In this episode, I share more about how this truth has played out in my own life — and the steps you can take to make it real in yours.

From a human perspective, judging God’s goodness through the lens of the world seems logical.
👉🏻 Yet, it’s simply not possible to accurately see God’s character through the lens of our broken, sinful world.
🌏 Instead, we need to interpret the world through who God has revealed Himself to be.
A human scenario to help illustrate the difference between those two perspectives:

We’ve all had instances where someone has judged our character – the very essence of who we are – based on something that wasn’t our fault.
He or she judged how good of a person we are based on things we didn’t do or say.
That’s what we’re doing when we look at God through the lens of the world.

And that’s a problem.
🌴 Because God created a perfect world – and then we broke it.
As humans, our natural inclination is to look at the world around us and blame God when bad things happen.

Note: If we’re highly compassionate and caring, it’s even harder to see others suffer.

Yet, underneath can be this idea or expectation that life should be free of sin and evil.
And it was – once.
💗 As we read in the book of Genesis, God didn’t create the world with sin or brokenness present.
It was when Adam and Eve chose to sin in the Garden of Eden – by questioning God’s words and ultimately His character – that those things were brought into the world.
And since then, us humans have brought sin into the world from the day of our birth:

In Psalm 51:5 (NLT), King David acknowledges, “For I was born a sinner—yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.”
Romans 5:12 (NLT) says, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”
Romans 3:23 (NLT) says, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

💯 The broken world we live in is humanity’s fault – not God’s.
Even so, shouldn’t God still keep all the bad things from happening?
But here’s a hard – but very freeing – truth: we think such thoughts because we see ourselves as the center of the universe instead of God.
Because we’re all born sinful, we’re born naturally bent away from God. Our natural tendency isn’t to lean into Him. It’s to lean away from Him.

God is holy – which means He’s 100% without any sin or wickedness. The Bible tells us this repeatedly.
But we’re not born holy. We’re born sinful.
So our words, thoughts, and actions are not naturally aligned with God’s holiness or ways. They’re bent away from him – towards sin.

👉🏻 As a result, our natural state (before coming to know God), is to think we’re entitled to things being a certain way. As if God is more of a genie than the holy creator of the universe.

I once heard a pastor say that when a plane crashes (which is indeed horrible and tragic), God is often blamed.
But no one praises Him for the thousands of flights that landed safely every day.
This is the perspective we can have when we:

Essentially, we look at the world – and at God – through a lens of entitlement.
🤔 And so then we assume that if God’s not doing what we think He should be doing, then He’s simply not good.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth, friend.
✝️ This is why it’s so important to interpret the world through who God has revealed Himself to be – starting with biblical truth.

This is one reason why He’s given the Bible to us – and why it’s endured for thousands of years.
We have His own words, in writing, about His true character.
Throughout the book of Judges, for example, the Israelites keep turning their back on God – and yet God never forsakes them.
It’s by reading such accounts like that we begin to understand:

Just how much we’re not worthy of God’s love and goodness
💖 And that He’s loving and good towards us because of who He is. (Not because of who we are.)

Want to dig deeper into God’s true biblical character, but don’t know where to start?
Relate Escape Place, my membership community, exists for this reason.