Is God Good?
Hello, and welcome to the Soil & Roots podcast. Iโm Brian Fisher, and this is episode 142, Too Good to be True. Itโs the 9th episode of Season 7.
If you are new to the podcast, itโs great to have you with us. Just be mindful that we always encourage people to start at Episode 1 if they want the full Soil & Roots deep discipleship experience, since the seasons build on each other. This podcast is a nice, sauntering journey with little to no current events or urgent news, so you arenโt missing anything if you start at the beginning.
If you want to cheat a little, you might just check out Episode 133, which provides a brief high-level overview of our journey so far.
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We talk about Greenhouses a lot here โ itโs a small community that gathers regularly for the express purpose of becoming more like Jesus over time. Itโs not a Bible study; itโs not a small group. Itโs a Greenhouse. You can find more information about that on our website.
Letโs dive in.
The Deep Places
Here at Soil & Roots, we explore what it means to become โdeep people.โ Not merely informed people, moral people, or churchgoing people, but people increasingly attuned to God, others, themselves, and creation. People who live the good life, the with-God life. People who love more like Jesus without even thinking about it. As Richard Foster said, what the world needs more than anything else is deep people.
One of the central ideas of Soil & Roots is that human beings live from the heart. By โheart,โ I donโt merely mean emotions. Biblically speaking, the heart is the deep center of the person, the operating system beneath the surface, the hidden places from which our lives naturally emerge.
This is why Proverbs says, โWatch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.โ Jesus says something similar when He explains that what comes out of a person reveals what is already inside them. The psalmist declares that God desires truth โin the innermost beingโ and in our hidden parts He will make us know wisdom.
Again and again, the biblical writers point us beneath the surface. They seem convinced that our lives are governed by forces often hidden in the depths of the person.
We talk about discipleship all the time here, so what does all this talk of operating systems, hidden places, and unconscious parts have to do with us being disciples?
As it turns out โ a whole lot! If we wish to increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus, naturally and without even thinking about it, our unconscious, hidden parts need healing and reform along with our minds. And, as we explore here, those hidden parts are not formed by instruction, perhaps to the consternation of educational institutions. They are formed through relationships and experience.
In other words, we cannot become love if we donโt first receive and experience love.
But this exploration of our hidden parts, our innermost being, doesnโt happen by accident. This is why the deep journey requires self-awareness and painful honesty. It requires slowing down long enough to ask not simply, โWhat do I believe?โ but โWhat is actually operating in my heart?โ That is a much more uncomfortable question because many of us discover there is a significant difference between our conscious theology and our lived experience, our โtrueโ theology, as it were.
We say God is loving, yet we live anxiously. We say God is near, yet we sometimes feel relationally distant. We say God is trustworthy, yet we compulsively control outcomes. We say God is good, yet somewhere deep down we quietly fear He may not actually be. And that brings us to todayโs episode.
Beliefs and Ideas
One of the things Iโve tried to clarify, both on the podcast and in my writing, is the difference between beliefs and ideas. In our modern culture, beliefs generally refer to intellectual agreement. I believe certain doctrines. I affirm certain theological claims. I subscribe to a particular worldview.
Ideas are different. Ideas are experienced realities. They are assumptions, conclusions, and perceptions formed in the hidden places of the heart through relationships, wounds, disappointments, suffering, family systems, culture, and repeated experiences. Beliefs largely live in the conscious mind, while ideas live in the unconscious self, in our hidden parts.
This distinction matters tremendously because modern discipleship efforts often focus almost entirely on beliefs while largely ignoring ideas.
To put this another way, we here are more prone to a Socratic process of formation compared to a scholastic approach. The Socratic journey involves curiosity, questions, wrestling with God and ourselves, discovery, and lived experience. The Scholastic method is based on the transfer of information. As I have argued many times, modern Christianity functions almost entirely from scholastic assumptions, not Socratic ones.
The entire modern Christian ecosystem is built around the role of Bible teachers โ men and women who we trust to tell us what the Bible says โ thatโs a transfer of information. We rarely, if ever, depend on them to shape our inner character or inner lives. That would require us to know our Bible teachers intimately and vulnerably, and for them to know us. Perhaps thatโs true in some small churches, but since many of us get our Bible teaching from podcasts and videos from people weโve never met, we obviously donโt expect to be formed by them; we simply expect to be informed.
Both Socratic and scholastic approaches are necessary to a point; however, a hyperfocus on the scholastic approach, which is what weโre living in, tends to drive home the idea that human beings are simply brains on sticks. And the scholastic approach rarely leads to inner transformation. Itโs probably obvious, but our team here is purposely working to advance a more Socratic approach to our spiritual formation, as weโve concluded that the hyper-focus on the scholastic approach simply has failed to form many people. Youโll find these same arguments in and around public and private education.
Now, donโt misunderstand me. Theology matters. Truth matters. Doctrine matters. If our brains are filled with untruths, it certainly wonโt help our hearts. However, it is possible to possess accurate theology while remaining profoundly emotionally and spiritually unhealthy.
Just this past week, I was speaking with a friend who is working with the head of the spiritual formation department at a major U.S. seminary. My friend finds her very difficult to work with; arrogant, a poor listener, and fairly demeaning of her staff. So is the spiritual formation information her department is teaching affecting her character?
It is possible to affirm grace while living in shame. It is possible to affirm Godโs presence while living in functional isolation. It is possible to affirm forgiveness while remaining bitter. And it is possible to affirm Godโs goodness while quietly distrusting Him.
This is why discipleship is not simply about information transfer. It is about the healing and reformation of the inner person. It is about uncovering the hidden assumptions from which we live. And perhaps no hidden idea is more powerful than this one: that God is not actually good.
The Goodness Problem
Now, if you follow Jesus or just know about Him, your immediate reaction may be to push back against that statement. โOf course, God is good.โ Most Christians would say exactly that, and rightly so. Scripture repeatedly presents God as loving, compassionate, faithful, patient, merciful, and good. He seeks our goodness, our flourishing. Certainly, thatโs what Jesusโ half-brother James tells us.
The creation narrative begins with God joyfully pronouncing creation โgood.โ He forms the world, fills it with beauty, abundance, order, and delight, and then creates human beings in His image, calling them โvery good.โ
The biblical story is not about an angry deity trying to avoid or enslave humanity like other ancient religions. It is the story of a God continually pursuing a relationship with humanity despite our repeated insistence on ruling life without Him. His great desire is to dwell with us, to be with us, to walk with us, and to form us into people capable of love.
That is the overarching story. And yet, you and I live in the mushy middle of the story. We live in a world of abuse, sickness, death, betrayal, loneliness, war, depression, addiction, injustice, corruption, and disappointment. Because we live in this middle place, many of us quietly harbor the suspicion that God may not be nearly as good as we claim He is.
We may never articulate that out loud. In fact, we might feel guilty even admitting such a thought. However, our hearts often tell the truth our mouths avoid, and itโs best we deal with our hearts authentically.
The Former Missionary
A few years ago, I spoke with a friend whose sister had deconstructed from Christianity after years serving as a missionary overseas. Letโs call her Jane.
Jane had devoted her life to serving a vulnerable population living under extreme poverty and violence. Many of the children she worked with eventually disappeared into addiction, abuse, trafficking, or death. Time after time, Jane poured himself into helping people only to watch suffering continue without fail. Eventually, something inside her broke. She concluded that either God doesnโt exist, is powerless, or simply does not care very much.
She publicly renounced Christianity and now spends much of her energy attempting to dismantle the faith she once proclaimed.
However, here is what struck me about her story. If you sat with Jane long enough, not to argue with her but simply to listen, you would realize that she is not functioning like a true atheist at all. She is not functioning from the idea that God doesnโt exist. She is functioning from the idea that He is cruel.
Janeโs conscious beliefs changed, but beneath them lies a much deeper reality. Somewhere inside, Jane no longer experiences God as good. And honestly, can we admit something? Many of us understand exactly how she got there. Perhaps not intellectually, but emotionally, experientially, and relationally.
Authenticity
One of the things I find fascinating is how uncomfortable modern Christianity often becomes with honest questions. Someone experiences profound suffering and quietly asks, โWhere was God?โ A child dies. A marriage collapses. A diagnosis arrives. A betrayal cuts deeply. A person spends years begging God for relief, only to hear silence in return.
And when they finally begin asking hard questions, some people instinctively panic. We rush to Romans 8:28. We quote clichรฉs. We attempt to defend God. We try to solve the problem. However, the Scriptures themselves seem remarkably comfortable with lament, wrestling, grief, confusion, uncertainty, and even protest.
Jacob wrestles with God. Job challenges God repeatedly. David cries out in confusion and despair. Ecclesiastes questions nearly everything. The prophets lament constantly.
Apparently, becoming a deep person is not the absence of struggle. Very often, it is forged through struggle. The vast majority of people who reach out to us at Soil & Roots are in the middle of some intense suffering.
This matters because these hidden ideas are rarely healed through suppression. Pretending we trust God does not produce trust. Faking certainty does not create intimacy.
Heartview
The hidden idea that God is not truly good rarely appears as outright rebellion, as it did with Jane.
Usually, it bubbles up as subtle distrust, distance, caution, hesitation, and emotional self-protection. Many of us still attend church, read Scripture, pray, and serve faithfully, yet somewhere deep inside we remain guarded with God.
We keep a little distance. We hesitate to fully surrender because surrender only makes sense if the One we are surrendering to is unquestionably safe and good. And our hearts are simply not convinced.
You may recall that Season 2 is all about how we read the deepest places of our hearts. I introduced the practice of Heartview โ learning to pay attention to our external indicators that point back to the inner reality in our hearts. We can uncover, with God and perhaps a trusted friend, what ideas are actually governing us by paying close attention to our Eight Indicators: our thought patterns, emotions, relationships, behaviors, health, words, and how we use time and money.
So, letโs practice a bit. If we pay close attention to these indicators, might they be suggesting that our hearts are not always sure God is good? After all, if He is good, we would find rest and comfort in that, right? Here are a few examples for us to mull over.
The Need to Control
One of the clearest indicators that we distrust Godโs goodness is our tendency to control. When our hearts no longer feel safe, when we arenโt sure that God actually has our backs, we instinctively begin attempting to manage reality ourselves. We attempt to control outcomes, people, appearances, conversations, emotions, finances, reputation, and environments.
Why? Because control creates the illusion of safety, at least temporarily. If I can control enough variables, perhaps I can avoid pain. Perhaps I can prevent disappointment. Perhaps I can guarantee security.
However, the deeper issue underneath control is often fear. Beneath that fear sits a hidden question: โCan God actually be trusted with my life?โ That is not really a theological question. It is a relational question.
We find this controlling tendency bubbling up from our depths in most of the Eight Indicators: our thoughts about control, our controlling behaviors, the relationships we try to control, the ways we try to control our time or someone elseโs, and the ways we cling to money.
Anxiety and Safety
Hereโs another example.
Chronic anxiety often reveals something important about our hidden ideas of God. Now, I want to be careful here because human beings are integrated creatures. Anxiety can absolutely have physiological, neurological, emotional, or traumatic roots. We are not simplistic beings.
When I became dangerously ill back in late 2023, I experienced anxiety and depression unlike anything I had ever known. In general, Iโm not someone who’s normally affected heavily by those conditions.
It was eventually discovered that three different bacterial infections had severely impacted several systems in my body. They knocked out my testosterone and Vitamin D, which are hormones that help regulate our moods. The infections caused unpredictable and extremely confusing bouts of depression and anxiety.
So I am not reducing anxiety to simply an inner spiritual situation.
However, I am saying this: if my heart genuinely experiences God as deeply loving, attentive, present, and good, then, over time, a growing sense of internal safety should emerge.
Not the absence of suffering. Not constant emotional happiness. But a deep underlying confidence that somehow, even here, I am held. I am safe. That canโt be taught โ it can only be experienced.
A toddler in a healthy home lives in this kind of relational safety. The child is not anxiously managing the future. She is not worried about paying the mortgage or obsessing over retirement accounts. She is not wondering whether she is lovable. Why? Because she lives inside a secure ecosystem of love. She simply assumes someone stronger, wiser, and more loving is caring for her. She probably doesnโt even consciously think about it.
That type of relational attachment creates freedom. And is this not exactly the type of relationship Jesus seems to describe? Little children crying out, โAbba, Father.โ Perfect love casts out fear. Birds of the air neither sowing nor reaping. Lilies of the field clothed in splendor. The with-God life. The Good Life. A deep, abiding relational safety in God that increasingly frees us from anxiety, striving, image management, and fear.
Using our Eight Indicators to uncover that type of inner anxiety is pretty straightforward. It shows up in our thought patterns for sure, as well as our emotions, often our health, and sometimes our words.
Resentment toward Reality
Example number 3.
I think one of the most common manifestations of an inner distrust of Godโs goodness is resentment, especially in middle age. Many of us quietly carry resentment over how life unfolded. Our careers never developed the way we hoped. Our marriage doesnโt look like the ones portrayed in Rom-Coms. Our kids struggled. The money disappeared. Some of our dreams died. A ministry failed, friendships faded or blew up. We look in the mirror and try to come to grips with our aging bodies and minds.
Because we have been deeply discipled by the American dream, consumerism, comparison, achievement, and cultural definitions of success, we slowly begin interpreting disappointment spiritually. โIf God were truly good, my life would look different.โ
Most of us never say that out loud. However, our hearts whisper it constantly. Over time, resentment quietly corrodes intimacy with God because it is difficult to trust someone we secretly blame.
Difficulty Receiving Love
Perhaps the clearest indicator of all is our difficulty receiving love. To receive love is to become vulnerable. To receive love is to stop managing. To receive love is to stop performing, to risk disappointment.
We may no longer experience love as safe, so we remain guarded, even with God, perhaps especially with God.
David Benner writes something that continues to haunt me: โThe single most important thing I have learned in over thirty years of study of how love produces healing is that love is transformative only when it is received in vulnerability.โ
Not merely understood. Not merely discussed. Received.
This may be terrifying for many of us because vulnerability feels profoundly unsafe. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped living like children and started living like survivors.
You may be wondering how I can write so easily about these four examples of an inner mistrust of Godโs goodness. Itโs because Iโve lived them all. And Iโm wrestling with one or two right now.
Withness
So how does healing happen? How do we return to an inner state of trusting, loving, and relying on Godโs goodness?
Not primarily through more information. Information matters, but ideas are rarely healed through explanation alone. Ideas are healed relationally, experientially, and slowly.
This is why one of the central themes of Soil & Roots is withness, presence, Immanuel, God with us.
One of the strange gifts of suffering is discovering how powerful simple presence really is. If you have walked through prolonged illness, grief, depression, or loss, you probably discovered that some people eventually disappear.
Though Iโm back to about 90% of my former self after this prolonged illness, most of the friends I had at the beginning are not my friends now. Ask anyone who’s dealt with a long-term illness, and they will probably tell you their community turns over โ almost entirely.
However, occasionally, certain people remain. They sit with you. Listen to you. Stay near you. Refuse to abandon you. They donโt try to fix you, rush your healing, or sermonize. They simply remain present.
And in those moments, something deeply formative happens beneath words because this is how God loves us. He is with us. Not because we are productive, useful, or performing. He is with us simply because He loves to be with us. He not only loves us โ He likes us.
The Invitation
Iโm still trying to work this out, but I think a key to returning to a heart posture of resting in Godโs goodness โ even when life isnโt good to us โ is authenticity. If you uncover some darker ideas, as I have, from the examples I gave โ a need to control, anxiety, resentment, or a guarded heart, it seems to me that a good step towards the Good Life is to tell God exactly how you feel.
Some therapist said, โMental health is a commitment to reality no matter the cost.โ I like that, and I think it applies to our discipleship โ our spiritual formation โ just as well.
It seems that God is remarkably unafraid of our honesty. He doesnโt panic when we admit resentment. He doesnโt recoil when we confess distrust. He doesnโt shame us for struggling.
The first step toward inner health is to uncover these hidden ideas, even if itโs uncomfortable. I think the second step is to tell God about them.
Again and again throughout Scripture, God seems willing to meet people exactly where they are, not where they pretend to be. Perhaps that is where the deep journey truly begins. Not in pretending harder, performing spirituality, or forcing certainty, but in just living before God authentically.
โLord, somewhere deep down, I donโt really trust Your goodness.โ
That is not the end of the spiritual life. It may just be the beginning of depth because healing can only begin where truth is acknowledged.
The path to deep discipleship, to the good life, begins with uncovering, with drawing out the deep waters of the heart, and with allowing God to gently expose what is actually operating beneath the surface.
And perhaps His response to our distrust of His goodness isnโt anger or condemnation, or a bad report card. Perhaps He is just delighted that we finally came to Him as we are, not as we think He would like us to be.
Thanks for being with me, and weโll see you next time.
