God Is Good?

I often wonder why we believe in a God. We live in this world where people want proof of everything. If someone is convicted of a crime, definite proof, reason beyond doubt is required to convict. Society values science and technology, and our lives revolve around these two entities. Everything in our society is based on absolute fact. But yet, here we are, believing in a God of whom we have no proof of actually existing. I mean, according to the legends of our religion, he talked to a bunch of guys thousands of years ago, and in the intervening time between then and now people have whole heartedly believed in this idea, and fought wars and lived lives all based on something of which there is no proof.
So why do we believe in God?
We worship this God, this indefinable, impossible, indescribable being. A phenomenon who has been the cause of more deaths and more wars and more terrors then any other being. A God who makes even the most horrible humans look genuinely nice. We are part of a religion that claims to value humility and kindness and goodness, with a God who wiped out entire civilizations, who demanded we worship him and no one or nothing else, a God who is not always good. But yet we believe in him, in our idealized pictures of flowers and rainbows, a grandfather with a white beard, the one who can forgive all sins. And no one dares to say that God may have sinned too.
  And so not only do I wonder why we believe in our God, but I wonder why we worship him.
Maybe it is this underlying darkness, our subconscious knowledge that we worship an imperfect God, that allows us to believe in something so impossible. I know that I am not perfect, and it is good to know that something somewhat imperfect is supposed to be in charge. This way incidents like genocide and hunger and earthquakes can be accepted. While everyone all says that God is in fact perfect and that He Has A Plan, maybe its that little itty bitty tiny bit of me that refuses to worship anything that could have purposefully done these things. And that itty little bit is able to be placated by the thought it was a mistake.
Maybe I worship my God because I want to boost His self confidence, so that maybe in the future he won’t screw up again.
Which may answer why I worship God. But not why I believe he exists in the first place.
Maybe it is a need to blame the world’s problems on someone besides myself. Its God’s fault people are starving, and so God can go ahead and fix Her own problems. Maybe I believe in God because it gives meaning to our lives, because I have to believe that there is something more to life than what is obvious. Maybe it is a need for God to fix our brokenness, maybe we need to know that something is out there to help us through our brokenness.
Which also means that God must be good. Because if he is going to fix my brokenness, he had better be good.
Of course, I truly believe that God is in fact good. I believe in a God who is closer to perfect than any of us ever have hopes to be. I believe in the God of my Grandparents and my Great Grandparents. A God who is loving and caring and wonderful.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder why I believe in him. Why I choose to worship him despite all the things I have seen through human history. Why I worship him with every breath and every song and every step.
Because I believe that God is good.
-Kathleen Kerr