God is Good?

When I wrote this title down, my mind flashed back to the ‘God’s Not Dead Series’ where in every film, Reverend Dave would battle with the concept of God being good and his Nigerian friend, Pastor Jude would listen and encourage him. At some point in the films, God would come through and Reverend Jude would say, “God is good” to which Reverend Dave would reply exasperatedly “All the time”. Hilarious, I should rewatch the series.

It’s easy to laugh at it but most days, we are Reverend Jude wondering if God is good. Some of us have walked with God for a long time, we should know and believe in him absolutely with no doubts. But yet, we battle doubt about whether God is good especially when magnitude storms hit us. Some of us haven’t walked with God for a long time but are considering backing out because he is seemingly cruel. Whatever your situation is, the quintessential question remains, “IS GOD GOOD?

The textbook answer is, “Yes, All the time”. But how do we reconcile it when it doesn’t seem as if God is good? What about when things are going wrong and not according to plan? How do we hold on to God’s goodness?

To say God is good is to say something about God’s character and nature. So, to question God’s goodness, we are essentially bringing God to trial and questioning his character and nature. Is he inherently good?

Here’s a tough one to swallow but true, nonetheless.

God has the right to do anything he wants, when he wants, with whom he wants, when he wants.

God is not a Democrat. He doesn’t exist for you and your pleasure/well-being. You exist for his pleasure.

There, I said it. God’s position as creator, initiator, and sustainer of the universe means that he is in absolute control of everything. As such, he reserves the right to make things what he may. God is a totalitarian, a good-hearted one but a totalitarian all the same.

The problem is we are arrogant beings. Like Adam and Eve, we secretly crave equality with God. This is why we question God the way we question our friends when they fail to come through. We relegate God to our genie in the bottle and when the genie fails, God is not good.

“For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure, they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11b). “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?” (Isaiah 45:9). These are not the most popular verses and understandably so.

God’s purposes and ways are beyond us and rightly so. When we read the verse, “Exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think”, we easily get excited. But we seem to not recognize that these ways might be through murky waters. I’m not where to argue God’s goodness. That is a fact. I’m just here to discourage getting mad at God. I know it isn’t easy in the heat of the moment. But this is why we must set our theology straight and right.

We must reach a point where we resign our lives and selves to God, like robots and live with a literal, ‘Your wish is my command’ mindset.

Wale Adenuga said it best, “We are nothing but pencils in the hands of the creator”.

Is God good? Can we trust him with our lives? Surely! I’d use one of my favorite illustrations to paint why God is good and can be trusted.

Imagine you were on the 80th floor of a skyscraper and your brother was driving to meet you. From your vantage point, you see your brother a few blocks away about to take a turn, you also see a car on the street beyond that same turn driving with no regard for the turn. You can see very well that there’s a 90% chance your brother would be in an accident but you can’t stop it.

Dark illustration but that is how so high above us, and our affairs God is. He is at a vantage point, seeing what we can. So, when he distorts our plans, we best believe he knows what he is doing.

I’d stop here for today. Next time, I will try and answer some of the top arguments' intellectuals have given to question God’s Goodness. Believe me, this is the ‘nicer post’. I’d also like to hear what you think.

Till Next time. GOD is GOOD, all the time. And all the time, GOD is GOOD.