How do I know God is good?
Question:
Hello there,
I need help with many spiritual questions.
I was baptized into Christ a few years ago and had been exploring the spiritual aspects of life for many years before that. While at times I have experienced fleeting moments of assurance, most of my Christian experience has involved negativity and anxiety.
I believe the main reason for this is that I radically question everything in my life that is important to me, and I get completely absorbed in 'what ifs'. This is something I deal with on a daily basis and find very difficult to control.
Obviously, I am writing this email as my constant questioning has bled into my faith in a negative way, and I need help because I know I shouldn't be feeling or thinking this way, but I really struggle to control it.
I am going to formulate a few questions that have been really bothering me, and I would appreciate any attempt to answer them or nudge me in the right direction to find the truth.
- How do we know God is good instead of evil and is deceiving us into thinking he is good? Is His goodness something we can know, or do we have to accept it by faith?
- Are faith and certainty the same thing? Can we know with absolute certainty that God exists, or is there still a personal leap of faith we need to make in light of the evidence that suggests He exists?
- Finally, I struggle to reconcile God’s unconditional love with His wrath in my mind. When I sin, I seem to flip-flop between two extremes! Either I see God forgiving me and looking at me in a truly loving way, or I see Him looking down on me in disgust and being extremely angry at me.
Any advice on this would be great!
I know this is a lot, and I apologize for that. I have reached the point where I can no longer try to sort these problems out in my own head and really need some seasoned wisdom.
Thank you so much!
Answer:
It appears that you are trying to approach Christianity from the point of view of someone with OCD. A person with obsessive-compulsive disorder doesn't want any risks in his life. Belief has no place in an OCD view of the world because faith is the confidence one has in the logical conclusion drawn from the evidence in the world. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
Faith is not a black-and-white (you have it or you don't) issue. Faith is something that grows as you continue to look at the evidence and see that it all points in the same direction. "We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater" (II Thessalonians 1:3; also II Corinthians 10:15).
Next, we need to define our terms. What is "good" or "evil"? One way to define "good" is that it is something that is beneficial. When God created the universe, on each day He declared that what He made was good (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). What He made was beneficial. Evil is that which causes harm. Jesus mentioned that you can determine a person's character by looking at the results of their actions (his "fruit"). "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit" (Matthew 7:16-18). All that the Bible attributes to God ultimately benefits humanity (I Timothy 4:4). While wickedness is punished, the result for society is that it is improved. God's laws limit what we may do, yet those limits keep us from harm. "Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the LORD'S commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?" (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). Therefore, by looking at His creation and His laws, we see the benefits of what He has designed. This matches the Bible's declaration that God is good. Jesus declared that only God is truly good (Mark 10:18). People make mistakes. Even with our best intentions, we are not consistently good.
How do we know God exists? We can examine the evidence. See
