As you look around at the state of the world, do you find yourself wondering where God is in all of it? Do you question his character or qualifications for running this place when the state of affairs under his watch looks like… this?
How a loving and powerful God could allow evil and still be good has been a question that has plagued human hearts throughout history. We cannot minimize the real and complex experience of pain with oversimplified answers, but in difficult places, greater understanding can bring a measure of comfort. And this is something we can understand, particularly in our day: Goodness requires allowing someone their own free will.
Goodness beckons, but it does not force. God is love and he made us for love, but he knows even better than we do that forced love is not love at all. Our Creator lovingly stacked all the cards in our favor to entice us toward goodness- toward him. Ultimately, though, he left us with a choice, because he is a good and kind Shepherd-King, not a dictator, and he made human beings, not robots.
The truth is, God didn’t cause the mess we’re in. We did. The fact that we doubt his existence and blame him at the same time is evidence of the very brokenness our rebellion caused. Sin deflects blame and creates relational distance, and that’s what we do, isn’t it? We all run from God, even those of us who want to follow him, and we act incredulous that he could allow all this evil and suffering. The evil and suffering each of us has willfully contributed to in one way or another.
And yet, our benevolent and faithful Father took it upon himself to bridge the divide that we caused. He was willing to go to the ends of the earth to heal us, restore our relationship with him, and get us out of the mess we’re in. The cross is the proof that he would do anything to get us back. Anything except force us to receive him.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
I believe God is good, and I believe that if we would trust that he is good, we would find ourselves on the path to restoration. The Bible tells us that doubting God’s goodness is what caused everything to fall apart. It makes sense, then, doesn’t it, that trusting his goodness is the key to healing what’s broken? To fix the world, we need to fix our faulty view of God. We need to trust him. The sorry state of the world is not evidence of God’s character, it’s the evidence of ours, of what happens when we walk away from his goodness.
That is why I will never stop talking about the goodness of God, even in the face of pain. I learned recently that there is a word for this: theodicy. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.” Sin and the pain it causes can blind us to the truth. It can tell us that it makes no sense for God to be good. But it lies, as it has from the beginning, and the core lie it whispers is that God is not really good. That he does not really love us. We must fight this lie with all that we have, or be swallowed by hopelessness and despair. We must fight it with the truth that God is good and he loves us fiercely. It really is the fight of our lives.
Jesus made our healing possible at the cross, and he has a plan to restore all that’s broken, a plan that will not be thwarted. But in order for you and I to be a part of that, we need exercise our free will and choose to do what we didn’t do at first: we need to trust him. We need to trust what he did at the cross, trust what he says he will do in the future, and believe in his goodness enough to draw near to him today and do what he says. Not because we have to, but because he is good.
This is faith, and it is what our good, good God beckons us to still.
Leave a Reply