Pondering God XIV: God's Goodness

Good and God in my mind and in many people’s minds are synonymous. Goodness of God seems to be a sum of all the positive attributes of God (not that there are negatives). It is the first attribute that comes to the mind of many believers such as me when contemplating God. It would be more proper to say the God IS Good not that goodness is just one of His infinite attributes. God IS goodness and this is why more often than not, when people are at their bottom they want something better. One of the first places they intuitively look is skyward or towards God.

Everything about God is good even His wrath. His wrath is based in His perfect timing and and perfect justice so what else could it be? Bad? Hardly. His anger is perfect anger based in righteousness and perfect knowledge. Only a human that doesn’t understand the truths about God could make a claim like, “He is an unjust angry God” or the comments like, “the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and mean God. What we have here isn’t a mean God but rather foolish man trying to quantify God again. In this case man is trying to explain God’s actions based on misunderstandings or just flat out ignorance of the truth. The truth is that God only does things that are good because anything else would be against His nature. Why were things done the way they were in the Old Testament such as the giving of the Law and punishment for not obeying it?

“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good? ~Deuteronomy 10:12-13

This was the essence of the Law: Israel was to fear the Lord, walk in His ways, to love Him, to serve Him with all their heart and soul and keep His commandments and statutes… for their own good. Man is not capable of good works apart from God.

"…as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God." ~Romans 3:10-11