Welcome back as we journey together to become people of depth, increasingly attuned to God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture.
A special hello to our new subscribers this week - thanks for joining us!
If you are new and find yourself a little lost, check out the first, short episode of the Soil & Roots podcast, which provides an overview of the challenge we are here to help solve.
If you’ve been with us for a while and would like a high-level refresher of our journey so far, this episode may do the trick.
We are looking at the spiritual journey from an admittedly odd perspective, making the case that becoming more loving involves the transformation of both the conscious and unconscious selves. Our conscious selves are somewhat easily described; our unconscious selves not so much.
We have identified at least two powerful forces that sit at the bedrock of our hearts, quietly and unconsciously governing how we live and operate in the world: our ideas and desires. Last week, I provided a somewhat technical description of how these ideas are formed.
An idea is an assumption, conclusion, or principle in which our hearts are rooted, but of which we are largely unaware. They are not so much intellectual statements as they are experienced realities.
The deep person invests time, energy, and sometimes pain in uncovering their hidden ideas about God, others, themselves, and creation. Otherwise, we end up living as false selves.
Jesus is the object of our spiritual formation, in that His ideas lead to human flourishing, beauty, and truth. He is, after all, the embodiment of such ideas. Other ideas lead to corruption, harm, and death.
Because we aren’t Him, we all wrestle with a mix of helpful and harmful ideas buried deep in the recesses of our hearts, formed by all manner of experiences and relationships. Typically, the most powerful ideas are those formed in our families of origin. That only makes sense, considering our hearts are far more supple and malleable as children than as adults.
We are entering a pivotal, introspective portion of our journey together - the uncovering of our genuine ideas of God. Again, this is not so much an exploration of our intellectual, theological belief statements. It is an exploration of how we experience Him, which, all too often, doesn’t align with our intellectual claims.
As A.W. Tozer reminds us:
"That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God."
A few years ago, I was speaking to a friend whose brother had recently “deconstructed” from Jesus. His brother (let’s call him Jack) had been a missionary in a country that was suffering from extreme poverty and government persecution. Time after time, Jack would pour himself into loving and serving this destitute population, many of whom were children. Time after time, these kids would disappear, whether from drug overdose, abuse, or death.
Having experienced so much human suffering, Jack finally concluded that there is no God or, if there is, He has no interest in caring for His creatures. Or perhaps He is powerless to do so. Jack renounced his faith, concluded that both of God’s books (the Bible and creation) are deeply flawed, and set about attempting to disprove God, a quest on which he remains today.
If we were to spend time with Jack and attune to his heart, we would discover that he is not actually an atheist. That is his intellectual belief; however, his hidden ideas tell a different story. He still functions from the reality of God. He is just vehemently angry with Him because his heart no longer finds God to be good.
We are beginning a short series on common, hidden ideas about God, and there may not be one as powerful as this: that God is not actually good. After all, just pull up a news website. Or visit a hospital. Or talk to someone suffering physical, emotional, or spiritual abuse.
If you follow Jesus, you may be aware of the oft-repeated phrase, “God is good all the time. All the time God is good.”
That is, in fact, the idea of Himself that He reveals in both of His books. For example, God joyfully pronounces each act of nature “good” in the creation narrative, whether it be the sun, moon, stars, beasts, birds, or fish. Upon forming humans, He bursts into a superlative, pronouncing us “very good.” And then, in a shocking move (at least in stark comparison to other ancient Near Eastern creation narratives), He invites humans to steward, care for, and govern creation with Him. What God created is good, and He desires to dwell with His “very good” co-rulers, shepherding this grand project called Earth together.
Of course, it only takes three chapters of Genesis for the project to go awry. We decide we’d rather rule the Earth ourselves, thank you very much. And things go downhill rather quickly from there.
The rest of God’s first book tells the story of Him continually working to dwell with us again (despite our insistence to the contrary) and His passionate desire to love us and be loved by us. It all finally comes together by the end of the book, though not without extraordinary pain, suffering, and sacrifice on His part, and not without a load of trouble on ours.
However, though the grand “meta-narrative” comes to a wonderfully blissful ending (beginning?) for those who choose it, we remain in the mushy, messy, middle - a part of the story still marred by deadly ideas and harmful behaviors.
There are myriad theological propositions and positions concerning this mushy middle, often called the “problem of evil.” They articulate how God’s goodness can and does coexist with evil, and how the former is slowly and inevitably conquering the latter.
They are worth exploring, and in fact, other gifted authors here on Substack address them, along with some of the wisest minds of the last two thousand years. I’ve found them very helpful in my own journey.
However, our concern here is not so much intellectual statements as it is with ideas, these somewhat mysterious, often buried experiential realities. Even if, like Jack the former missionary, we theologically agree that God is good, what do we do when our hearts conclude otherwise? Are we even aware if our hearts operate from some other idea?
This is a common struggle for deep people. In fact, questioning God’s goodness may be a necessary step into the richer waters of faith, provided you live in an ecosystem that allows such vulnerability and authenticity.
I confess I’ve become a bit suspicious of those who readily claim God’s goodness without having undergone a crucible of suffering. As C.S. Lewis once quipped:
“What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?”
Therein lies a key point: goodness does not mean a lack of suffering, pain, or even evil. If I dare boil down a working definition of goodness to something as simple as “seeking the flourishing of another,” then it becomes clear that pain is often a vital step in providing and deepening that goodness. Just ask anyone who has parented a teenager.
Still, I can write so easily about this common idea of God because I’ve lived it.
When I first became ill back in late 2023, I experienced unexplained bouts of anxiety and debilitating depression (it was later discovered that the bacterial infections drastically depleted my Vitamin D and testosterone, resulting in various mental and emotional challenges).
There were many days when I would wake up feeling weak, debilitated, and hopeless, desperately looking forward to the best part of the day - when I would fall into unconscious sleep at the end of it. Sickness had come on the heels of personal and career upheaval, resulting in what seems like (at least to Jessica and me) an extended, unfair period in the wilderness. Someone could have quoted Romans 8:28 to me every day, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. My head knows that God is good. My heart was experiencing a different reality.
Whatever our suffering may be, it is a normal and even healthy response to ask God just how good He is in the midst of our individual and cultural pain.
Some traditions frown on such raw dialogue, assuming that we lack faith or confidence in God. Perhaps that is true, though I suppose they’d have to take issue with the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Jacob, Job, and a host of other ancient writers and characters. Both faith and confidence are forged and refined in hotter fires than in Sunday sermons and small-group studies.
It seems to me there are two vital steps in dealing with the idea that God isn’t very good.
The first is to do the hard work of discovering if this idea operates in our hearts. Are we living in a deep-seated, felt trust of God’s goodness? Or do our heart indicators (thoughts, emotions, words, relationships, behaviors, etc.) reveal an inner life that is anxious, controlling, worrisome, and doubtful? Are we able to engage in this “painful self-probing” without self-condemnation and judgment, and to accept that this may be God’s gentle way of further freeing us?
Second, are we open to the fact that the healing of such a powerful idea is not simply about taking in more information? Reading and listening to messages that remind us of God’s goodness may be helpful; don’t get me wrong. However, our heads learn through information, but our hearts learn through relationships and experience.
If we uncover this idea in our hearts, how might God be inviting us into relationships and experiences that slowly and gently heal it? What experiences with Him, others, ourselves, and creation might carefully remind our hearts of God’s goodness, even as we suffer?
What if goodness is not so much about circumstances as it is about presence?
It is here we return to a key theme of our journey into depth: withness, or the power of presence.
If you’ve ever known someone who has dealt with a long-term illness, they will most likely tell you that the friends they started with are not the friends they end up with.
This has been true in my situation. The people who knew you as productive, proactive, and useful eventually realize they don’t know what to do with you in your weakened state, and move on to other useful people. New friends come into your life not based on what you can do for them, but based simply on the fact that you exist.
They sit with you in your suffering without offering advice or trying to “fix” you. They show up - over and again - because they intuitively understand that suffering may or may not cease and that presence is a deeper, more powerful force.
These types of friends are, in truly formative ways, being God to us. Because this is how He loves us, he is with us. God with us. Immanuel.
His desire to be with us, regardless of our health, capabilities, or productivity, is the primary theme of the biblical storyline and of our lives, whether we know it or not.
When the ex-missionary, Jack, publicly deconstructed, his legalistic family reacted by humiliating and ridiculing him. They questioned if he ever had any faith, argued with his new positions, and told him he was being foolish and unintelligent.
As you might imagine, this only fueled his idea that God isn’t good.
I often wonder what would have happened if some family and friends had come around him, offered to sit with him and listen, and, month after month, just committed to being in Jack’s presence, day after day, while he worked out his understandable anger. I wonder what would have happened to Jack’s heart if those close to him had been God to him.
Because that is how God wishes to be with us.
Duc In Altum,
Brian
Updated resource: This article has been expanded into a fuller evergreen guide for people whose minds believe God is good while suffering has formed a different conclusion in their hearts: Is God Good When Life Does Not Feel Good?
This was one of my favorite early S&R podcast episodes, because I had the chance to make up another phrase: “heart listening.”
Linda, Linda, Listen! reminds us that one of the most vital characteristics of a deep disciple is listening to hearts and not just words. It’s an essential part of being with each other.
A few months back, I was testing some things here on Substack and locked down older articles. I ended up abandoning the test, but forgot to unlock the archives. Sorry about that. The entire Soil & Roots column library is now open and available to all.
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