Explain What Is Meant In The Bible By The Phrase God Is Good

a) Explain what is meant in the Bible by the phrase “God is good.”

The Old Testament is based upon the creation of the Earth and the Universe. This goes on to declare that God created all life on Earth and that He saw it and said it was “Good”. Most Christian and religious people would believe that God is good because of the word of the bible and by seeing the world as what it really was: a miracle of creation that is Good. The world is seen as a perfect creation in the Bible and this view is transferred to a strong belief in the very foundations of Christianity that God is a good, benevolent being.

According to the bible, God created the Universe ‘Ex Nihilo’. The fact that God even created the Universe demonstrates benevolence because without the Universe, there can be no life and in the
Bible it is stated numerous times that Life is sacred and good; the Universe is good because it has the potential to support life.
Looking into the creation of life in further detail, God created the Earth. This is demonstrative of the use of the phrase God is good because it shows His further want of life in the Universe; In Gen1 God actively creates life on Earth; he creates a perfect world on which to live on and is a truly loving thing to do, God could have created an Evil world where no Good or potential for Good can be present, God could not do this however, because he is an entirely benevolent God according to the Bible and Jesus who can only act for Good. When finished creating life on Earth God shows that he is good in many of the miracles that are performed. The parting of the Red Sea in the Israelite exodus of Egypt which helped to free His oppressed people from the Egyptians was a miracle from God that shows people that God is benevolent and loyal to his followers; Moses was fleeing from the Egyptian army with all the Israelite slaves. Moses was trapped because they could not cross the sea but asked God for help to let them escape. The Goodness of God is shown here
because primarily God did not have to perform the miracle, he did only through compassion and loyalty with his followers and the action itself was a good deed and one that anyone would support; his goodness is undeniable. Many other miracles have also been performed in the Old Testament; Moses asked God for the plagues to be put on Egypt and He did. Although God may have caused the suffering of many Egyptians, this act shows an immense sense of morality and knowledge of what is right and wrong because he helped those that were enduring the greatest suffering and was faithful to those that followed his teachings. The series of miracles for Elijah showed that God has faith in his followers and compassion for all mankind – He helps anyone who is in need, not just his devout followers – he feeds a pagan woman that was starving; God helps all and is a truly good being. These miracles show that the phrase “God is good” in the Bible is meant to describe God’s benevolence and compassion for all living beings.

b) “It is difficult to believe in a God who is perfectly good” Discuss

This statement is indeed a commonly debated and controversial one. The argument in support of this argument is that through our experience of the world, we can see that there is a strong presence of Evil in our world. Many people find it hard to believe that an omnibenevolent and Omnipotent being cannot create a world that has Evil and Suffering present; God is presented as being a compassionate being but this isn’t reflected with some of the natural disasters in the world where thousands of people die, or some of the extreme acts of cruelty that have been acted out, with Child abuse and murder, rape and other acts with such a magnitude of Evil that a loving God that could save these people could not possibly exist – it is easily argued that a good God would not let this happen. If he couldn’t then he is not Omnipotent, if He does not want to help, then God cannot possibly be Omnibenevolent. These beliefs are the very foundations of Christainity, and as such, if they are not true then we cannot have a God that is perfectly good. Indeed, a perfectly good God would not have the capacity to create a world with Evil because that is not a benevolent thing for a perfectly good God to do.

Some may also argue that God can be seen as a perfectly good God because of all the loving things that God does; some may reply to Hume that just because there is some Evil in the world, it does not mean that a perfectly good God cannot exist. Many religious people believe that Evil is a punishment from the Fall of humanity from Adam and Eve, and is there because humanity acted wrongly rather than because God is currently acting wrongly. He is treating us like learning children that need experience to be good because unlike Him, we are not all inherently good; this came about with God’s gift of free will; where rather than God creating Evil, we did and we still choose to do Evil – God did not create Evil, but rather Humans did. However, in response to this, people such as Hume would say that when giving humans free will, God being timeless and all-seeing, must have been able to know that the gift of free-will was not a good one because it causes such Evil and suffering in the world following the first disobedience of his word. A perfectly good God would have seen this and not given us free-will because He would not have wanted Evil and suffering to be present on His perfect world that He created.

In conclusion, although it is easily possible to see the many examples of goodness in the world and that these examples are demonstrative of a good God, I believe that if a God exists He cannot be perfectly good if there is such Evil and Suffering in the world because God, as an omnipotent being, could stop it from being present in our World, and yet He doesn’t. In my opinion, for a perfectly good God, there must be a perfectly good Earth that he created, and I do not think that there is one because Evil and suffering is unfortunately present throughout the universe.