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I have learned something about some modern atheists. Some modern atheists not only say that the Christian God does not exist, they go further to make the claim that even if he did exist he would not be good. When I didn't know God existed, I still gave God the proper honor of being respectable and good if he really did exist. God cares about your desires, motives and the way you think. It is one thing to say,”Hey, I don't believe God exists” It is entirely another thing to go,”I don't believe God exists, but if he did exist, I have some problems with him.” There is a danger in having problems with God because left unchecked it can grow like a weed into hatred for God. God has been hated by sinful beings from the beginning of time. Jesus himself went through a long period of being hated by the people who should be loving him and ultimately was hated so much that people demanded that he be crucified. Jesus is forgiving though, and forgives even those people who brought him to the cross, so he has forgiveness for even those who hate him today. In this article, we will cover some of the glorious things that make God good, and we will debunk false ideas that he is not good.
Before we get into discussing about why God is good: I think I understand why modern atheists are trying to claim God is not good. I think some(not all atheists) want to justify breaking away from the freedom that God grants and would rather be a slave to sin. In order to shirk off God's love, they must first convince themselves that God does not actually love them or that God is not the wonderfully good being that the Bible and people claim he is. This is perverted logic, but it makes sense. It is akin to playing the shell game in their mind. They may think, assuming God can not be disproven: God only has a 1 in X chance of existing based on what I have experienced. They may say with a 1 in X chance that I'll get to hang out with an awesome being that loves me for eternity, I guess I should keep my actions on the safe side and avoid sin. Once you introduce the possibility of God being a jerk lets say, the shell game changes as if the shuffler is crooked and does not even give you a winning choice. While the chances of living with a loving Creator for all eternity sounds great, multiplying by one minus the probability that God is bad lowers your probability for winning. “An eternity with a good God” = “Probability of God existing “ * (1 -”Probability of God being not good”) Once the overall probability of living with a good God gets so low, they can no longer value God as a meaningful factor to influence their life. To believe the lie that God is not good is the easiest and conscionable way for an atheist to revel in sin and break free from the freedom Jesus gives. Their deceived conscious may even make the additional step,”God isn't even good, so why should I be?” This article is going to explain how God is good, to help some people from using false thoughts to enable them to sin.
The coolest thing about writing this article is that I'm not trying to prove God is real. Even though I know God exists, I don't have the best arguments to prove he exists. It makes me happier that I have better arguments explaining God's goodness. This article assumes God is real and that the Bible is his record of history. I'm not arguing that God exists here, we're saying that he does. This article is simply helping you discover if the Biblical God is good.
It is important you understand that God is good even if you're an atheist because it can still help you avoid some sin. And if you avoid sin, you avoid the consequences of sin. As I said in the first paragraph, God judges your thoughts and motives. A man who is educated on God being good can err on the side of caution, whereas a man who never chose to learn about Jesus can fall into sin easier. It is true that Jesus can forgive any amount of sin. But there are many sins that have real and lasting consequences that God may not heal in your lifetime. The wages of sin are death. Romans 6:23 For sin pays its wage - death; but God's free gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord. Maybe you cannot know that sin can harm you because you cannot know if God is real or not, that is fine. I'm just theologically explaining why it is good for even atheists to know that God is good: It can save them from harm even though they're not a Christian.
First lets define good and evil. I wrote a short article about it -here-. But in case you're not interested in visiting a hyperlink, here is the gist of it: Good is the desire to see other beings prosper and see other beings happy. Good beings love other beings, and good beings help each other. Evil is the desire to use other beings for personal gain and not care what they feel. Using these definitions for Good and Evil, we'll investigate whether God is good.
Next let us look at God's redemptive plan for humanity. God created the world. Satan put sin in the world so it is in a state of decay. God's son died for everyone's sins so we aren't fated to go to hell. When we die, we get to go to Heaven with God and all his people forever. The awesomeness of what is in Heaven cannot be imagined, and there will be no suffering in Heaven forever.
Okay, lets review these statements. #1: God Created the Heavens and the Universe. I have no idea what it is like to not be living. The memory of what happened to me before I was born is blank to me. In fact much of my early years is not remembered at all. How can I tell if it is good to be created or not? Well I sort of enjoy my life on Earth, so I'd say it is good that God made creation and me as part of it. Not everyone enjoys their life on Earth as I do, but this should not be thinking God is bad. Even if you hate your temporal life in this world, you still get to be without suffering forever with God when you die. So existing gives you the promise of eternity.
#2 Satan put sin in the world: God did no wrong. God is not responsible for people disobeying him and harming others. God is not responsible for sin. Sure, some jokers out there like to say that because God created free will that by extension he created sin, but isn't it a far better thing to be able to choose your actions than it is to be a puppet? God did not want people to rebel against him, so God does not want anyone to sin. People who constantly disregard what God wants and never repent go to Hell by their own choice. People who sin, but realize they were in the wrong to do bad things to others, they can come to Jesus and be forgiven. It is very important to submit to Jesus as we'll discuss deeper in this article as that is the only way for a utopia to exist.
#3: Now the next thing God does is die for everyone's sins. It is not pleasant to give up Heavenly glories to come to suffer and die. God really put himself out there and as such, it is an example of his great love for us. You can say you love someone, but to live and die for them is real expression of that love. God needed to be without sin so he could have sovereignty of judgment. If Jesus sinned at all, he could not convict anyone with the same sins as him. This is the same reason no man other than Jesus is fit to be judge. Even if all someone did was lie, they could not convict other liars, even if that liar killed millions of people also. Jesus is the only fit judge, and he earned that through his death on the cross.
#4: When we die we get to go to Heaven. All people are able to go to Heaven if they choose Jesus as their savior and repent of sins. It is a free gift that we don't have to pay for. This should be one reason why God is good: We don't have to do anything to get to Heaven. But we have to stop being evil to our fellow man and love him. After all, its really practice for what we'll be doing in Heaven anyway. What if someone does evil to us, and we do good back to them? Wouldn't some people think they're being cheated in some way? Well God wants us to learn the concept of forgiveness. Jesus suffered and died on the cross without doing anything but good to others. Jesus forgave us as an example for us to forgive others. Even if we're wronged by every person we meet, we're still supposed to be good to others. There is no line where we say,”Okay, no more mister nice guy.” We're supposed to be good in every occasion, especially when we're wronged. The history of our rights and wrongs on someone else can go forth into judgment day.
Heaven is also a gated community. If you accept Jesus as Lord, you get to go into Heaven. If you reject Jesus as Lord, you get to go where everyone who rejects Jesus goes. It is the biggest choice any being can make. Do you want to go to God who is love, who is merciful, who is generous, who is forgiving, and who gives peace? Or do you want to go to a place where there are beings who hate love, mercy and peace? Hell sounds awful even flames are not stoked. Hell could be hell just from the beings that are there. Some people say God is not good because he allows beings to suffer forever. But they fail to realize that people go to Hell through their own stupid choice. God would be some sort of tyrant if he did not give people the choice to leave his presence. God is good for letting beings of have an alternative to Heaven.
I never want to leave God's presence. I know God is real, and that he is good, and he is with me right now. God blesses me with happiness any time I ask him because he has a close personal relationship with me. This is a bit of a tangent from talking about God being good. I'm just professing how much I value my relationship with God(I do that sometimes because he enthralls me). My relationship with God means more to me than anything on this planet. Sure there are some things that come close like the plight of those less fortunate, but without God, they'd have no chance. I love God is what I'm saying. This is the same as saying,”I love love.” for God is love. If you hate the concept of love, there are not words to describe how much pity I have for you, but at the same time I don't want to live with other beings who'd want to do me harm. I'm glad God created Heaven and Hell. Heaven shows he God is a good being to allow all loving beings the ability to live in peace. I think elementary logic dictates that a place devoid of good beings will not be a peaceful and happy place.
People wonder why we have to submit to God for his Heavenly government to work. It really makes sense. God is perfect. God is good.(I know this is what we're investigating, but lets assume it for now because we're thinking of what will make a perfect ruler) God is loving. God is just. God wants what is best for everyone. Typically you hear of dictators as bad because they are so easily corrupted. But if you had a dictator that made perfect decisions, that could be a good thing. There is no such thing as a perfect dictator in human history, and that is because all men are sinful and fallible. Jesus was perfect, and some expected him to rise up against Rome and create a world government. Jesus had more important things to deal with on his first trip to Earth, but in his next return, he will create a perfect government. All governments until this time have had undeniable flaws, I don't think anyone would argue with me here. But if a good and perfect being was ruling, we could have a utopia. His followers could create sub courts, but if people continually appealed, they'd get Jesus' ultimate authority. Since everyone in Jesus' kingdom submit to his will, there will be no further appeals. This is why someone who does not submit to Jesus cannot be in his kingdom, the government would not work. You either need to submit to a loving, good and perfect ruler, or you're in rebellion of peace.
Okay, now that the preamble is done, lets look in depth at everything that makes God good throughout the Bible. I will start with the most undeniable things that show that God is good to build a foundation then work my way through the more misunderstood passages of the Bible to show that God is even good where people claim he is not good.
The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament. The process by which salvation comes to man did not happen until the New Testament though. After Jesus died for our sins and went to Heaven with authority over men's souls, things are mostly straight forward in Christian philosophy. Before Jesus went to the cross, don't you think God could have done basically anything and it be good because in this case the ends justify the means? Jesus dying on that cross means that every human who ever walked on Earth can get to Heaven, and without Jesus' sacrificial death, all men were destined to Hell. I can't think of anything more important than this. I'm of the reason that any amount of finite suffering is worth the Eternal salvation of another being you love. So if one person is worth a great deal, how much more is the billions of souls? I think the magnitude of the difference between Heaven and Hell for all mankind is something most people cannot weigh, it is just too great to consider. But that it is the weight that Jesus had to bear on his journey on Earth.
Since it was so important for Jesus to be successful, why would God not prepare for it? God did prepare for it. A few things God did along the way are found in the Old Testament. God is not a liar, he is truthful, yet in being truthful, isn't it possible for misdirection? The Old Testament holds a great deal of information, and in it, God even explains about Jesus in it. God doesn't give Jesus' exact name(though he does give him some titles) but he explains the life, suffering and death that he is going to have. And not all of this is evident unless you go comparing Jesus' life to the Old Testament. Since evil beings did not know what Jesus came to do, they willingly came to see Jesus die. Colossians 2:15 GNT And on that cross Christ freed himself from the power of the spiritual rulers and authorities; he made a public spectacle of them by leading them as captives in his victory procession. If God did a rush job on his redemptive plan, it would have not have been as powerful. Was God to have Eve bear Jesus and then have Cain kill him off? No. There is too many problems with that. But when Jesus was born in the era of Roman conquest, he confused his spiritual enemies into possibly thinking that Jesus was going to organize the world by force as God had the Israelites do in Canaan. The Old Testament and God's actions was set up such that Jesus could fulfill his destiny of dying on the cross at Calvary. John the Baptist explained that preparation must be made for the savior even in his own time. Luke 3:5 GNT "Every valley must be filled up, every hill and mountain leveled off. The winding roads must be made straight, and the rough paths made smooth.” How much more important was God's own preparation. If you cannot read the Old Testament with this knowledge, perhaps you too were tricked into thinking God isn't the same person he is in the New Testament. Don't feel bad though, all the evil beings in rebellion with God were tricked by this too.
So now that you see the Old Testament as a preparation for the ushering in of the New Testament, I hope you're not as quick to judge God. Remember too that, God is the one who judges, not man. If you bring a case against God, you're going to lose because you don't have the intellectual capacity to understand everything in reality let alone God's actions. Job brought a case against God when Job was suffering on account of the Devil, and when God finally appeared to Job and asked Job if he understood the wonders that God created, Job admitted he did not and in his humble submission to Godly authority, Job was blessed exceedingly. God is our Father, and as such, we should see the difference in knowledge. Young children don't teach their parents calculus when the young children don't even know what numbers are because their thoughts can't conceive of these things yet. In the same way, we're like young children when it comes to the knowledge of God. If you don't know the whole that Goes into God's actions, you cannot sit in judgment condemning what God has done.
Surely you know that someone with imperfect information is not fit to be a judge. If so, just skip to the next paragraph. Lets say there was a judge that felt that everyone who kills should also be killed. Because this imperfect judge doesn't have the maturity to understand that some people may kill to defend themselves or some may accidentally kill someone, this imperfect judge doesn't understand the proper sentence on those convicted. Here is an example: A maniac jumps in front of someone driving their car down the road. The man driving the car kills the man with the suicide attempt. In a court with an imperfect judge, the man driving the car would get death, and that is not justice. So you see, imperfect judges who don't see the whole situation should not be presiding over a case.
Now, let us look at people who try and judge God. They may think of themselves as knowing enough to know cosmic rights and wrongs of reality. A person who has a case against God may say something similar to,”A loved one of mine who did no wrong died a senseless death. God does not love me. God is not good because of this.” My heart does go out to people like this. It is a very common occurrence, and without a great portion of grace it cannot be dealt with. The problem though here is that the person takes it a step too far and blames God for being in the wrong. God does everything for a reason. Our minds are too limited in scope to understand why God does something, so the proper reaction is,”A loved one of mine who did no wrong died a senseless death. God is good and merciful so I'll be able to see that loved one again when I get to Heaven.” Here is just one possibility: What if by dying, your loved one brought someone's mind to think about death and into acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior? A temporary suffering helped another person(s) to shed infinite suffering! I don't know about you, but I'd die if I knew my death was the reason someone got to get to Heaven instead of going to Hell. Any noble person would welcome such a death. Death isn't a bad thing because we get to experience a much better existence in Heaven where there is no suffering and there is joy without end.
What qualities of God do we learn about in the New Testament? :
1 John 4:16 “And we ourselves know and believe the love which God has for us. God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in union with God and God lives in union with him.”
We learn that God not only loves us, but God himself *IS* love. Isn't love a quality of a being that we could call good?
Mark 10:18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone.”
Jesus claims that God is good. Jesus was perfect and without sin. There isn't anything logically wrong with taking the word of perfect being to help our own understanding. After all, if Jesus knew that God was not good, he probably wouldn't be taking orders from him at great personal cost. Jesus is the good shepherd and he is to lead us so we should listen when he speaks. If Jesus says that God is good, we should put weight on it.
John 8:12 “Jesus spoke to the Pharisees again, ‘I am the light of the world,’ he said. ‘Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.’”
God is light. Your own actions should be right such that you wouldn’t mind if someone else saw what you were doing. When you fully understand God, you should be like a shining beacon which illuminates the way. Also you must tell everyone you can about Jesus Christ. People who are evil do not want to come to the light because they don't want people to see of their evil ways. Because God is light that is another reason he is good.
John 11:25 “Jesus said to her, ’I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will; never die.”
Jesus is the resurrection and the life. This means we may die, but God will bring us back to life. If we believe in Jesus and accept him as Lord, we won’t have to die more than one time. If the end times come, we may not even have to die once. Following the ways of Jesus will bring us to the true way to live, and life in its fullest. Sin is deceitful in that it may make you happy for a bit, but then leave you low and closer to death. Jesus is truthful in saying that he is life because the more you follow Jesus, the better you feel about yourself. The biggest high you can get from sin is nothing compared with the constant feeling of happiness God can bestow upon you when you’re doing right. What most people can reason is that you’ll feel good about yourself for doing good deeds and having a good conscious. What people fail to realize is that God is all powerful, and can send down blessings of happiness and pleasure to you also.
Matthew 6:14-15 GNT: "If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.
God forgives sin and wants you to forgive others. By influencing people to be forgiving of one another, he encourages peace on Earth. This is something a good being would do.
Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach his message: "Turn away from your sins, because the Kingdom of heaven is near!"
Sins are not something that wrongs God. Sins are things we do that wrong our fellow man. When Jesus tells us to repent from our sins, what he is saying is to be good to our fellow man. A good being would encourage people on Earth to be good to each other.
There are numerous points in the New Testament where Jesus heals people of disabilities and sicknesses. Jesus does not use his power to control people, but he uses his power to free people. This is a sign of selflessness and shows that he is good.
Matthew 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, "Love your friends, hate your enemies.' 44 But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.
It is very radical of Jesus to say to us to always be loving to others even when they hurt us. I think it is a big challenge to love others even when they despitefully use us. It makes sense though if you were good to the core, you'd do good to everyone because that is who you are. God is good, and we should aim to be like him.
Matthew 10:41 Whoever welcomes God's messenger because he is God's messenger, will share in his reward. And whoever welcomes a good man because he is good, will share in his reward.
God is generous and rewarding. He especially rewards people who are good to his messengers. The wise man on Earth knows that nothing here lasts for eternity. There is no trophy one can earn that keeps you from the grave. However, there are things you can do on Earth that will give you permanent rewards in Heaven. You cannot buy your salvation with good deeds for that would be impossible. You r salvation is a free gift from Jesus' sacrificial death. Yet, you can strive to get rewarded in Heaven by doing good things to others. Because God is generous and rewarding to people who act from their love and kindness, I say he is good.
I really feel like I just touched the surface of the goodness of God. If you haven't done so, read the New Testament (and if you get a chance Old too) so you can learn for yourself the goodness of God. I know God is real, and if it is within your capacity to believe me, I hope it increases your faith. My claim, which I think I reasonably illustrated is that God is good. Even if you don't believe me that God is real, keep it in your mind that he is good. I think anyone who reads the New Testament will come away knowing that Jesus and his Father are good beings even if they don't know if he is real or not.
-Jim Sager