Blog
What is Good? 1/5/24
shareRecently, my 13-year-old daughter hit me with a deep question.
“Dad. If God created everything, that means He created Satan, right? After He created everything, the Bible says He said it is good. If God created Satan and Satan brought sin and evil, how could God say it was good?”
I asked her to consider this question “What is good?”
How do we define “good”?
The standard criteria for many is if something pleases us and happens the way we want it to, it is good.
Scripture tells us that The Lord is good.
In Matthew 19:17; Mark 10:18, and Luke 18:19 Jesus was approached by a man (ruler) who addressed Him with “Good master!”
Jesus asks him why he chose the word “good.” He states that only God is good. Now, Jesus knew that He was God, but was challenging whether or not this man also saw Him that way.
In essence, if you call me good, you must believe I am God because only God is good. He then goes on to highlight the other “good” things that this rich man had that he was unwilling to give up to follow Jesus.
When we get this truth settled in our hearts, we will have less disappointment, emotional turmoil, and general frustration no matter the circumstance.
Corrie Ten Boom learned this deep lesson during the Holocaust as she went through unimaginable suffering and watched her precious sister die.
God is not good because . . . . God is simply good. Good is defined and embodied by God.
In Understanding and Trusting Our Great God (pg. 165), we read, “God’s goodness is sometimes manifested in ways that perplex us, that disturb us, that even cause us to weep and grieve. Yet the faith that saves us is the same faith that calls us to trust him, even when his goodness ‘is as curious as his disappointments.’”
“Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.” Psalm119:68
God sees, knows, and loves in a way we cannot. When we learn to see things His way and to fill our heads with His word and our hearts with His love, only then we will begin to understand what is good.
We either trust Him or we trust ourselves more.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” The good here is God’s good rather than our own version.