Pursuing Veritas

This post originated with a message at Arise Church.

In this scene from God on Trial, Rabbi Akiba questions the goodness of God, concluding that, no, God has revealed that He is not good.  If you get the chance to watch this full scene, it’s powerful and emotional, made all the more palpable by the fact that it takes place at Auschwitz. Finding themselves in a horrible situation, the Jewish prisoners in this scene ask themselves if God is good.  And it’s an entirely appropriate question.

It’s a question that we should ask too. Is God good? If He’s good, why have such terrible things happened in history? If He’s good, why is there so much suffering and death? If He’s good, why pandemics, wildfires, unemployment, war, divorce, abuse, broken relationships, and death?  Is God good?

It’s a question that we need to answer. And not just because the answer is likely to influence whether we believe in God or not—but also because what we think about God’s goodness impacts how we view Him and how we live our lives. It’s not enough to just assume that God is good—the situation that we find ourselves in here demands that we wrestle with the question. So, is God good?

We’re thinking about God’s goodness as part of our ongoing series God is. There are lots of competing and confusing ideas out there about God and the goal of this series is to help us understand who God is and what He has done in our world. The past couple of weeks we’ve looked at how God is love and how in Jesus God is man. But today, we turn to a more difficult topic: the goodness of God.

There are a number of places in Scripture we could look as we think about God’s goodness. But one particularly good passage is Psalm 136, which is where we’re going to be this morning. But before we dive into that, two quick things for you to be aware of about the Psalms.

First, the book of Psalms is found in the Old Testament—in the first part of the Christian Bible—and for centuries it was the songbook of the People of God. Unlike most other biblical books where chapters and verses divide what were originally unified texts, the psalms were largely composed individually—so when you go to read and understand a psalm, it’s like looking at the lyrics to a standalone song.

And second, as songs, the Psalms can be pretty lengthy and repetitious. The longest chapter in the Bible, for instance, is Psalm 119, which contains 176 verses and about 2500 words (which is right around how many words as are in this post). Psalm 136 is also fairly long and contains a lot of repetition. The psalms are songs, after all, and as we know, songs often repeat themselves (as in, well, pretty much every even remotely popular song today).

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His merciful kindness endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods. His merciful kindness endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His merciful kindness endures forever. to him who alone does great wonders, His merciful kindness endures forever. who by his understanding made the heavens, His merciful kindness endures forever. who spread out the earth upon the waters, His merciful kindness endures forever. who made the great lights—His merciful kindness endures forever. the sun to govern the day, His merciful kindness endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His merciful kindness endures forever. to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt His merciful kindness endures forever. and brought Israel out from among them His merciful kindness endures forever. with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His merciful kindness endures forever. to him who divided the Red Seaasunder His merciful kindness endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His merciful kindness endures forever. but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His merciful kindness endures forever. to him who led his people through the wilderness; His merciful kindness endures forever. to him who struck down great kings, His merciful kindness endures forever. and killed mighty kings—His merciful kindness endures forever. Sihon king of the Amorites His merciful kindness endures forever. and Og king of Bashan—His merciful kindness endures forever. and gave their land as an inheritance, His merciful kindness endures forever. an inheritance to his servant Israel. His merciful kindness endures forever. He remembered us in our low estate His merciful kindness endures forever. and freed us from our enemies. His merciful kindness endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His merciful kindness endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His merciful kindness endures forever.

This Psalm is all about God’s goodness, in the Hebrew idiom of the author, His enduring merciful kindness. It’s always difficult to describe a God who’s transcendent and different than us. But verse 1 frames this psalm’s perspective on who God is, and then the rest of the psalm demonstrates how and why we can know that.

And what is the main message of this psalm concerning who God is? Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His merciful kindness endures forever. The psalmist wants us to see the goodness of God. He wants us to remember God’s enduring merciful kindness, which has been on display throughout history. Look at Creation, look at the Exodus (when God freed Israel from Egypt), look at how God brought Israel into their inheritance, the psalmist says. Who God is has been on display through God’s actions in the world. And if you look at God’s guidance of His people, Israel, you should conclude that God is good. In short, the psalmist calls us to grasp the goodness of God. That is, don’t just think of God as good; don’t just have a category in your head that says, “God = good.” Grasp the goodness of God—see it, experience it, and remember it.

That’s the perspective of this psalm. But let’s return to our guiding question: is God good?  It’s one thing to sit in church on a Sunday morning, hear a psalm, and say that God is good. But it’s an entirely different thing to maintain that thought throughout the week and throughout life in a world that seems to be anything but good.

A few years ago, I read the late Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great. I don’t recommend it to you (there are more substantive books worthy of your time), but it serves as a helpful illustration of the kinds of questions that people often raise about God’s goodness (or lack thereof). In particular, two of his chapters stood out to me: “The Nightmare of the Old Testament” and “Religion as Original Sin.” They stood out because, in brief, these are two of the most common challenges to the claim that God is good: the contents of the Old Testament and evil that occurs all around us in day-to-day life. I want us to think about each of these challenges for a moment.

So first, the challenge of the Old Testament. The Old Testament—the first part of the Christian Bible—tells the story of God’s people, Israel. The first chunk of the Old Testament talks about origins: how the world came into being, how Israel became a people, and the law and culture that made Israel unique among the nations. The next chunk of the Old Testament tells the royal story of Israel’s monarchy, which reached its zenith with Kings David and Solomon and then declined into exile and subjugation at the hands of ancient empires. The third major chunk of the Old Testament are the writings of the prophets, those who carried God’s messages to God’s people, calling them back to God and reminding them of how they should live.

Today, most people don’t have too many problems with that third section—the prophets. But the accounts of the origins and royal history of Israel contain some less than pleasant stories that raise some questions about the God who directed these events. In fact, Psalm 136 mentions a couple of these instances. Verse 10 mentions him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, a reference to the Exodus story where an angel of death killed all living firstborn things in Egypt. Likewise, verses 17 to 20 mention the conquest of Canaan: to him who struck down great kings… and killed mighty kings… Sihon king of the Amorites… and Og king of Bashan… and gave their land as an inheritance. This is a reference to when Israel invaded, waged war against, and dispossessed a number of nations who were living in the Promised Land.

Now, warfare is part of any nation’s story. But what makes the Old Testament accounts so difficult for some people is that Scripture consistently shows God as commanding or carrying out this warfare and killing. As one example, consider Deuteronomy 20.16-17 (NIV), where God says, in the cities and nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave anything alive that breathes. Completely destroy them…. The question that many people—including Christopher Hitchens—raise here is, “can a God who says that actually be good?” Can a God who commands genocide be a good God?

The other challenge from Hitchens’ book is the challenge of the evil that occurs all around us every day. This is the experience of evil in the world, the question, “why is God letting bad things happen to me?” Why are more people today suffering from mental health issues than perhaps ever before? Why is our cultural and political climate so divisive and hate-filled? Why can’t I get my head above water financially? Why did God take my loved one away from me so soon? Why can’t I shake my addiction? Why doesn’t God seem to be answering my prayers? Why am I in so much pain all the time? Why is this happening to me? Why God?

Is God good? Do the contents of the Old Testament reveal a good God? Would a good God allow the evil that occurs all around us? Coming to terms with who God is isn’t something I (or anyone else) can do for you. Only you can determine where you stand with who God is. Only you can make sense of God’s character and goodness for your own worldview.

Now, there are counters to the challenges that Hitchens raises. I’ll keep them brief so as not to bore you, but if you want to dig deeper on any of this, let me know, I’d love to talk with you further. Let’s not leave this morning hearing only some challenges to the goodness of God—let’s go with some tools to make sense of those challenges too.

In response to difficult passages in the Old Testament, I’ve found no better resource than Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. This book walks through the sorts of questions that people like Hitchens raise and helpfully addresses them. It’s not an answer book that deals every possible issue, but it does provide some principles for making sense of these difficult parts of the Old Testament. Principles like the importance of reading in context, understanding the use of Ancient Near Eastern warfare terminology, finding categories for retributive justice, and ultimately understanding what the Old Testament means in light of the message of the New Testament. It’s a helpful tool and I encourage you to check it out.

In response to the challenge of the evil all around us, the overall teachings of Scripture provide an explanation. Why do bad things happen? Well, bad things happen to us because we live in a fallen, distorted, sinful world and we’re fallen, distorted, sinful people who are bent toward evil and routinely suffer the consequences of both our actions and the actions of other fallen, distorted, sinful people.  But let me make another suggestion: a grand explanation like that isn’t the only way to make sense of bad things that happen to us or our loved ones. Another way to grapple with those things is to take seriously the message of Psalm 136.

Like many other parts of Scripture, Psalm 136 points to a key truth: that God loves us, cares for us, and wants to bring us to wholeness in Him, no matter what evil we encounter in the world.  The message of this psalm is that even when we’re surrounded by sin, sickness, and death, we should grasp the goodness of God. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore our problems; but it does suggest that we should put those problems in perspective and remember the other side of the story. To grasp good things that God has done. To look to God’s goodness in creation. To remember what God has done for us in the past. To recall how God cares for those in need and rescues the downtrodden. And above all, to remember that God didn’t abandon us to the problems of this world, but instead sent His Son Jesus to come into our broken, evil-filled world in order to save it—and save us.

I have working theory: that most of the time, people who have questions about the goodness of God have encountered some serious evil. I know that was the case for me. I started wrestling with the question of if god is good a number of years ago after I had a traumatic, abusive incident with an adult from my church who I should have been able to trust. That experience and its fallout raised a lot of questions in my life, one of which was, “if God was good, why would he let this happen to me?”

As I wrestled with that, I found that theological, philosophical, and logical explanations only helped to a point. It was actually when a mentor helped me think of all the good things that God has done for me in my life—when I remembered not just the bad but also good—that I recognized that God could be good. It was only when I grasped the goodness of God—particularly in the good news that He sent His Son to die for me regardless of whatever guilt or shame I bore—it was only when grasped that goodness that I begin to see the truth.

There is wickedness and evil in the world. Like the victims of the Holocaust in our opening clip, that reality stares us in the face every day. And in light of that evil, it’s easy and appropriate to wonder if God is good. But to only consider what is wrong with the world isn’t the whole story.  The whole story includes the fact that God has reached into this world to defeat the things that are wrong with the world. King Jesus has come to save us! And now, you and I, we have a chance to experience the goodness of God—not just in this life, but in the one to come.  Won’t you give God a chance to be good?