Is God Always Good?

Lately, I have been spending some of my devotional time in the book of Joshua. This morning I read chapter 10 of this wonderful little history of Israel and found myself greatly troubled. How can a holy, loving, generous God call for the complete destruction of whole cities of people? How can God utterly destroy men, women and children by the sword of the army of Israel? Does this annihilation contradict the God of love, compassion and grace which we see in the person of Jesus?

Right about the moment my meditation on this passage started to get the best of me I felt the Holy Spirit bring to mind several thoughts in response to my questions:

1. God is holy and just. God cannot stand sin and will one day completely wipe it from existence. Those who practice sin will suffer spiritual death in what the Bible calls the "second death." God takes sin seriously and will never tolerate it (nor should it be by His followers). It should not surprise us to see sin and unrepentant sinners utterly destroyed.
2. Many of God's actions throughout the history of mankind are lost to recorded history. Joshua refers to a "Book of Jashar" in Joshua 10:13 of which there are no known copies. God may have dealt with the Canaanites in a myriad of redemptive acts before His act of judgement against them through the Children of Israel.
3. God extends grace and mercy in ways He Himself determines. In Romans 9:15, which is a quote from Exodus 33:19, God says, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." God's ways are higher than our own (Isaiah 55:9) and we won't always understand His decisions or methods...but that's ok! After all, if we always understood God we would be His equal!

I may not understand everything but I have a dependable God who absolutely knows everything and in every way acts absolutely just. God is always kind, loving, full of grace and merciful. We can depend on the God who knows everything, to be absolutely good, continually loving and perfectly just in all His ways.

James