More than....

The psychiatrist Gerald May writes:

" I know that God is loving and that God's lovings is trustworthy. I know this directly through the experience of my life. There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant that I would not be hurt. But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain - it embraces them both."

Somewhere along the way western thought has hijacked a silly belief that God's goodness is defined by his ability to make us comfortable. This proposition thus served as the premise for the philosophical question, "If God is good, why do bad things happen?"

The question therein tho should not be as to whether or not God does conform to our standard of Goodness, but rather "is our standard of Goodness Valid?".

I would argue that the biggest problem with such a premise tho is ...the bible. We know God is good because of the bible, yet we have an unbiblical standard of goodness. We question God when things dont go our way, because we have a standard of goodness that means suffering would never happen.

How can we hold an unbiblical presuposition of goodness to a biblical definition of God?

Can it be justified that for God to be good and loving excludes him from allowing pain and suffering? Well if it were so, i suppose the cross would have never happened. Yet we know the reason the suffering on the cross happened was BECAUSE God is indeed Good.

God truly is good. It seems many just have a false definition of goodness. Somewhere in the midst of it goodness must be more than us being comfortable, more than a lack of suffering, more than health and wealth.