The last post was a little long, so I decided to split it up. I want to circle back to one key idea that is found in our question, “If God is good…”. It is the notion of justice that is found in each of our hearts. Any situation that causes us to question God’s goodness is preying upon our understanding of God’s justice. In other words, our reaction becomes, “If God is good, this shouldn’t happen.” We feel like justice has been undermined in some sense. Whether it is seeing the innocent being taken advantage of, the rich becoming richer at the expense of the poor, or a child becoming terminally ill, our reaction often hits upon the theme of justice. If we were in charge, those things wouldn’t happen. I touched on this a little bit in the last post but the reality of the situation is that God is at work even in the midst of awful circumstances.
On a different note, however, I want to play out our hearts a little bit more. I want to step back and ask the question, “What if God intervened exactly the way we demanded every time we saw something we didn’t like?” You probably don’t see a problem with this. The world would be a better place if God did exactly what you expected all of the time. The problem is that if we step back a little bit, this really isn’t what we want at all. We want the comfort of knowing that our family, our friends, and our problems will be taken care of in the way that we want and expect. But do we really want God to intervene everywhere that suffering and evil are found? Your gut reaction is probably, “Yeah, I would love that!!!”
The problem is that we don’t want God to forcibly change our hearts every time we have a thought or action that is contrary to Him. We want Him to change everybody else, conforming them to our idea of what justice is. We want others to change while God gives us the comfort of being free from suffering. But we don’t really want God to change us by force. We don’t want God to force change except for when we want Him to. We are control freaks. We are sinners and we want God to do things our way.
If you think of the example of Job (strongly suggested here), everything about our sense of justice screams in frustration at the thought of a righteous man, Job, losing his family, his wealth, and his health in the span of a few hours. Our hearts cry out, “He is righteous. He doesn’t deserve this.” In Job 40, we see a different picture. Job has voiced his frustration that the righteous suffer. His friends have told him that he needs to repent because surely sin is at the heart of his personal suffering. Beginning in Job 38, God calls Job out. God identifies Himself as the Creator and Sustainer of all things and asks if Job has the knowledge to be God. In Job 40:7-9 we see a key in God’s questioning of Job:
“Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His?
There is no clean way to question God’s goodness without elevating ourselves and debasing God. This isn’t to say that there are extremely, extremely difficult situations and realities of life that might tempt us to believe that God is not near or that God does not care. My prayer for you is that as you face these incredibly dark and trying realities that you might seek the Lord and find Him rather than crying out for an idol of justice that is carved from your own image and your own thoughts. Be encouraged; God is not idle. He has intervened and He hears your cries. He is good and He is still doing good. Look no further than the cross on Calvary and the blood that cleanses sinful hearts.
