God is good – all the time; all the time – God is good. We have all heard it said many times. We have possibly spoken those words ourselves, especially in times of personal deliverance from harm, sickness, trouble, and distress. I oftentimes read statements on social media in which some well-meaning spokesman for God will praise Him for His act of goodness in sparing them from a storm, and yet, their neighbor down the road loses everything as a result of that very same storm.

A tornado destroys everything within a mile-wide, three mile long space. Houses are wiped off the face of the earth, lives are lost, leaving dozens reeling in the aftermath. But, because I lived just outside the path of destruction, I lift my voice and praise the Lord for His goodness. The hurricane strikes the Texas coast instead of the Louisiana coast. Countless hundreds of thousands are spared. But a couple hundred miles to the west, it looks like a war-zone. God is good because He spared the residents of Louisiana. But what about the residents of Texas? Was God not good to them? Did He not care about their well-being? Was He moved with compassion toward one, and anger toward the other?

The treatment for cancer provides healing for one, while another languishes in constant suffering, with no improvement from the treatment, and eventually dies from the disease. Most births take place with no difficulties, but yours is the one which is riddled with complications, and your child is born with serious, life-threatening birth defects which will cause life-long health issues. The one says “Thank you, God,” while the other cries out, “Why, God?”

Is God unfair? Is He unjust? Is He uncaring? Does He simply leave us to our own devices to figure out these complexities of life? How are we to trust a God who seems to be so flippant toward His human subjects?

Let’s get just a little more specific. Let’s hypothesize for a moment, just for argument’s sake. Let’s suppose for a moment that there are two families living next door to one another. One family is totally dedicated to the Lord. To the best of their ability they serve the Lord through the various ministries of their church. They are also engaged in other charitable causes which are of great benefit to others. The other family is not dedicated to the Lord. As a matter of fact, they are professing atheists. They have no regard for God or the teachings of God’s word. They live their lives in total recklessness, and actually defy openly those who would try to share with them the message of God’s love and grace.

In this hypothesis, let’s further assume that a fire ravages this neighborhood. However, in what appears to be a rather freakish change of wind direction, the home of the professed atheists is unscathed, while the home of the dedicated Christian family is completely destroyed. What’s worse is that, unknown to the parents, their five year old son runs back into the flames trying to save the family pet. The son, and the pet, die in the fire.

Even though this is a hypothesis presented for the sake of discussion, this scenario has played out countless times. This seeming incongruity leaves us confused and perplexed. And yet, it is an everyday occurrence, showing itself in different ways and intensities. So, what are we to make of what appears to be an unexplainable flaw in God’s character?

Well, we have to understand first and foremost that there is no flaw in God’s character. If it is true that God is good, then it must also be true that He is good all the time. If He is not good all the time, then He is not good at all, but rather He is very, very bad. So, let’s assume for the sake of our discussion that God is indeed good.

If that assumption is correct, then it must also be correct that the problem is not with God’s goodness, but rather with our understanding of His goodness. Think for a moment about this statement: God’s goodness is not to be defined by the good things He does. Before you read further, please read that statement again. Now, once again. Please try to delve into the depths of the implications of that statement. Don’t hurry past it.

You see, the problem is that we often rejoice in God’s goodness when we are the recipients of good things. But when the good things cease, and the troubles begin, and the distress is overwhelming, and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel – as a matter of fact, the tunnel of darkness has no end – then God is no longer good.

Now comes the platitudes, the clichés, the well-meaning statements that are meant to uphold God’s reputation. We come up with explanations. We say that God works in all things for good, which is a clear Biblical truth. By that, I assume we mean that God is not necessarily good, but that He has the ability to bring good out of the worst of circumstances. Now it is absolutely true that He can bring good out of what appears to be bad. Time and space will not allow us to share the multitudes of examples of how God has made something beautiful out of the most ugly and horrific of circumstances.

But that is really not the issue here. The issue is not whether God can bring something good out of something bad, but rather it is whether He is good even in the midst of those events in which nothing good seems obvious. Like the little boy who dies in the fire; the child born with the serious birth defects; the house that is destroyed by the storm while the one next door stands firm; etc. etc.

To give an answer to this, let’s turn our attention to the event of Jesus’ death on the cross. What appears to be a glaring example of God’s lack of goodness results in the greatest act of goodness the world has ever seen. But that is getting way ahead of the story. Long before the cross, the Bible records God’s act of creation. He created a good world, into which He placed man, the crown of His creation. At the conclusion of God’s creative work, He looked at His masterpiece and pronounced that it was very good.

God made it very good, but into the midst of this pristine paradise was introduced something very bad – evil. And sin came about as a result of that evil. And that sin caused what was very good to become very bad. No longer was the creation a paradise, but it became more and more corrupted by this state of evil. Did that ever increasing state of ‘badness’ mean that somehow God had become bad? Did it result in God’s goodness being diminished? Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, this is where God’s goodness shines the brightest.

God, having the ability to know all things, knew before He created the world that man would rebel, that evil would proliferate, that what He had created as very good would indeed become very bad. And yet, because He is very good He provided a means of bringing good out of the bad. He decreed a plan through which the brokenness of man, and the introduction of evil, could be reversed. This, however, would call for the most unbelievable act of God, far greater than the act of creation itself. That was the event of the cross. The worst moment in all of history was actually the best moment. It was the moment in which God’s goodness was seen in the face of the man’s badness.

God’s good plan resulted in the provision of salvation for sinful man. However, this act of God’s goodness did not eradicate the results of man’s badness and the effects of evil on this broken planet. The earth still languishes under those horrible, residual effects of the introduction of evil, and will continue to do so until that day which God has appointed to create a new heaven and earth. For those who have believed God’s report (recorded in the Bible) and have embraced by faith this act of unbelievable goodness, they will see good everywhere they look, because they know that God is still displaying His goodness in all things.

Rampant evil can easily persuade us that everything is bad. But we must look above and beyond the obvious. We must, as the Bible teaches, live this life by faith, and not by sight. The sights and sounds of everyday life can be so discouraging, but the promises of God give hope in the midst of despair. By faith, we are given the ability to see the end of the tunnel. This life is not all there is. See the light at the end – that light is Jesus.

Yes, indeed, God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good!