“God is good all the time, all the time God is good!” I was introduced to this phrase when I volunteered to be a greeter for my church. As I welcomed people to church I found many of them saying “God is good all the time” to me and waiting expectantly for my response of “all the time God is good.” These lyrics from the song written by Don Moen have echoed throughout the Christian community for years. Many churches start each Sunday with this cadenced greeting. But what does it mean? When we say God is good, what are we really saying? Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” However there is an ever-growing opinion in the world that God might not be all that good. If God is so good why does He let things like the earthquake in Haiti happen? If God is good then why is there pain and suffering? These and many questions like them have given rise to the question of God’s goodness. So, is God good? I attest that He is. But to fully understand what this means we need to understand what goodness really means and then how this goodness applies to God. When we see goodness for what it is and when we see God for who He is (or at least as clearly as we can see Him) we will in fact see that God is good.
In talking about the goodness of God it might be helpful to begin with what “God is good” does not mean. The problem for many lies in their definition of good. When most people say something is good they are in fact saying little about the object and are saying more about themselves. When I say, “this pizza is good” or “that was a good movie” I am often saying nothing about the nature of the movie or the pizza but only talking about my feelings toward them. Thus, by saying something is good I am merely saying I like it, or I have pleasant feelings toward it. The problem with using ‘good’ this way is that it becomes a total subjective word that is based on the individual. To understand “God is good” in this light would mean that all people must at all times ‘like’ or have ‘pleasant feelings’ toward Him. However it is clear that this is not true. We can find in the Bible many examples where people do not ‘like’ God. Revelation talks about years where people will continually curse God (Rev 16:9; 16:11; 16:21). But just because people do not like God does not mean he stops being good. If God is going to be good all the time the definition of good must be an objective and not a subjective one. I believe that one of the goals of Satan has been to subjectify all the attributes of God so man no longer knows what God is like but instead worships himself and his own emotions. We have certainly seen this happen with God’s goodness. Thus when there is an earthquake in Haiti people’s emotions are not happy and instead of glorifying God through the tragedy they glorify their own feelings and question God’s goodness.
The answer? We need to stop using the word ‘good’ in a subjective way. We already have the word “like” in our language and so it adds nothing to use ‘good’ in the same way. Instead we need to understand the definition of good and use it in its proper context. And what is the definition of good? Luke 18:19 says, “No one is good but God alone” (Luke 18:19). If this is true, the only way we can answer this question is to turn to the Bible and look at God. In doing this we quickly find out that goodness is not based on what people feel about God but who He is. Psalms 119:68 says of God, “You are good and do good.” The definition of good is based on God and God alone. He is the standard of good. Thus, to say that something is good means it lines up with who God is and what He has done. This makes it nonsensical to say that God is not good, for He is the definition of good. So to better understand what goodness is we need to understand who God is and what He has done.
So first to understand goodness we need to understand who God is. This, however, is no easy task. God is larger and greater than our minds can comprehend, but this doesn’t mean He is totally unknowable. Jesus said it this way “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” [1] We can only see things about God that He chooses to reveal to us. However, what God does reveal is defined as good. In this way goodness seems to be the value God has placed on the rest of His attributes. God’s attributes, like goodness, are not things that define God but are things that God defines. His attributes include His immutability (Ps 102:27), His eternity (Ps 90:2), His omnipresence (Ps 139:7-10), omnipotence, holiness, justice, mercy, love and the list could go on. Through this we understand that these things define goodness. Something is good in so much as it reflects the attributes of God. Thus we can say that a government is good or bad based on how well it reflects God’s attributes of justice, mercy, love, etc. No longer is good based on how I feel about an object but it is based on something real, something concrete (namely God’s attributes).
Secondly, goodness is defined as what God has done. James 1:17 says “every good and perfect gifts is from above coming down from the Father of lights.” When God acts His attributes, including His goodness, are displayed in the results. Creation is called good (Gen 1:31) because it was God’s action. Romans 1:20 says. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” Not only in creation but “the goodness of God is seen in the variety of natural pleasures which He has provided for His creatures.”[2] In Psalm 84:11 it says, “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” The second sense of goodness is reflected in what God has done and what He continues to do. Something is good in so much as it reflects that actions of God.
Putting these two definitions together we start to see a better picture of what it means to be good. God is good and all that He does is good. Some have tried to work these two into a definition and I think it helpful to look at what they have said. Wayne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology defines it this way: “The goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval”[3] A.W. Towzer talks about it this way:
The goodness of God is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of good will toward men. He is tenderhearted and of quick sympathy, and His unfailing attitude toward all moral beings is open, frank, and friendly. By His nature He is inclined to bestow blessedness and He takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His people.[4]
However, I want to remind us that all these words in these definitions are defined by God. Kind, cordial, sympathy, blessing all should come back to the standard of who God is and how He acts. We need to get away from judging God on our standard and remember that we are judged on His. I hope we now have a better understanding of what goodness is and have a better grasp of what it means to say, “God is good.”
But we don’t want to stop there. Once we see God for who He is we then can rightly see ourselves for who we are. If God is good, then we see ourselves as not good or as bad. The only goodness that we have in our lives is the goodness that God put there. And the only goodness that God has put there is what reflects His attributes and actions to the world. Thus for us to be good we need to better reflect the goodness of God in us to the world. We need to let God’s attributes and actions shine through our lives. This is why God has commanded us to love like He loved, to walk like He walked, and to live like He lived. We are reflecting His goodness to the world. On the reverse side we need to realize that when things are bad in the world this does not reflect back on God but it instead reflects on man and his sin. Man was the one who brought sin into the world when we desired to become our own gods. We wanted charge of our own life and in this we brought badness into the world. The result is that creation is under a curse and man is now a slave to his sin nature. Just like God’s attributes reflect goodness man’s sin nature reflects badness. So when we see bad things happen in the world it is only things that are not reflecting who God is and what He has done. It is the part of the world that man has brought in, it is our own nature reflecting back at us.
This brings us to what I think is the ultimate show of God’s goodness: there is still goodness in the world; He did not take it all away when we sinned. The fact that we can see bad means that there is good to compare it to. If the whole world were dark we wouldn’t know what light is. The only way we can discern dark is when contrasting it to light. In the same way the only way we know what badness is, is when we compare it to goodness. In the ultimate act of grace God didn’t take His goodness out of the world when man walked away. By all rights we should have no idea what good is. If we got exactly what we deserved when we pulled ourselves away from God He would have let us completely leave, which would have meant death. However God allowed us to leave and take His goodness with us. We told God that we wanted to be God and yet to do that we had to borrow all the good things He gave us (creation, intellect, life, etc...). And in His love, God allowed us to do this. He allowed us to use His goodness to curse His goodness. Why did He do this? It is a dangerous question to ask why of God, but if for nothing else it was because He loved us. But leaving all of God’s reasons to Himself the fact remains that He allowed us to do it.
So this is where we find ourselves today, using God’s goodness to question and curse God’s goodness. And I think that this has great practical implications for our lives. We need to understand God’s goodness in us and use it to reflect back glory to Him instead of using it to steal glory for ourselves. Our ability to reason, the pleasures of life, our health, life itself are all a part of the goodness of God. But we are living in the “me” society. We have convinced ourselves that I belong to no one but me. I worked hard for my money and it’s mine. Personal property. MySpace. We are perpetuating the sin of Adam and Eve and claiming God’s goodness as our own. The attribute of the goodness of God demands that we see ourselves for who we really are. I am a sinner and all that is good within me is God’s. Not only that but God has told us what to do with the good that He has put in us, we are supposed to let it shine, not for our glory but for God’s. God wants to see Himself reflected in His creation; it is how He brings glory to Himself.
[1]The Holy Bible : English Standard Version., Lk 10:22 (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001).
[2] Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), 58.
[3] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 197.
[4] A.W. Towzer, Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper Collins, 1961).
[5]The Holy Bible : English Standard Version., Php 2:9-11 (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001).
It's funny I was just thinking about this the other day. The problem with the question "If God is good then why evil?" is that it is a straw man argument. As Christians we cannot grant this premise. As you clearly communicate God's goodness or power is not dependent on our perception or even the very real presence of evil.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I had with the Shack is that it grants this premise and then tries to somehow vindicate God to the readers. The conclusion it comes to is thus poor: God cannot prevent evil, but in his loving kindness responds to evil with good. (very open theist) As nice as this sounds, what it really does is reduces God to a weeny who can only chase Satan around reacting to his misdeeds with love. The problem this creates is: If God is so powerless to prevent Satan from causing evil in the first place, then what power does God really possess to respond with afterwords?
Why not rather let the Bible speak for itself. God is good, the very definition in fact, and the world is fallen, sinful, and selfishly grasping at darkness rather than light.