The Mystery of Good

People who struggle with God send me the most frequently used argument AGAINST God. They ask, “How can God be good when there is so much bad going on in the world?” Or some variation on that theme. They think they have an unassailable argument against there being a God but what they have is betrayed a belief in GOOD.

Anyone who uses the argument that there is too much BAD in the world for a GOOD God to exist is in reality telling you they believe in GOOD and they believe God should measure up to the standard of GOOD. My rhetorical question back to them is: why do you believe there should there be ANY good in the world? Where did you get this sense of GOOD?

Where did this mystery of GOOD come from? We all know of it, we call can’t quite define it, but we are all aware of it somehow. Tell me how a humanist, atheist or an evolutionist would explain the presence of GOOD in the world?

Every Christmas I have a battle with my wife over what kind of gift giving we should have with our children and grandchildren. Should we give them something they NEED or should we give them something they WANT. To me, this struggle is evidence of the mystery of GOOD. How can you really explain Christmas without the mystery of GOOD. Now I don’t mean the Jesus being born thing; that has evolved into a commercial mess and there are more important days on the Christian calendar like Easter and Ascension Day. What I am talking about is the DESIRE and JOY that comes from giving gifts to each other. Christmas is really more about GIVING of gifts than the RECEIVING of gifts. Again, it is the most callous among us who don’t get a deep joy out of watching children open presents.

Explain that to me in humanist, atheist, or evolutionary terms. Sure, we want to give gifts to see our children succeed in life and all humanists do too; but it is more than that, there is a JOY in giving that can only be explained by the mystery of GOOD.

This year I will again pay money along with a few other strangers to go to a foreign country, work for free, sleep on a hard floor, put up with snoring strangers, attempt to speak a foreign language, eat food that doesn’t quite agree with me; all because … why? Because of some evolutionary instinct to help others? NO, because I want to do GOOD.

After 9/11 there we were a nation with an overwhelming sense of GOOD and a need to do something GOOD. It was short lived, but it was there. In any crisis you see that sense of people rushing to do GOOD. Why?

I cleaned my fish tank and totally disrupted the world of my fish. It was as if a tsunami devastated their world. But I did not see the other fish rushing to support each other. Some of them died in the tsunami but I didn’t see the others rushing to prevent or help. In fact they more likely rushed to eat the dead and dying.

Only Christianity can explain GOOD in the world. Even then it is still a mystery about how we were created in God’s image. Far from being a reasonable argument against God, the “why is there evil in the world” debate is proof that there is a mystery of GOOD in the world. Only Christianity can explain the joy I have in giving to others. Only Christianity can explain the successful therapy derived from serving others. Only Christianity can explain the strong desire to help those in crisis. Only Christianity can get you further down the road to explain the mystery of GOOD.