Vision Logo Circle
Vision Logo Circle

Is God Good? Pt 1

by | Tue, Feb 15 2022

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There is a growing number of church denominations around the world who have changed their official policies with regard to all manner of moral and spiritual issues be they political, moral or spiritual. For example, the view of marriage between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others is now no longer accepted among some denominations. Divorce is now accepted as commonplace among many denominations. Some ministers now refuse to even use the word ‘sin’ in their preaching because they think it’s too negative and God is too loving to want to deal with sin.

Where once no church leader would have questioned God as absolute creator, now many churches and church leaders are officially embracing evolution as the source of our origins and claim the account of creation in Genesis is nothing more than fables expressed through poetry.

There are many seminaries now that don’t teach the Bible as the infallible Word of God and that really, the Bible is just a man-made book that can’t possibly be taken seriously or considered divine, or the source of absolute truth and to believe the Bible is the source of absolute truth is the height of arrogance.

A growing number of seminaries and church leaders teach that the Bible is a man-made book and not divine in origin and authorship, that the miracles listed in the Bible are untrue, they’re merely folklore. They deny the creation, they deny the virgin birth of Christ, they deny the resurrection, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, they deny the divinity of Christ and you come to the point where you wonder why they claim to be Christian at all when they don’t believe anything the Christian faith teaches!

One of the really huge denials about the Word of God is the Bible’s stand and commitment to both the land and the people of Israel. The fact that there are a growing number of church denominations around the world that have now engaged in political opposition to Israel, and who boycott the Israeli nation by divesting their financial investments from Jewish and Israeli companies and actively lobbying against Israel is quite shocking.

There are some difficult things in the Bible that God commanded His people to do that are hard to reconcile. God commanded whole people groups or cities to be wiped out, and that’s hard to understand. Of course, a little research and study of history makes those commands more understandable, but very few people ever take the time to investigate these difficult commands.

When you boil the entire argument down you’re left with one question; “Is God good?” If so-called believers question and doubt so much of the Bible, you have to question His goodness as well.

When you listen to the arguments of Atheists and Agnostics, they tend to focus on things in the Bible, such as God commanding an entire people group being wiped out or demanding execution for what we think are seemingly minor infractions or for allowing slavery to take place. Their issue is really that they don’t believe that the God of the Bible is a good God and therefore, they cannot under any circumstances believe in such a God.

They wrongly believe that their own moral measuring stick is straighter and better or more moral standard that God uses. They accuse God of being evil and commanding evil from His followers. They’re not alone in their views either because many believers can also believe these wrong assumptions about God as well. We have to return to the question as the root of these wrong assumptions….”Is God good?”

Luke 18:18-19, ‘A ruler questioned Him (Jesus) saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.”’

We’ve talked many times about Jesus being God and therefore, we understand that Jesus is good because He’s God. But there are many people, Atheists, Agnostics, nominal believers and real believers who can’t reconcile the Jesus of the New Covenant and the God of the Old Covenant. They see Jesus as good and loving but God as brutal, hateful and cruel.

However, in this conversation between Jesus and the ruler, Jesus declares that no one BUT God is good. He was absolutely talking about the God of the Old Covenant…His Father. Jesus said that God…IS…good!

You can read through almost every book in the Old Covenant where God warned His people that judgment was coming unless they repented and when judgment finally did come, it was always with the promise, that in spite of their sin, God would restore and bring His people back into relationship with Himself. In fact, His judgments often became the inspiration that sparked repentance and restoration in His people.

Hosea 3:5, ‘Afterward (that is after judgment has taken place) the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and they’ll come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.’

In fact the argument could be made that if God didn’t exact judgment, it would actually prove that God was not good. If a human judge didn’t enforce justice and deliver judgments against criminals for the crimes they’ve committed, we would say those judges were bad, that they are wicked and perpetuating injustice among our societies. Why is it we have an expectation of human judges to enforce the law and punish the wicked, but we expect God to turn a blind eye to wickedness altogether in His human creations?

We’ll continue to look at many instances when God has only sent judgment after giving ample opportunity for men to repent, and then going even further to express His goodness to mankind.

 

Shalom

Mandy