City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

“…God is love.” 

1 John 4:8

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” 

John 3:16

And of course, that raises a very big question. If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? And for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling ‘whatever you say, and however clever your argument are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by an intelligent power?

C.S Lewis Mere Christianity

Exegesis

If you have read Mere Christianity you know that Lewis thought through the question he lays out above and realized the very standard he was using to determine the world was unjust must have come from God. He then considered dropping the notion of injustice, but he realized if he did that his argument against the existence of God collapsed as well. Consequently, Lewis decided atheism was too simple, that if the universe had no meaning we never should have discovered it had no meaning. It’s a compelling argument.

There is another question though that Lewis does not ask, and that is “Where did we get the idea that God is good?” It’s the premise to the question usually proffered by atheists, not because they think God is good—they don’t believe He exists—but because they think if God did exist He would be good. Because Christians believe God is good, they accept the question as presented without posing the more fundamental question in response: Where did we get the idea that God is good?

The answer, of course, is that we got the idea God is good from Jesus. And, the same Jesus who taught that God was good, never argued that because God is good there should be no injustice in the world. In fact, the same Jesus who taught that God was good and loved the world, suffered the gravest injustice of any person who ever lived. 

Instead, Jesus knew and taught something about injustice that we all instinctively know but often don’t want to acknowledge: there is no justice without judgment. Jesus even used a parable to encourage those who would be tempted by the injustice in the world to question God’s goodness. See Luke 18:1-8. There will be justice because in the future there will be judgment. Luke 18:8.

But Jesus said, “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” John 12:47. Judgment, and hence, justice is reserved for later. We should be glad Jesus did not come to judge the world before He came to save it because we would all be guilty and worthy of punishment for having gone our own way and rebelled against our Creator. That God has decided the to defer judgment, and hence justice, is not an argument against God’s goodness but an affirmation of it.