Is God Good – Or Is He Just Big?

When we ask a question like this, we are sometimes asking other questions within that one – things like: 

·             If God is so good, why do evil things happen to me?

·             Does He care – or even know – that I’m hurting?

·             Can I trust Him – He says that everything works for good, but I just can’t see that all the time. 

Perhaps we don’t ask these questions out loud, but all of us feel them in our heart from time to time, especially when evil happens to us without anything good ever seeming to come about through it. Why did my wife get cancer and die at the age of 45? What do I make of the fact that we did our best to give our children a godly upbringing, but our daughter is now on drugs? Why didn’t God stop that robber from breaking into our house and ransacking it? The list is as long as the individual stories each person has to tell. We have all had experience with evil that we can’t understand, we wonder where God was and if He even cared, and we become unsure about whether or not He can be completely trusted.

            To understand about God’s heart for us, we need to look at His story, starting way back at the first part that we have any record of. In that beginning, there was God, and only God (Genesis 1:1),[1] and He was love (1 John 4:16).[2] God has always been love and always will be love. That is who He is. But how does He show that love, and can His love be trusted? Or is He somewhat fickle? Of course, when we ask things like that, what we are asking is: “How does He show that love to me, and can I trust His love? Or is He somewhat fickle – sometimes there for me and sometimes not?” Well, let’s look at our beginning and find out.

            When did we have our beginning? Surprisingly enough, not when God formed us in our mother’s womb. In fact, all of human history began long before God made the first man and woman. According to Ephesians 1:4-6: “For he [God the Father] chose us in him [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” Or, as The Message says it: “Long before he [God the Father] laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” The words that God spoke to Jeremiah are true of us as well: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5), and “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). God has been in love with us from all eternity. He made us because He already knew us and loved us.

            Which is an amazing fact, because God had already been betrayed in His love, yet He dared to try again. Before making people, God had already made angels. Angels lived with God in a perfect heaven, they were created perfect, and yet not all of them remained content. Some of them, whose leader was Lucifer, began to feel that God was holding out on them, that He could be giving them more power and more honour but was withholding those things for no good reason. So they rebelled. Betrayal happened in the heart of the universe, and heaven erupted in war. Why? Because of the same question that we find ourselves asking today: “Is God good, and is He good to me?” The story of this war is found in Ezekiel 28:11-19,[3] which talks about an earthly king, but in terms that reveal it is talking about more than that king, but also speaks of a ruler in heaven who waged war – and lost. Yes, Lucifer and his army lost, and were thrown out of heaven. Lucifer then acquired the name Satan – the adversary – the one who always fights against God and what God is doing. This event caused the all-important question to take on even bigger proportions. It became: “Is God good, and is He good to me? Or is He just big and powerful, throwing His weight around when things don’t go His way?”

            Enter the first man and the first woman – God again opening up His circle of love to others. Why did He again create? Why people? Were we plan B, something like a date God made while hurting and on the rebound? A fill-in for the missing angels? Not at all. Remember, He knew us, loved us and chose us from all eternity, from before He made anything at all, including the angels. We were never plan B, God’s second choice as the objects of His love. We have always had first place in His heart. In fact, if you look at the reason God made angels, it was to serve us (Hebrews 1:14): “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” God loves His angels with a perfect love, but it’s not angels who will be His bride – it’s us, the ones who give our love and our lives to His Son Jesus.

            And so, planning for the wedding day of His Son, God made the universe that we know. He created a special planet that we call “earth” and brought into being many living things, and He created a paradise home called Eden, ready for the first man and woman – Adam and Eve. Finally, it was time. With the greatest of care, God formed a man with His own hands, and breathed His own breath in him to bring him to life. This was the first being God had made like Himself, or, using the Bible’s words, in God’s image. Then He tenderly caused this man to fall asleep, took a rib from him and healed the wound, and just as carefully and tenderly made a woman. He brought the man and woman together into the first family and gave them the most extravagant engagement present ever: the earth and everything in it. He said to them (Genesis 1:28): “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Psalm 115:16 says: “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to man.”

            In other words, God, even after experiencing betrayal at the hand of His creation, created man and woman, and He gave them freedom to choose to love Him, knowing that they not only might – but would – choose to turn on Him. God, who is the beginning and the end (Revelation 21:6),[4] who lives outside time, could see the coming betrayal. He could see it from all eternity. From eternity past, He knew of the human rebellion against His love, and at the same time, loved us enough to make us anyway. What kind of person would do that? What kind of person, indeed! Only a person who is completely love. God is all about love and about intimate and loving relationships. Which means that this is what all of life is about. Have you ever wondered why men and women fall in love and get married? Because people are like God, who made Himself a bride and loved her for better or for worse. Ever wonder why parents have children and sacrifice their lives for those children? Because God loves to increase His family, and is willing to make any sacrifice for that family and to endure any heartache on behalf of that family.

Enter Satan. Satan was looking for some place to rule, preferably some place which would help him get back at God. Obviously, fighting God head on wasn’t about to work. But there could be another way to get back. In a corner of the universe called earth, there lived a man and a woman. God had given them a place to rule. And God seemed to be madly in love with them. If Satan could seduce them to his side, he would have both things he wanted – he would have a place to rule (because then Adam and Eve would belong to him), and he would be putting a knife in the tender heart of God.

God watched as his enemy made his approach to Adam and Eve. God had warned them not to eat the fruit of one tree in the garden – the tree He called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – warning them that they would die if they did. As Satan made his approach in the form of a snake, God stood aside. Love is only love if it is freely given. And God wanted Adam and Eve to love Him. Knowing what was about to happen, and how this couple would betray Him, God’s heart crumbled as His enemy entered the garden home of His people.

Satan, too, knew of God’s warning to Adam and Eve. He watched for them to get close to the forbidden tree, then he caught their attention. His idea was to try to convince them of the same idea that he had had when he started the rebellion of angels in heaven: God is not good; He’s holding out on you. He said to them (Genesis 3:1): “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Translation: “God is pretty stingy with you guys, isn’t He?” Eve answered. She wasn’t willing to go as far as Satan would have liked, but she followed his train of thought a little way. She said (Genesis 3:2): “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” God had never talked about touching the tree – only about eating from it. Eve was starting to believe the exaggeration. However, she was right about the penalty. God had indeed said that they would die the very day they ate from that tree, if they ever decided to do so. Satan picked up on that and tried again to convince Eve (and Adam, who was with her (Genesis 3:6)) that God was not as good as He was making Himself out to be: “‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Eve thought about that. Her heart was already beginning to turn. And God, who created her to be free in her love, did not interfere. Would she continue to love Him? Or would she turn? The story continues: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Betrayal again! God’s heart broke, as He sent Adam and Eve from their garden home. But He gave them a promise: One would come who could finally crush Satan the serpent under His feet and undo everything that had been done this day.

In the meantime, catastrophe had happened. Adam and Eve’s spirits died. That part of them that allowed them to communicate with God and to know Him was mortally damaged. They indeed began to know good and evil, but they had lost the divine power within themselves to choose good and reject evil. Moreover, since they were out of touch with God, they could not draw on His wisdom to know what really was good and what really was evil, and they began to do evil while thinking their lives were OK. With human evil came pain, wars, conflict, family breakups, hatred, jealousy, and all the other forms of tragedy that beset the human race. People had indeed fallen from a great height to a great depth.

This was a tragedy that took in the whole human race. When God created, He made living things to “reproduce after their kind” – in other words, their young would be like them. So, when Adam and Eve had children, their children were like them (Genesis 4:3)[5] – spiritually dead, unable to connect with God, deceived in their belief that they could really know good and evil on their own, and without power to overcome evil (hence wars, divorces, crime, petty jealousies, fights, arguments, etc.), and living in a world whose spiritual head was now Satan (and you wondered why there is so much evil in the world).

We understand, from the defects in human lives and from the horror of a great deal of human history, what the effect of Adam and Eve’s betrayal of God has meant for us. But what did it mean to God? God describes it this way (Ezekiel 16:1-52): 

1  The word of the Lord came to me:
2  “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices
3  and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
4  On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths.
5  No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
6  “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!”
7  I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.
8  “‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.
9  “‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you.
10  I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments.
11  I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck,
12  and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.
13  So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen.
14  And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.
15  “‘But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his.
16  You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. Such things should not happen, nor should they ever occur.
17  You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.
18  And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incense before them.
19  Also the food I provided for you--the fine flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat--you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord.
20  “‘And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough?
21  You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols.
22  In all your detestable practices and your prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, kicking about in your blood.
23  “‘Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign Lord. In addition to all your other wickedness,
24  you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square.
25  At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by.
26  You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your increasing promiscuity.
27  So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory; I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were shocked by your lewd conduct.
28  You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied.
29  Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied.
30  “‘How weak-willed you are, declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute!
31  When you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute, because you scorned payment.
32  “‘You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband!
33  Every prostitute receives a fee, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors.
34  So in your prostitution you are the opposite of others; no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you.
35  “‘Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord!
36  This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because you poured out your wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity with your lovers, and because of all your detestable idols, and because you gave them your children’s blood,
37  therefore I am going to gather all your lovers, with whom you found pleasure, those you loved as well as those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and will strip you in front of them, and they will see all your nakedness.
38  I will sentence you to the punishment of women who commit adultery and who shed blood; I will bring upon you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger.
39  Then I will hand you over to your lovers, and they will tear down your mounds and destroy your lofty shrines. They will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you naked and bare.
40  They will bring a mob against you, who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords.
41  They will burn down your houses and inflict punishment on you in the sight of many women. I will put a stop to your prostitution, and you will no longer pay your lovers.
42  Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you; I will be calm and no longer angry.
43  “‘Because you did not remember the days of your youth but enraged me with all these things, I will surely bring down on your head what you have done, declares the Sovereign Lord. Did you not add lewdness to all your other detestable practices?
44  “‘Everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb about you: “Like mother, like daughter.”
45  You are a true daughter of your mother, who despised her husband and her children; and you are a true sister of your sisters, who despised their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.
46  Your older sister was Samaria, who lived to the north of you with her daughters; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you with her daughters, was Sodom.
47  You not only walked in their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they.
48  As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.
49  “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
50  They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
51  Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done.
52  Bear your disgrace, for you have furnished some justification for your sisters. Because your sins were more vile than theirs, they appear more righteous than you. So then, be ashamed and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous. 

Sounds like the angels’ rebellion all over again, doesn’t it? God loves people – people rebel – God gets angry and lets them have it! He’s big and powerful, alright. But what does this passage say about His goodness? Well, the rest of the Ezekiel passage says this (Ezekiel 16:53ff): 

53  “‘However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and of Samaria and her daughters, and your fortunes along with them,
54  so that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done in giving them comfort.

55  And your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to what they were before; and you and your daughters will return to what you were before.
. . . . .
60  Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.
61  Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you.
62  So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord.
63  Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.’” 

What does all this mean? It means that God loved people enough to make them His bride – to wed them and love them forever. He had walked with the first man and woman in the garden, enjoying their company, and they His. They had talked together and laughed together and loved together. God had made and given to them an entire planet out of the extravagance of His love. And He had given people their freedom, at great risk to His own heart. Then people turned on Him and broke His heart. They ran off with His greatest enemy, who didn’t love them at all, but only used and abused them to get at God. God was forced to let His bride go because that is the price if you want love to be freely given. But God kept trying to win back the hearts of His people. He sent prophets to warn them of His enemy’s real intentions. He tried to remind them that the rebellion in their hearts – if not remedied – would result in death – both death to their bodies one day, then the second death.[6] People were made for better than that. They were made to rule with God, at His side, as His beloved. Finally, after sending many prophets, God sent the best He had. He sent His Son Jesus, who was part of Himself.[7]

Was Jesus God’s last desperate attempt at reconciliation? Actually, not. Remember that God had known about human rebellion from all eternity. He also knew from all eternity that Jesus would be sacrificed to heal the effects of that rebellion (Revelation 13:8).[8] Why? Because the unavoidable result of separating yourself from God is death (Romans 6:23).[9] God is life (John 14:6).[10] Apart from Him, you die. We have all turned on God in some way (Romans 3:23).[11] So we are all dying. Death is our present reality and our eternal destiny. There is no way we can escape this – unless someone else dies in our place – someone whose life is of great enough value to be an acceptable substitute for every person who has ever lived and who ever will live. Only God can offer a life like that. And offer it He did.

As soon as Adam and Eve turned on God, He made them a promise, which people held to for decades, then centuries, then millennia. Sometimes they lost faith that this one would ever come, and they turned their backs on God. Other times, they stood strong and looked to Him to rescue them from their evil and the horror of living eternally apart from God.

Finally, the day came. Jesus entered the human race as a baby – put in the womb of His mother Mary by God the Holy Spirit. He grew up and taught people about God. He showed what God was like through how He lived. And how He lived was to always be doing good (Acts 10:38).[12] Jesus was God saying: “My heart is good. I have only love in my heart for you. I love you so much that I came to die for you.” And die He did – with all our rebellion and evil on Himself – reaping the consequences into Himself so we could go free (2 Corinthians 5:21).[13]

That was 2,000 years ago. Jesus died, but He returned to life three days later, proving that the job He had come to do was finished, and people could indeed live lives free of death. He says to all of us (John 11:25-26): “‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’” And He continues to invite people into His family, to share life with Him as His beloved bride for all eternity. When we choose that life, He takes away all our sin and all our death. Just like in the Ezekiel story, He cleans us, and dresses and adorns us in extravagant clothes and jewels, and makes us fit to live as royalty with Him.

All of history is heading toward one thing – Jesus’ wedding day (Revelation 19:7ff.).[14] People were birthed out of divine love, and their history is meant to end in divine love. Unfortunately, by our own choice, it can also end in eternal death. But those are the only two possible endings. And God, who desires the better ending for us, still calls. Everyone is welcome into His heart and life. His call is: “‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness’ (Jeremiah 31:3), and ‘I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ (Jeremiah 29:11). I’ve proved it. Yes, I’m big and powerful, but I would never, never use my might and power to hurt you or to force you. My heart for you is only good. Jesus proved that (1 John 4:10;[15] 1 John 3:16a).[16] So come. Let Me love you for as long as we both shall live – which, in My family, means forever.”