Most of the people I know who have wanted to argue against the existence of God (or against His goodness) have wanted to make the argument external, non-personal.  But God is personal and our need for Him is personal, our sin is personal.  So when we talk of God and the conversation is not about why we would personally need God, we overlook the nature of the relationship and knowledge of God that was intended in the first place.

So my conclusion is that any real conversation about God needs to be about why you or I need God personally.  Conversations about whether God is good or does God exist in general, where as the question my be legitimate in the mind of the questioner, it is misleading.  The question needs to be ‘can I know that God exists?’ or ‘Can I know that God is good?’  When we consider a possible relationship with Him we need to ask ‘how can I have a relationship with God and is that reasonable?’

What this does is eliminate the hypothetical bologna that gets in the way of honest questions.  Instead of allowing my mind to question how God can judge something I don’t see as a problem in another person, I then have to ask how God could make peace with me.  And even if I don’t understand the law of God, each of us are aware that we have done things that are wrong.  When we face those parts of our life that we know we have done wrong, then we free to consider if God is real and how He will accept us.  That will reveal our need for a Savior, and that leads only to Christ.

If we fail to make this personal than we become guilty of the greatest form of sin and arrogance.  When we start evaluating God in a hypothetical, non-personal way, we wind up judging God based on our presumptions concerning His actions in situations that we do not fully understand.

Verses to consider:

• 1 Samuel 16:7 – But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  (ESV)
• Romans 3:21-26 – But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—  the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  (ESV)