I was teaching about Noah’s ark yesterday morning for the little kids’ Sunday School class (Genesis 6:5-9:17). When we got to the part about the rainbow when God promised never to flood the entire earth again, one of the girls wondered why God would have flooded the earth to kill everyone in the first place and asked, “But isn’t God nice?”
I love it when kids ask good questions like this, and I explained. God is nice, but sometimes He has to say enough is enough. People on the earth were so, so bad that God actually had to get rid of them. They weren’t listening to Him even though He gave them many chances, and they were actually bad enough that God had to make them stop. It isn’t nice to let people keep on being mean to each other that badly.
This got me thinking about the “niceness” of God. Sometimes even when it looks like God isn’t being nice, He actually is being nice. It wouldn’t be nice to just let people be as bad as they could possibly be without doing something about it. God can’t just let sin continue indefinitely, and one of these days He’s going to do something similar to Noah’s day but different from it when Jesus comes back. One day God is going to say enough is enough, and those who listen to Him and want to love Him will be with Him, and those who want nothing to do with God will be left to the consequences of that choice. God will respect everyone’s free will as to whether or not they wanted to be safe from judgment. (See also Matthew 24:36-39; 1 Peter 3:18-22.)
Related:
If God Is Good, Then Why Is There Evil?
God Respecting Your Decision
It’s Not Fair
When God Can, But Doesn’t
Why Is Sin Such a Big Deal?
Not Fair, But Still Good