Article August 19, 2019 Issue

A right understanding of God heals

Chiemezi Ahanonu

Assurances of God’s goodness and everlasting love for His creation can be read throughout the Bible. Yet it is not unusual for the average Bible reader to believe God is capable of both good and evil, a belief that not only limits God but also limits our faith in His love and ability to help us when challenges arise. The common assertion that God is capable of evil clearly contradicts the also popular assertion that God is infinite good. Ascribing to God the capacity for evil suggests a limitation to His infinite, all-good nature.

Since the Bible tells us God is Spirit, is it possible to gain a higher, more spiritual concept of God’s nature, and to rely on this understanding in difficult times?

To find within the Bible not an uninspired, material sense of God, but a reliable, spiritual understanding of an all-good God, we can start with the first chapter of the first book, Genesis. This chapter presents the first record of creation, where evil is not known by God and therefore doesn’t exist anywhere in God’s “very good” creation. According to this account, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (verse 27). This man of God’s, Spirit’s, creating is spiritual, not material.

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