June 2 sermon - Living Between Good and Evil: Is God Really Good?

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever. Cry out, “Save us, O God our Saviour; gather us and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to Your holy name, that we may glory in Your praise.” Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. (1 Chronicles 16:34-36)

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      These words were spoken by Sharlene Bosma, and as some of you may have noticed from some of my recent writings, they moved me very deeply and touched a chord: 

 "On May 6 our lives changed forever. What happened to him was not God's doing. I know that if it wasn't Tim it could have been another man and another man's family. What if they didn't have the support that we have. I couldn't be here without all of you. Evil came to pass. We have seen there is far more good on this earth. I believe, especially in this case, good will overcome the evil." 

      Sharlene Bosma is, of course, the widow of Tim Bosma, who was apparently kidnapped and murdered on May 6. She spoke them at the memorial service held in his honour. When I first heard the words on video, and then read them again later in print, they literally sent shivers up and down my spine. The words express such faith in both God and in goodness, in the light of such a monstrously evil act. And they made me wonder how we can even begin to deal with questions of good and evil when most of us at least (I hope) haven’t been face to face with evil in this direct a way. How do we live between good and evil? How do we interpret and understand and come to terms with the concepts of good and evil? That’s going to be my theme for the next month: “Living Between Good And Evil.” Life between two such contrasting things is, at the very least, interesting. When I was in university, in my late teens and early 20’s, we lived in a bungalow in Scarborough on the east side of Toronto. On one side of our house was a nice, friendly, quiet family who would do anything for their neighbours. On the other side was a family who stuck to themselves and we saw rarely, aside from their teenage son - who insisted on playing drums (usually with their windows open) at all hours of the day and night. That may not be a classic example of living between good and evil, but it helped me understand the dilemma of living in an environment where you have contrasting forces on either side of you!

      Today, to start, I want to consider the question of God’s goodness. “Is God Really Good?” It’s a question that’s been around for a very long time. Centuries before Jesus was born, the Greek philosopher Epicurus offered a series of questions and answers that still cause people to question or even lose their faith. I hear this quoted by atheists all the time:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then where does evil come from evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

      Others find the depiction of God (especially in the Old Testament) to be problematic - and those who wrote the Hebrew Scriptures certainly attributed a lot of unpleasantness to God. So I wanted to show, by using an Old Testament passage, why I believe God is good, even in the face of a world that does sometimes seem to have too much evil - and too much evil sometimes committed by those who claim to be followers of God! The people of God in the Old Testament surely had more than enough reason to have given up on God. 300 years of slavery in Egypt, followed by 40 years of seemingly aimless wandering in the wilderness of Sinai, followed by never-ending wars as they sought to settle the land they believed should be theirs, defeat and exile at the hands of Babylon. They could have given up on God. They still could. If you remember the movie “Jakob the Liar,” set in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, Robin Williams’ character of Jakob says at one point, “I still believe we’re God’s chosen people. I just wish He had chosen someone else.” This is the reality of being the people of God, living between good and evil - on the one hand, faith; on the other hand, doubt. But then I come across this little verse in 1 Chronicles - written after the exile, so after most of the horrendous experiences God’s people had in Old Testament days at least: “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.” And in those 13 words, I learn a lot about the goodness of God.

      Understanding God’s goodness first results from our actions. “Give thanks to the Lord.” Some might find that strange. Why should we begin with giving thanks, if we’re not convinced that there’s anything to be thankful for? Basically, it’s because I believe that our actions open us to fuller and healthier relationships with others and with God. Sometimes, when I talk to people who for some reason are carrying a burden of unforgiveness (meaning that someone has done something to them and they can’t let it go; they can’t forgive the person) I suggest that they begin a regular pattern of praying for blessings to come to that person. It sounds odd, and it certainly sounds hard. Praying for someone who’s done something terrible to me? Why? It’s because it lets you go; it lets you move on with life. It’s very difficult to stay angry with someone if you’re actively praying for them. Praying frees you from anger; praying has the potential to bring reconciliation. I think that’s why the verse begins not by speaking of the goodness of God, but by telling God’s people to give thanks. Expressing thanksgiving to God, even on those occasions when we may feel little to be thankful for, breaks down the barriers that we sometimes erect against God even without realizing it, it builds our relationship with God and it helps us to see and understand God more clearly. Psalm 34:8 tells us to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” and in reflection on that concept, 1 Peter 2:3 says that we will get rid of all sorts of bad and evil things in our lives if we taste “that the Lord is good.” Psalm 135:3 tells us that praising God is both good and pleasant. Praising God and giving thanks to God opens us to goodness, even in those hopefully rare occasions when we feel ourselves surrounded by evil. Jesus exorcised demons according to the Gospels not with magic spells or incantations, but by approaching those possessed not in judgment, but in love and compassion and in the name of God. In prayer and thanksgiving, we discover the power of God, and we discover the power of good over evil. In other words, in prayer and thanksgiving, we discover, as 1 Chronicles 16:34 goes on to say, that God “is good.”

      But what is goodness? Jesus Himself said that “only God is good” but what is goodness? Is it just the absence of evil? It has to be more than that, because if you simply take something away then all you have left is a void. Goodness is active. Our contemporary society tends to define goodness simply in terms of doing nice things, being inoffensive, not challenging or disagreeing, putting on a sometimes false veneer of friendliness. And sometimes those things might be helpful and worthwhile. A false veneer of friendliness, for example, might be better than an open display of hatred and hostility! But I don’t think any of that is what’s meant when we call God “good.” In the Gospel passage when Jesus spoke of only God being good, it was in combination with his teaching to a rich young man who wanted to know how to gain eternal life - how to be close to God, in other words. Jesus equated goodness in this case with giving to those in need. We’re not talking here about tithing, or contributing to the offering, or giving to charity. Jesus spoke about giving everything and holding nothing back. The rich young man went away sad, and most likely we would too, because probably none of us can do that. The reality is that life in this world requires certain things. Food, at least a little bit of money. Something. If you don’t have certain things, you have to find a way to get them. True goodness means being willing to give up everything for those in need. And that has to be a choice. True goodness can’t be coerced, because coerced goodness isn’t good. Coercion itself would be evil on the part of God, and so God gives us the right to choose, even though some will make the wrong choice, and some will even choose evil. We can’t choose perfect goodness. But God can. And God does. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” and, in Philippians we’re told that Jesus “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing.” There we see true goodness - giving without counting the cost. And God’s goodness is reflected by God’s love, which, we’re told by the last part of our verse, “endures forever.”

      God’s loves perfectly. God’s love is God’s nature, and it’s a reflection of God’s goodness. God is able to love perfectly and freely and completely because God has no needs. God loves us because God chooses to, and not because God has a need to do so. Without needs and being completely self-sufficient, God is also freed from worry about being rejected. Isn’t that what so often holds us back from truly loving others? It’s the fear of being rejected. It’s the fear of perhaps being embarrassed. God has no such fears. God is simply free to love. God simply is love. God simply loves. That’s what makes God good.

      If we define goodness a simply making all the bad things go away, then I suppose God doesn’t qualify. I don’t think goodness even means simply doing nice things - not even for God. Bad things happen. Evil exists. But if we define goodness in terms of living rightly - completely unselfishly and always for other? Well - that’s real goodness and - THAT’S GOD!!!