is God really good?

“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” The all to familiar Sunday school line circled my thoughts as I parked my white Buick LaSabre in the cracked parking lot. Is He really? Is God really good all the time? Or was that just something Christians said when things went wrong because they knew it was expected of them? The thought made me cringe just a little. I was a pastor’s kid; I wasn’t supposed to think things like that.
I slowly opened my door and climbed out of the car. It was always too quiet here. You never heard laughter or even a raised voice. The birds were still there but their chirps were distant, like someone had blocked off the entire section of land with a soundproof barrier. This was the first time I had come by myself, yet, I knew exactly were to go to find the small polished stone forever marking the spot.
The air smelled new from a quick rain shower hours before and the ground was still soft beneath my brown sandals. Then I saw it, etched clearly in stone for anyone who wanted to see, my mother’s name, Nina Nemmers. The fresh daisies in my arms grew heavier with every step I took. Stopping, I knelt down and placed them in front of the tombstone. Time slowed and my legs lost their strength so I sat.
God is good…I pushed the thought aside. How could He be good? How! He didn’t seem good, not after all that had happened to my family. Sitting in the cemetery brought it all back. Waking up to find I no longer had a normal life, I no longer had a mother of my own. At the age of seven I hadn’t really know the full extent of what had happened. I knew my mom had had a heart attach and hadn’t made it through. I knew we wouldn’t be home schooled anymore. I knew my family was sad. I even knew things would never be the same as they were before. But I didn’t know what it would be like years later in my life.

The distant sound of a car engine brought me back to reality. My pants were now wet from sitting on the ground for so long and my left leg no longer felt attached to the rest of my body. Standing brought sharp pain as blood rushed back down my forgotten leg. Absently I brushed a tear from the corner of my eye and numbly started back for the car. It was a two-hour drive home and I needed to get going. How could He be good?
I turned on to the interstate and set the cruise control. Life was so different now. My dad had re-married, consequently I had three new siblings, we had moved to a different town, I was at a new school, we attended a different church, and we just found out my new older brother had a liver disease; the very disease that had taken his father’s life. Maybe the saying should be changed to “God is good, most of the time. Most of the time, God is good.” It made more sense.
Cars sped by me, some blasting their horns in a gesture of annoyance. Looking down I realized my cruise no longer worked. In my own gesture of annoyance I jerked my foot down on the pedal causing the car to lurch forward. In turn my head snapped back then forward only to be caught by the locked seat belt slicing into my neck. Great. Reaching for the radio I blocked out the rest of my brooding thoughts and drove home. I didn’t want to think about a good God anymore.
Within the next couple months my brother grew thin. Noah’s 6-foot body displayed skeleton limbs and sunken cheeks. His once darkened skin now paled with a yellow tint. He was next on the transplant list but each day passed without the call. If God was good, why was He doing this to my family? Hadn’t we been through enough already? If God was good, why is the world so full of terrible things?


I knew I shouldn’t be thinking things like that. I was the pastor’s daughter. I was supposed to understand why bad things happened. But I couldn’t help it. I knew all the answers in my head, but I couldn’t bring myself to truly believe what I knew. People ask those kinds of questions all the time. “Why do bad things happen to good people? Or “If God is good, why does he send people to hell?” or “If God is good, why does he allow killings, diseases, and war?” And I knew how to answer them. It all came down to one thing, the total depravity of man. There are no “good” people. God doesn’t send people to hell they reject him. Men are sinners. But those answers weren’t good enough for me. I wanted more.
My thoughts didn’t change even after Noah received the transplant. Everyone around me kept saying how wonderful it was for God to provide a suitable donor. And how great it was that God was allowing him to recover so well. Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier if Noah hadn’t needed a transplant to begin with? Then I started noticing how my brother was acting through this whole thing. He never complained, ever. Of all people, Noah was the one who could complain a little and no one would have thought less of him. He had needles poking him all the time, he was 16 years old and would have to be on medicine for the rest of his life, and he had lost almost a year of high school because he was in and out of the hospital. Of all people, he could complain, he could be upset. But he wasn’t. And I couldn’t understand that. How could someone go through so much pain, and still rejoice in God’s goodness?

I didn’t get it. I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t seem to put the pieces together. I sat in my room one morning, my hair clinging to my neck from the humidity. It was the first time in a very long time I had opened my Bible for something other than church or school. My fingers touched the thin paper as I closed it softly. I had just read the story of Job. It was all too familiar, like the Sunday school saying. But somehow this time it was different. My heart burned as I thought off all that had happened to my family, all that we had gone through. Glancing down, I touched the journal my dad had given me to read; it was my mother’s. Her last entry had been about her own struggle with understanding God. She couldn’t see the reason for John the Baptist’s death, it seemed so pointless. But her last statement, the day before she passed away read, “All God’s ways are perfect. I must be content with that.” Tears touched my cheeks as my own understanding grew.
My natural tendency was to think that if God was good, and if He truly love me, than He would make my life pleasant. Consequently, when things went well and life was good, I thought of God as good. But when things don’t go the way I planned, or when tragedy happened, I started to question His goodness.
Our current happiness is not a standard by which to judge God's goodness. We are not the center of the universe, not the reference point against which goodness can be judged. We act and think as though God's goodness depends on how well we like what's going on.
We are not in a position to judge the goodness of God's actions. We see too small a part of the overall picture — a picture that covers all of time and all of mankind. The only way for us to know whether God is good is to get to know Him, to experience His character first hand.
When God reveals Himself to us, then we know that He is good. That is our experience of Him. Goodness beyond imagining, goodness that is pure and true and complete. When we know that God is good, then we begin to see Him bringing good out of sufferings and tragedies.