Is God Really Good All the Time?
You hear it all the time.
You might even say it often. "God is Good all the Time!"
Okay, so here's the string of my thinking: If God is everywhere
present, and God is good all the time, then poverty and disease
are good?! Okay, I can probably decide for myself, rationalize
it in some way, that poverty and disease are 'good' in some way,
but why on earth would I want to?
Okay, so what's another
way I could look at this? Emmet Fox says this: '[Some people]
believe God is intelligent but not good - I know people would
not dare to say that, but people who think that God sends sickness
and trouble really believe in a God Who is not good.' (The
Ten Commandments)
Whoa! According to Dr.
Fox if I believe that God sends trouble, then I believe that God
is not good all the time!
Do you see the intellectual
tornado that I involved myself in? The point here is not that
I want to change the way you see God. My goal here is to go within
and get some major clarity on my own beliefs.
Is God really good all
the time? How can I be expressing God (omni-present) and be expressing
disease at the same time? Can disease really be of God? (And by
'disease' I really mean 'dis' 'ease', in any area of my life.)
How do I see God and what, if any, is God's role in my life? Is
God a Partner, a Referee, a Judge, an Onlooker, or what?
As with so many things,
I don't believe that there's a 'right' or a 'wrong' way to answer
these questions. But I do think that gaining clarity and insight
about these questions makes me a brighter light in the world.
So, if you would like a
short exercise in clarity, take a few minutes and journal some
answers to the above questions. Your answers might be more surprising
than you think!
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Copyright 2004-2006 Shelly Walker, All Rights Reserved