Yesterday I had a day of personal formation at college. Personal formation (PF) is a subject that runs for three years, handily broken up into PF1, 2 and 3. I'm currently studying PF2 and yesterday I got to meet with my formation group and share a little about where God is taking us in our life.

The subject seemed to be a gimme at first, you just sit around and share how your going, pray for each other and see each other in another 2 months time but it's really a quite intense and very personally confronting process.

In the start of year you attend a retreat, your put into a group and you share everything about your life. After you do that you find yourself instantly bonded to one another in the group. The process promotes you to be vulnerable about yourself and share in each others vulnerability. Then during the year you meet up and update the rest of the group. It's a process guided by a facilitator who is looking to develop our ministry philosophy and challenge us in other areas as well.

That's the background.

So yesterday one of my group members shared with us that they were facing a life threatening ailment (I wont go into it for confidentiality reasons) and at the end they said, "But God is good".

Our facilitator picked up on that statement, it was almost a throw-away, something said as a full stop to the conversation. He challenged the person and all of us to ask "why is God good", why is he good when a person faces being struck down in their prime and faces the prospect of leaving behind a young family.

I guess this falls partly into the "why do bad things happen to good people?" category but the answer to that is easy, none of us are really good! And even if we were, Christianity isn't some sort of insurance policy against illness, God shows some of his fairness with illness. He allows the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. If God said when you turn to me you will live perfect and healthy lives he would be creating an injustice that is not in keeping with his character. He would be saying to us, I love this person more than that one and that just isn't the case. He would be making life so much easier and avoid the character forming events of life.

So why is God good? One reason is that he shows us fairness, he doesn't play favorites, he just want's to draw people away from their lives lived in rebellion and bring them into his family.

Some people might object to this and say "but Christians claim that God heals them, doesn't that mean he's playing favorites?" On the surface that seems so but if you did a little deeper and examine the healing ministry of Jesus we can clearly see that  he shared physical healing with both those who believed and those who did not.

I believe that God is good, not just because the bible tells me so, but because God is ultimately fair, he is just, he does not punish us unless we are truely deserving of it and that isn't with cancer, it isn't with AIDS, it comes at the end of our lives when we stand in his presence and our eternal destiny is decided.

Well, we can cheat a little. The bible says that anyone who calls upon the name of the LORD in this life, that is, anyone who makes Jesus the King in their life will share with him new life in the next. And even that's not cheating, that's an offer for everyone.