“Safe?… Who said anything about safe?  ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

As a young adult, I read these lines from Lewis’s Narnia series.  One of the greatest struggles in the early years of my life had been questioning the goodness of God.  I’d already seen the bodies of adults and children destroyed by cancer.  Being on the fringes of the lives of those who lost children to tragic accidents, seeing the loss and sacrifices that many had to make, made me even more sensitive to the suffering of others. Which led me to the question, “IF God is good….then why…?” The line from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe made me think. Maybe I didn’t know what “good” was.  So often, we equate goodness with safety or the easy things of life.  But what is good?  What is God’s goodness?  Eve wondered the same thing.  It was for the sake of knowing “good and evil”  that she ate the forbidden fruit. She looked upon it and saw that it was “good to the eyes.”  (Genesis 3:5-6)

Isn’t that where our greatest problem with God’s goodness lies?   We look for things that are “good to the eye” and neglect what is truly good.  Our view of what is good is warped to the point that, oftentimes, we think we can decide what is good or not.  However, there is only one true good.

Since the beginning of time, we have seen God doing good things. (Genesis 1:10).  As He created the world and all that was in it, the Bible says, “Behold, look. This is good.” God is good, and He only gives what is good. In fact, James reminds us that anything good only comes from God. (James 1:17). Knowing these truths, when we seek to find what good is, we really should be seeking who God is because He is good when life is not. 

But what about when bad things happen?  Is God good then?  How can a good God let bad things happen? Look at the story of Job.  God allowed Satan to send hard times to Job.  What kind of good God does that? God was able to allow those things BECAUSE He is good.  It seems counterintuitive.

One of the biggest misunderstandings in the Christian life is mistaking the difference between justification and sanctification. At the cross,  justification was complete, although we often live our lives like justification is an ongoing process.  When we repent, our personal justification is complete, and the sanctification process begins.

What’s the difference? We are justified only through faith by Christ’s work on the cross. If we live our lives working for our justification, we are confused and angry when hard times come.  We look at our works and expect to be rewarded for our attempts, but our justification is complete at the cross.  

When we realize that justification has been fulfilled and that the rest of our lives are for sanctification (becoming more like Christ), we can rest in the trials that come.  They are not punishment for our failures to be made right with God. We are already right with God through His Son. The trials are not based on what we’ve done, although we still suffer the consequences of our sins. The difficulties are not a failure of justification but an opportunity to grow and be more like Christ.

There we can find joy. Trials are not God being unfair to our attempts at justification, but they are chances for us to grow and be sanctified, more like Him.  Confusing justification and sanctification will destroy joy.

Elisabeth Elliot was a woman who suffered many things for the sake of Christ.  She questioned the goodness of God in some of these times, but eventually was able to say, 

“What is good, it is generally assumed, is out to make us feel good.  For example, if it is the will of God, we will feel good about it.  This is not always the case.  Jonah had no good feelings about going to {Nineveh}.”

In times like these, it doesn’t feel like God is good, but notice the key word there. It doesn’t “feel” like it.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things.”  God gave us feelings, but because of the fall, we can’t rely on them.  Feelings are not the same as truth, so don’t measure your faith on your feelings.  

One of the most misconstrued verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28. How many times have we heard, “All things work together for good…”  Note here that it does not say, as many surmise, that things work together for our good or what we THINK is good.  We have to remember that if it’s not for His glory, it’s not for our good. Hard doesn’t mean bad.  Easy doesn’t mean good.  Goodness depends on what is for God’s glory.  When hard times come, the human tendency is to ask, “Why?”  But instead of asking “why?”, which we often don’t get an answer for, maybe we should look to see “where’s the good in this?”  Sometimes, the good may only be in the fact that God is there.  He never leaves our side.  He IS the good.  We are not promised ease, but we are promised that He will never leave. THAT is good.