Dichotomy

Defined as dividing something into two mutually exclusive halves.

How can a Sweet-Tart be both sweet and sour?
How does a loving God let awful things happen? (Did I get serious too quickly?)

I was sitting in church yesterday and the pastor asked the question, "Isn't God good?!"

To give you some context to this story, twenty minutes of open-mic had just wrapped up, in which person after person talked about their troubles, their trials, their pains, and their heartaches.  Do you sense a dichotomy yet?

How does a person talk about the goodness of God directly after that?

The theologian Lee Strobel talks about building a case against God.  He talks about opening a magazine and finding a picture of a mother, holding her malnourished, dead child in her arms with anguish in her eyes.  The child died for lack of water.  Strobel asked of God, "Was it so difficult to make it rain?  Was it too much to ask?  How dare you!?"

This reminds me of a verse in the scriptures: Matthew 5:45 - "... He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."


Here-in lies the problem.  Do you need a God that only allows good?  Or let me ask it a different way. Do you need a God that only allows good things to happen to good people?


What would that say about God?  Would that make Him a better God, more "just" and more "loving"?  Or would it cause a mass-flood of people to worship Him simply for financial and personal gain?  Is that love, or is that bribery?


I wish to return to the original story.  There were people who recounted stories of hardship in church, and the pastor asked, "Isn't God good?!"  What I didn't tell you was that each of the stories told was ended the same way.  Before the pastor ever took the pulpit, each person ended their story with praise to God.


Why?


God is NOT good because He blesses you. God is not good because He gives you things.  God is GOOD because He sustains you.  He is GOOD because He is your portion.  Only a God greater than our circumstances and greater than our pain is worth worshiping.

Only a person who has tasted and seen the faithfulness of God through hardship can say "God is GOOD".  It appears as foolishness to those that do not know, but is an indelible mark on those that do.