Are You a Good God, or a Bad God?

Last night, I was reading a commentary on the story of a woman who asked Jesus to heal her daughter and was met with silence. The writer who was parsing the Scripture said Jesus ignored this mother who, in her despair, had sought him out and that he did so in order to test her faith.

If that’s a true story and an accurate interpretation, I’d have a lot of trouble respecting the God-man we call Jesus. He sounds arrogant and capricious and not a guy I’d much like to hang out with.

This morning at Lake Forest Church in Huntersville, pastor Mike Moses recounted another story of Jesus performing a miracle healing. In this story, friends brought a man who was paralyzed and asked Jesus to heal him. Without waiting for the paralyzed man to ask for his help, without demanding that he repent or declare his faith or touch his robe or wash his feet or anything. Jesus pronounced the man forgiven and he was healed.

Mike said this shows how our own efforts to love and pray for people — even people who don’t believe — can result in a blessing in their lives (although Mike said it much more eloquently and maybe with a slightly different spin; but until the podcast goes up on the LFC website, you’ll have to live with my recollection/interpretation of Mike’s message). In other words, the Jesus that Mike talked about is a God-man who operates from unconditional love and compassion, one who is looking for opportunities and ways to heal us. That’s a God-man I can see myself following.

For years, I steered clear of religion precisely because of contradictions like this. Like Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz in her first encounter with Dorothy, I kept asking, “Are you a good God, or a bad God?”

Sometimes it’s hard not to ask that question. Especially when religion has tried so hard to create God in our own judgmental, loving-with-strings-attached image.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post