The Kindness of God: Beholding His Goodness in a Cruel World

By Nate Pickowicz

Kindness has fallen on hard times. Almost daily, we witness or experience cynicism, impatience, or incivility. And it begins to wear on a soul. Overall, we’re not doing well. We need hope. We need truth. We need God.

In The Kindness of God, pastor and teacher Nate Pickowicz shows how our lives must be understood and lived in light of God’s kindness. Pickowicz brings the reader along a joy-filled journey of discovering God’s life-giving lovingkindness and compassion.

This book is for Christians overwhelmed with their life circumstances. It’s for anyone who is feeling disappointment or hurt from a fractured relationship. It’s for all those who are discouraged by caustic political discourse. And it’s for those who are saddened or frustrated, desiring more from life . . . more from God. This book offers biblical salve to spiritual wounds and answers how God's own character remains intact even when wounds are inflicted by others.

You will come away from this book, marveling and thanking God for His immeasurable kindness. And you will come to reflect His kindness more deeply in your own life toward others. In a world that can feel dark and cold, this resource is a light of God’s kindness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9780802472892

Book preview

Introduction

BEHOLDING THE KINDNESS OF GOD

The LORD is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. (Ps. 145:17)

Susan had a hard life. After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at fourteen years old, she would endure a lifetime of compounding sicknesses. Always plagued with varying levels of pain and discomfort, she eventually developed glaucoma, rheumatoid arthritis, and severe kidney stones, which required extensive and invasive treatments. Surgery was part of her life at many times, and pain was a constant unwanted companion.

Growing up, Susan had been abused by her brothers, classmates, and even her father, who on one occasion knocked out several of her teeth. She had a baby girl at age eighteen but sadly had to give her up for adoption due to her inability to care for her in the midst of sickness and hospitalizations. Marriage to her first husband brought two more children, but also more abuse. She would remarry again, but after only three years, he packed up and left her with nothing but a small disability income and no options. Unable to afford her home, she ended up moving to a run-down apartment with a ceiling that was caving in.

And then one day she found a lump.

Susan’s breast cancer was only exacerbated by her Crohn’s disease, which also made radiation and chemotherapy a torturous experience. Before long, she endured a double mastectomy to remove the cancer. Within a year, however, it had returned and metastasized to her brain. Despite an eight-hour brain surgery, the cancer still progressed.

While still living in her dilapidated apartment, her condition began to worsen, and she began falling. Her family searched for a treatment facility that would take her in, but the local hospice had no available beds. And so, her mother and daughter attempted to create a makeshift hospital room at home, staffed by various friends and women from her mother’s church who would come and sit up with her through the agonizing nights. Finally, when a bed opened up in a hospice facility forty-five minutes away, she was moved. It would be her last home.

Throughout her life, no matter the circumstances, Susan always tried to stay positive. Yet trouble always seemed to stalk her. Despite all her attempts to be happy, the cancer proved too great an enemy. As her illness progressed, her mind and her body began to break down. She experienced terrifying hallucinations and delirium, as is common with brain cancer patients. After a painful, grueling battle, Susan finally passed away at age fifty-four.

When we hear about stories like Susan’s, it’s natural to ask, How could a good God allow for such a terrible thing? Why would a kind, loving God afflict a woman with such a difficult life that came to an end through a horrendous disease? Skeptics and critics will conclude that God is either powerless or cruel—but certainly not kind. They would claim that a world full of pain and suffering is undoubtedly the proof of it. However, this challenge needs to be met with some hard truth.

THE CRUELTY OF EVIL IN THE FACE OF GOD’S GOODNESS

Our news feeds are cluttered with stories of terrible events. I remember reading about a young mother who went out jogging only to be abducted by two men and taken back to their house where she was sexually and violently assaulted, tortured, and starved within an inch of her life. After several weeks of unthinkable hell, she was dumped off on the side of the road, naked and emaciated, where she died alone.

But even our more common, everyday experiences bear witness to the cruelty of this world. A father who abandons his family to ruin in order to pursue another life. A teenager who overdoses on methamphetamines. A child who commits suicide after being tormented by peers at school. An illness that forces a family into bankruptcy and homelessness. An elderly woman who is abused in a nursing home as she slowly and painfully declines from the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

When we encounter awful situations like these and hear the refrain, How could a good God allow such things? we need to check ourselves and examine our own judgment. Attacking the character of God over the wickedness committed by human beings overlooks the depravity of the human heart. The real question that should be asked is, How could anyone commit such an evil act against another human being? This leads us into addressing the problem of sin.

The Bible records the events that took place in the beginning (Gen. 1:1). God created all things—the heavens and the earth, the moon and the stars, the sea and the land, plants and animals, and finally, human beings. He created everything to be very good (Gen. 1:31). Everything was as it should be. But then Adam and Eve disobeyed God by violating His command not to eat of the tree that was forbidden to them. However, the transgression was not about eating the wrong kind of fruit, but about willful rebellion against the Creator.

When the first humans rebelled against God, they fell from their good standing with Him, and evil entered the world. In fact, the Bible teaches us that it was through one man [that] sin entered into the world, and death through sin (Rom. 5:12). With the entrance of sin and death into the world, the whole created order became enslaved to corruption and began to groan and suffer the pains of childbirth (Rom. 8:21–22). In short, the fall of humanity plunged everything into chaos and destruction. To illustrate just how wicked things became, we should remember that the third person ever to exist killed the fourth (Gen. 4:8).¹

All these millennia later, the world is still drowning in a sea of sin and wickedness. It permeates all aspects of life, and nothing escapes its deadly grasp. Plants shrivel and die; animals savagely attack each other; children get cancer; mobs brutally murder innocent bystanders; crooked businessmen steal millions from destitute people; tidal waves wipe out unsuspecting villages—all as a result of the curse of the fall.

And yet, we may be tempted to blame God for the evil we see in the world. But the Bible teaches that God is not the author of sin and evil (e.g., Ps. 5:4).² Furthermore, He does not tempt anyone to commit sin (James 1:13). Rather, God is good, and all His ways are right and true (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 33:4; cf. 1 John 1:5). The reason a woman dies of breast cancer is not due to any deficiency in the character of God, but rather it is a result of the widespread effects of humanity’s fall into sin and wickedness. But God is still good; He is still kind.

While we are in the world, however, we experience the devastating effects of sin’s curse. Terrible things happen. People hurt us. We hurt others. All told, it’s hard to escape the reality that we are living in an increasingly cruel world. But where do we look for hope? Where do we find goodness, kindness, and love? As we will see, the only oasis of goodness is found in God.

GOODNESS AND KINDNESS

When Moses marched up Mount Sinai to meet with God, his burning curiosity led him to ask, I pray You, show me Your glory! (Ex. 33:18). Not without some conditions, the Lord granted the request and proclaimed, I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you (v. 19). In the next chapter, we find ourselves hidden with Moses in the cleft of the rock, beholding God’s back as He passes by, declaring,

The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. (Ex. 34:6–7, emphasis added)

In this astounding display, God not only flashes forth His visible glory, but also declares various truths about Himself—perfections, or attributes, as they’re called by theologians. God expresses to Moses the aspects of who He is. And while the list is not completely exhaustive, we learn of His compassion, grace, patience, lovingkindness, truthfulness, forgiveness, and justice. However, the Lord Himself refers to all of what He reveals to Moses as His goodness.

God’s goodness is the ultimate standard of all that is morally pure, inherently right, and worthy of approval. Any judgment of something being good has to be stacked up against God Himself, for He is the barometer of all goodness. Furthermore, God’s goodness encompasses all of His divine perfections, as all of them display God’s intrinsic goodness. Stephen Charnock notes, All good meets in his essence, as all water meets in the ocean.³

When we look in the Bible, we see that the Hebrew word tûb can refer to goodness, good things, prosperity, fairness, or even beauty. But when describing God, it refers to His perfect and upright character. The psalmist confesses, "How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You have wrought for those who take refuge in You, before the sons of men! (Ps. 31:19, emphasis added). Isaiah extolled the character of God when he declared, I shall make mention of the lovingkindnesses of the LORD, the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD has granted us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He has granted them according to His compassion and according to the abundance of His lovingkindnesses (Isa. 63:7, emphasis added). Speaking of the future restoration of Israel, we read, ‘I will fill the soul of the priests with abundance, and My people will be satisfied with My goodness,’ declares the LORD" (Jer. 31:14, emphasis added). Repeatedly we behold the objective goodness of God displayed before His people.

However, the goodness of God functions almost as an umbrella that encompasses many other of His divine perfections. William G. T. Shedd refers to God’s goodness as a special attribute with varieties under it.⁴ One of the key varieties of God’s goodness is His kindness. Louis Berkhof notes, The goodness of God should not be confused with His kindness, which is a more restricted concept. They are not the same thing. However, he continues, "in our ascription of goodness to God the fundamental idea is that He is in every way all that He as God should be, and therefore answers perfectly