By Clement Harrold
September 24, 2026
Even when we remain convinced of God’s existence, there are times when we are tempted to doubt His goodness.
In these dark moments, our cry is similar to that of the psalmist: “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? ... It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed” (Ps 77:9–10).
Particularly when we experience deep suffering, we might find ourselves asking: How do we know for certain that the true God is a good God?
We’ll explore four different answers to this question.
The Empirical Answer
One way of being confident that God is all-good is by looking at the world around us.
Creation testifies to the existence of a cosmic Designer who is not just an incredible chemist and physicist but also a remarkable artist and lover.
The world we inhabit is hauntingly beautiful, filled with marvels and wonders that seem to have been made, at least in part, for our delight and enjoyment. The God who went to such lengths to bring joy to His creatures must surely be good in some very significant respects.
Of course, the world also contains pain and sadness.
And yet, our sense of indignation over these things is itself a sign that our hearts were made by One who regards evil as an aberration and a tragedy. As C. S. Lewis observed in his book Miracles, “Nature has all the air of a good thing spoiled.”
While there is plenty of brokenness in creation, the goodness of creation remains absolutely primary. We see this in the fact that the vast majority of human beings choose not to commit suicide. Despite their struggles, they remain convinced that existence is overwhelmingly good.
The Interpersonal Answer
A second way of establishing God’s goodness is by looking within ourselves.
There are countless human beings who testify to having had a personal encounter with God, in which they experienced His perfect love and goodness. It seems extremely unlikely that so many otherwise reasonable and credible people could all be deluded with regard to these experiences.
But even if we are tempted to dismiss the testimony of others, we still have the testimony of our own hearts.
Each of us has within us the voice of conscience, which tells us in a language deeper than words that certain actions are truly good and noble, while other actions are objectively evil and disordered.
To be sure, we can choose to ignore this voice, and we can try to dull its effects in our soul. But still, it is there.
We know with as much certainty as we know anything in this world that it is always and everywhere wrong to torture babies for fun. But the strength of these moral convictions is very difficult to explain if God doesn’t exist or if He is merely a mixture of good and evil just like the rest of us.
The fact that the universe clearly operates according to set moral laws is a sign that there must be a moral Lawgiver whose nature is itself the paradigm of goodness.
The Theological Answer
A third way of discovering that God is good is by looking at what He has revealed about Himself.
There are excellent reasons for believing not only that God exists but also that He has taken on human flesh and walked among us.
If Jesus was not who He said He was, then it is very difficult to explain His life, His preaching, and the movement that He inspired. Judging by His teachings and parables, He was the wisest moral teacher who has ever lived.
How likely is it that this same moral teacher was either profoundly deluded about His own identity and mission or else a barefaced liar who successfully deceived thousands into adopting Him as their Messiah?
The reality is that we possess powerful historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, which proves that He was who He said He was.
But if this is the case, then we have every reason to believe that the God we worship is all-good and all-loving.
For one thing, if Jesus rose from the dead, then it follows that the Jewish Scriptures are true. This means that we can trust what those Scriptures say about God’s character: “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made” (Ps 145:9).
Secondly, if Jesus is who He says He is, then we are confronted with the mystery of a God who died on a Cross to save us. What wondrous love is this!
At the same time, the fact that Jesus founded a Church means we have good reason to trust what the New Testament tells us about what God is like: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
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The Philosophical Answer
A final way of demonstrating God’s goodness is by using the tools of philosophy.
Philosophical arguments advanced by figures like Aristotle, St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas offer compelling proofs for the existence of a necessary being who is the foundation of all reality—a being with no defects, imperfections, or limitations.
We call this being “God.”
Now it is metaphysically impossible for evil to exist in God, because evil is simply things not working as they ought to work. But God is essentially and necessarily perfect, and so it would be nonsensical to speak of Him erring or malfunctioning in some way.
Similarly, God can never will evil directly, because the essential nature of the divine will has to be God’s eternal rest and delight in His own perfection, which excludes all evil.
But if God’s nature is incompatible with evil, how then do we explain the abundance of evils in the world?
The answer is that God can and does permit certain evils in His creatures, but only because permitting these things allows Him to bring about even greater goods.
Another way of putting this is that God can only positively will that which tends to promote perfection. He therefore wills His own infinite goodness, and He wills the goodness of His creatures because their very existence is a participation in the divine perfection.
It would be unthinkable for Michelangelo to add a piece of profanity-laden graffiti to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. God’s inability to will evil in His creatures is like this, only infinitely more so: He is metaphysically incapable of positively willing evil in His creation.
This gives us the confidence that the true God could never create our hearts for anything less than finding our eternal rest in Him.
Since God’s will is always ordered to His own perfection, and since all of creation is a participation in His own perfection, it would be impossible for Him to positively will that one of His creatures remain eternally frustrated and unhappy.
Hence, no matter what suffering comes our way, this should never cause us to doubt God’s goodness. The only reason He is permitting this suffering is so that we might be perfected by it and thereby participate more fully (and beautifully) in His own perfection.
Even in our darkest moments, therefore, this philosophical truth remains unshaken: the God who created the heavens and the earth is all good; He is all powerful; and He wants us to be happy.
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Further reading:
If We Must Thank God for Good Things, Why Can’t We Blame Him for Bad Things?
Ed Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld Publications, 2009)
About Clement Harrold
Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s degree in theology, philosophy, and classics from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. He is a columnist for The Catholic Herald, and his writings have appeared in First Things, Word on Fire, Catholic Answers Magazine, Church Life Journal, Our Sunday Visitor Magazine, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.
