crops and robbery. Some of these things are preventable, some apparently not. In the face of hard things that cannot be explained, do we place the cause of perceived evil as a flaw in God's character? Is it a flaw in his ability to love? Is it not more likely that the cause is with a world flawed by the persistent effects of sin or years of poor choices on our part? Our struggle to understand if God is really good rests on a number of basic premises. How sin in the world affects us personally. How we misapply emotions about our experiences to God's character. How we expect him to allow us freedom to help in our way. How we apply God's Word to how we want to live. Whether we interpret pain as good or bad, as necessary or an unneeded part of our world. These are all-important bases for which we need to have answers and solutions. Could you explain to someone why God allows evil to exist? Why God does not jump in and change circumstances to what we desire? Why Christians (& for that matter anyone) get sick? And the ultimate question, why potholes exist? The "lurkiness" of these questions helps us decide where energy needs to be applied in our own lives. Doubt runs pell-mell towards unbelief (and towards its first cousin apathy or inactivity) if it does not stimulate pursuit of constructive answers as soon as it is raised. These difficult questions seem to be planted by our creator, almost like the pop-up figures that surprise us as we turn the pages in a child's book. They are there for careful consideration. They are purposefully in the way, to be resolved so that character, his character, can develop in our hearts and minds as we appraise them and apply solutions to our lives. Read Romans 5:1-5 & 1 Peter 1:3-9, 3:13-17, Job 23:10. Not all our questions will be answered. Sometimes we must be satisfied to "know the one that knows." Often God's intention seems to be to provide contrast between his goodness and this sinful, dark, confused world in which we live. My hope is that you will see the contrast and learn to confront these questions. They often raise doubts, potholes that yearn to be smoothed and filled by the caring hand of our Lord. Take them there. Bill Spear Director, Mountain Ministries
[ Is the Bible Really God's Word? | Is
God Really Good? | What
is Worship? - The Juggler | Is
Jesus really God? ]
mm@mountainministries.org
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