WHEN IS GOD GOOD?

“And He said to him, why do you call Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” Mat 19:17

We all know that God is good. We are all able to recognize this from Him, even if we just talk about it from time to time, without true, genuine acknowledgement concerning the very truthfulness of it. We may state that God is good since we know it to be so from the Bible; even the unbelieving may say so. I believe that all atheists do state that if they would believe there was a God somewhere, He would be good, if they would not speak out from their bitterness and would become honest. All over the world, the devil appears to be according to what he really is and so is God. We all have the right perceptions concerning true issues, even if we discuss them off. None in his perfect mind will ever state that the devil is good and that God bad. All people know what truth is all about, for people perceive even whatever they say they do not believe. The nature of Light does not allow the devil to be taken, to be perceived, as good – we all know and acknowledge truth.

If the devil would mark and state his presence in a disco or in a dance club, very few people would go there. People go there because they somehow accept it as a “good” thing  – otherwise, they would never go there. So, the devil has to be silently moving, deceiving if he wants to destroy and corrupt still. He makes people think and believe they enjoy drinking, and to a certain extent people who drink are somehow “possessed” because the devil himself does give them the enjoyment he is able to grant them and with which he is able to attract the attention upon sin. People feel a certain kind of “relief” because they curse, misjudging it for something good and well done – even against conscience and inborn good sense in them. That’s why they are always guilty before God. However, whatever they may do, truth will never change - it may change its looks, its feeling but it will never change itself.

So, goodness is not feeling pleasant, it is never doing the right thing, but it is rather being able to do the right thing from the heart, the right way from a new nature. God is always good even if He has taken the lives of sinners from them already. Is that goodness? Yes, it is. Earth is compromised to sinning, to evil doing and evil reconciliation. Earth chose to kill itself; so, God has to do away with suicide by having it killed through a blessed death, by killing it forever. If God kills, it is a blessed thing. People are the ones who state something and do another. For instance, they say they hate evil, yet they curse; they say they are the good ones, yet they do not respect; they say they hate war, yet they fight each other at home or at work. But the Lord has no other way of being good, unless through killing death. Evil does never fight war – it fights towards self, which thing it always considers as a supreme good. So, if you want goodness to prevail, why vindicate it upon self then? Sin in man turns its own sword against itself.

So, when is God good then? When He gives and blesses? When He takes away and curses? Well, God is always good, He never changes, whatever He does. If we happen to be many years in church living and knowing how to pray, and are still sinful and careless – if then God takes away our daily bread from us to awaken us from deep sleep, especially when we are asking food from Him - is He good or bad? Is it a bad thing to manifest Himself through our daily bread affairs, contradicting ours prayers? Can’t that be an answer to prayer, when He decides to take away from us whatever we ask to be granted instead? If God decides to take away something from a terrorist, everyone with the exception of the terrorist himself will think and believe it to be a good thing done. So, if we are evil, yet do not recognize it because of hardness of heart, seeing we say something and do another quite often, and God decides to go against us because we are evil – is He bad? We are evil and say that to take a terrorist from the streets is a good thing. If He curses because of sinning, is He bad? He does not merely curse because of sinning - He does so because He is good. He has to do just that. We know that He is always good. Therefore, because of goodness, for goodness’ sake He says: “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers, that I not come and strike the earth with utter destruction”. Mal 4:6 MKJV. The good nature of a good God does that – it curses too. The same God is good when He gives, as when He takes away, when He gives birth and when He takes life away, when He blesses and once He curses. He is always good. God does never change whatever He does.

We all admire Job for all the things he has gone through and resisted fully well. But we seldom acknowledge that this man spoke thus only because he was fully truthful concerning the matters he spoke about. He knew God would not change because He decided to take away from him. Do you? If not - why then do you still say God has left you when He takes away from you? Perhaps it is because He is with you that He takes away and not otherwise! Does He change only because He has taken from you? No, I believe not. “What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” Job 2:10 MKJV. God is always good.

José Mateus