God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good

Preface

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. I am allowing myself to ask questions I never asked before. I don't ask because I want to degrade Jesus, but because I think He is strong enough for my questions. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…

Prayer

God. I know you are good all the time. This was drilled into me all my life. But what does that mean? What's the definition of good? We say this so flippantly, but I think this phrase might be more complicated than we initially thought. Please help me understand. Tom

Musings

God is good all the time and all the time God is good. We said this all the time when I was a kid growing up. I liked it then, but now I struggle with it. What!

My concern is with the definition of good. Good from God's perspective and good from a person's perspective  are not the same. Yet they get all mixed up in this phrase.

Let's review the phrase two ways.

Option 1:

God is good to me from my perspective all the time and all the time God is good to me from my perspective.

Option 2:

God is good from His perspective all the time and all the time God is good from His perspective.

If we believe option 1 it is invalidated by our experience. A lot of crappy stuff happens to us. So God is not always good to us from our perspective.

Therefore, we are left with option 2. But option 2 has its issues. For one, if those outside the church hear the phrase they might naturally assume we mean option 1 which fails the experience test which makes them less likely to pursue God because the claim seems false. If they do believe option 1 and join the church, it can feel like a bait and switch when they are discipled or something bad happens and they learn its really option 2.

So, I think we should get away from this saying, because it would be better to say, "When everything seems crappy, you can trust God to have a good plan." Its much clearer and doesn't have the potential for confusion.