This past week 2 events in my life met within a few days. I began preaching on the gospel and started to unpack what makes the gospel so good, and I saw Batman v Superman. These 2 events are not as disconnected as you might think.
To many people God is distant, angry, or even cruel. We find the rationale for this view of God expressed in a quote by Lex Luthor in the movie
“See, what we call God depends upon our tribe, Clark Joe, ’cause God is tribal; God takes sides! No man in the sky intervened when I was a boy to deliver me from daddy’s fist and abominations. I figured out way back if God is all-powerful, He cannot be all good. And if He is all good, then He cannot be all-powerful.”
The problem with this view is the expectation that God, since He is all powerful and all loving, should stop all evil. For God to do this He would need to act against our free will in many cases, as with the quote from Lex. God would need to strip choice and freedom from us, not some of the time, but all of the time because so many small choices and events lead to big ones. So is there good to be found in a God who may often seem to be powerless because He doesn’t always intervene – even though we know He does at times from accounts of miracles and angels and rescue.
The gospel, or good news, is good because our world is bad. God created it good, but because humanity chose sin it all went bad. On a large scale creation has been affected, and on a more personal and daily life level – we have been affected. We experience pain and evil a lot because it is the nature of a fallen and broken world, but God’s plan isn’t to rescue us and restore the world through heroics. His plan since the beginning was to make all things new, to restore, redeem, remake, renew – resurrect. That where there has been death, there can be life – where there is evil, God can bring good – where there is darkness now, He can bring light. And God does this through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ story is creation’s story and it can be your story.
The good news is that God’s plan is still life, and the story of creation (all of history), and the story of your life, is about God bringing everything back to life. God brings what was dead, back to life – restoring creation when Jesus comes again, and restoring your life when Jesus comes into it. God doesn’t always stop or undo evil in our world now because He is love and has made you free. But even in the evil and death of the world you can find life, hope, peace, and purpose through God’s all powerful and good plan through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
There’s not space in a short article to fully explore this, but I invite you to continue to explore what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ good news with us on Sundays over the next few months and in your own search and study. I’ll leave you with a statement that stands in contrast to the quote by Lex Luthor, It is the hope and reality I have found in a relationship God who I have found to be good and all powerful even when I don’t get my way, or life doesn’t work the way I think it should.
“The gospel is good news because through Jesus we can receive what we desire instead of what we deserve.”