Is God good? Your initial response may be the one you learned in church or Sunday school; “God is good. All the time.” But what about your internal emotional reaction? It’s one thing for your head to “know” the “right” answer. It’s quite another for your internal nervous system, your feelings, to enthusiastically affirm the same.

This is a question humans have asked for millennia. Moses. David. Jeremiah. Habakkuk. Mary and Martha. And many others. It’s one thing to have an internal picture of God as big, all-powerful, all-knowing, up there somewhere. But we all experience evil; assaults on our body, mind, and soul, deprivation, oppression, broken relationships, warring within the various aspects of our own being. What then?

I hear this often. Marge* feels God must not care because her prayers for a godly husband and a good life seem to be ignored. Jeremy* sees God as cruel for making him a sexual being and landing him in a sexless marriage even though he “did everything right.” Sandra* wonders why God could send people to hell for “sins” they had no choice over because of genetics, trauma, etc.

We’re talking right brain/left brain here. You may “know” all the right answers and still struggle to emotionally believe that God is good. Free will, the reality of the kingdom of darkness, theological nuance – understanding those things can help. But when it comes right down to it, your right brain runs the show.

So, if in your heart of hearts you’re not sure God is really good, what do you do?

Where Did That Come From?

You learned things about God – and life, relationships, connection, all the things – long before you had language for any of it. You came to see the world as basically a good and safe-enough place, and yourself as able to explore, do things, and come back to a secure home base. OR, you came to see yourself as powerless or pretty much alone and the world as dangerous and unpredictable, where you’d have to fight and scramble for crumbs if you were to survive.

Many, some might say most, people develop some variety of insecure attachment (to use psychological language). Sometimes that’s because your parents or caregivers were truly unpredictable or unsafe, and sometimes it’s through no fault of your parents at all. And regardless, that internal map of reality automatically frames your internal perception of God.

So from babyhood on, the default pathway in your brain may see everything as evidence that the universe is dangerous and therefore God must not be good. You experience a rupture in a family relationship. School and career don’t go as you hoped. You experience trauma or hear about trauma happening to others. If you’re in church, you may hear about all the things God expects of you.

Yes, all those messages can be interpreted in different ways. But if you grew up with an insecure attachment, your default brain pathways are programmed to see all that as evidence that God is not good.

And more information into your left brain, even good Biblical true information, doesn’t change those internal default ways of seeing the world and God. You might even end up hating yourself for struggling to believe God is good.

Brain Defaults can Change

Rewiring your emotional sense of the world and of God doesn’t happen quickly or automatically. In the long story of the world, think of how all the things God said and did for His people in the Old Testament weren’t effective in helping them know who He really is. There were some who picked up the clues, who pursued a true connection with God, but by and large His people did not see God as good enough to follow, believe, and worship.

Then comes Jesus. God with us. It took seeing, feeling, hearing, sensing Him with their own eyes, ears, and hands for even His closest friends to come to know who He really is. “… which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands” – that’s right brain stuff (1 John 1:1-3).

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do know – theologically, psychologically, and personally – that brain defaults can be rewired. Insecure attachment to God can be healed. Our internal perception, our emotional sense, of God can become so secure that you know that you know that you know that God is good.

As I told one friend a couple days ago, I am convinced with every fiber of my being and without an ounce of reservation that when I get to eternity and see the whole story, I will not want God to have done one single thing differently. I didn’t start out that way. But my attachment to God has become truly secure. I humbly but confidently affirm that nothing can move me.

How Your Brain can Change

If you’re not at all sure that God is good, let me suggest a few places to direct your energy.

1. Bring your questions into the light. God’s very best friends in the Bible brought their hard questions to Him.  Refuse to give in to religious boxes that demand you must say this, do that, only pray this way. Only when you are honest about your questions – with yourself, with others, and with God – can you be healed.
2. Hang around others who are pursuing secure attachment to God. Sometimes that’s not church people who are doing all the right things! Find those who demonstrate a growing substance in their very being and their way of life that demonstrates an authentic pursuit of becoming whole, who are safe (enough), real, inviting, and growing.
3. Bring your “stuff” to God.  Either He can handle your questions or He can’t. I challenge you to be real with Him. Use the Psalms as a template of how to begin voicing your real self to God. No hiding. No masks. Just “out with it” in His presence with open hands. Do it over and over. And then get quiet enough to hear if He has something to say to you.

If you need to borrow a measure of faith from me and others for a moment, do so. And know that God is good enough, big enough, strong enough, unoffendable enough, to handle you and all your stuff, all your questions, all your resistance, all your brokenness.

Yes, God is good. Truly good.

It’s worth taking the time to walk toward believing that with your whole self.

Your Turn: Has part of you wrestled with whether or not God is good? What has gone into your struggle with that? Where do you see yourself in the journey toward secure attachment to God?  Leave a comment below.

Want more? The podcast this week is with Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw all about our attachment defaults and building secure attachment with God. Listen or watch.

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• God is good. But do you truly believe that – with both your left brain and your right brain? Defaults in your brain can change, including the type of attachment you have with God.   Tweet that.

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*Names changed for privacy reasons.