GodQuest by Sean McDowell & Stan Jantz

Author:Sean McDowell & Stan Jantz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, Apologetics
ISBN: 9781935541295
Publisher: Outreach Publishing
Published: 2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

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4

The Question

What you believe about God’s goodness defines your relationship with Him.

In this life, there are times of pain and suffering that can be very difficult to understand and accept. During those times, you can choose to trust God even when you don’t understand, or you can turn your back on Him and walk away.

Chapter 10

DEALING WITH DOUBT AND

QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD

There’s a little prayer that children have been reciting before meals for generations. Maybe you were taught this prayer:

God is great, God is good,

Let us thank Him for our food.

Besides the fact that “good” and “food” don’t actually rhyme, there may be something else that bothers you about that childlike prayer now that you’re grown up and thinking for yourself. You may agree that God is great, but the “good” part may be a bit of a problem for you. It isn’t that God isn’t good with respect to His holiness. But how about God being good with respect to His goodness? It’s difficult for us to relate to God’s perfection, but goodness is another matter. We have a hard time trying to be holy, but we can conceive of being good—if by good we mean decent, fair, and helpful. We all try to live good lives by exhibiting those qualities, and if we’re being honest, we like to think that God is doing the same thing. We want Him to be decent, fair, and helpful. Yet when we look around and notice all of the injustice, suffering, and just plain evil in our world, we wonder: How can God be good if there’s so much bad?

If this question has caused you to have doubts about God, don’t feel guilty. Doubt is a natural part of human existence, and doubt about God and His ways is perfectly natural. So don’t worry if you have doubt in the course of your GodQuest. In fact, we would be worried if you didn’t have any doubt, because that would likely be an indication that you’re not thinking deeply enough about God.

The Benefits of Doubt

Fuller Theological Seminary recently conducted a study of young adults who left the church after high school. The researchers came to this conclusion: “The more college students felt they had the opportunity to express their doubt while they were in high school, the higher [their] levels of faith maturity and spiritual maturity.”1

In this chapter, we’re going to struggle with three tough questions about the goodness of God, but first we want to spend some time on doubt. When it comes to God, doubt can be both good and bad. It’s a good thing when you doubt or question something you hear or read about God that just doesn’t seem right, and when you take it upon yourself to verify the truthfulness of the statement. When the Apostle Paul and his ministry partner came to the region of Berea to do some teaching, the people “received the message with great eagerness.” But they had some doubts, so they “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).

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