Let me begin with a little story. Two months ago I was in Toronto, and I was fellowshipping together with our four co-workers in our Toronto church, and we were talking about the goodness of God. Nothing to do with discussing today's camp's theme — we were just talking about how God has been good to us in various ways. And one couple of co-workers in Toronto were sharing how recently, because of the heavy workload, they were very tired. And so they decided to go for a trip to a place north of Toronto, two or three hours' drive away, to get some rest there.
And so they went there, and when they got there, as often the problem on a holiday is, what do you do on a holiday? So they thought they would try something they hadn't tried before. What about horse riding? They'd never been horseback riding before, so they said, well, why not give it a try? Somebody recommended that particular type of exercise. So they had an address and they went to look for this horse riding school.
So at this time, this was a husband and wife team. And so the husband said to the wife, "Why don't you drive?" So the wife would get more experience in country driving. But in the city, unless you can drive reasonably well in the country, you best not try driving in the city. It's a bit more dangerous. Toronto drivers are really something. Some of us who have been driving for years and years are quite terrified by the way these Toronto drivers drive. They seem to think that they are on the Monte Carlo racetrack or something. I normally drive at a fairly high speed, but nothing compared with the likes of them. I just see the car go past. I'm looking at my speedometer. Is there something wrong with my speedometer?
So this brother wanted his wife to do a little bit more driving on the country road. So they were looking for this riding school. And they asked somebody local, "How do we get to this riding school?" They said, "Well, go along this road and the distance is about 10 kilometers. So when you get to the 10 kilometer mark, that's about where the riding school is." Ah, no problem. So they looked at their speedo and they said, "We count up. When the meter goes up 10 kilometers, you know that you're near the riding school."
So the sister was driving the car and the husband was sitting beside her. And the sister had to keep looking at the road, trying to count 10 kilometers, looking at the road up there. So he said, "No, no, you keep your eye on the road. I'll look at the kilometers. I'll lean over to see whether we are there yet." So when it came to the 10 kilometer mark, the husband said, "There's a road to the right. You turn into the right-hand side, there's a road there. That's where the riding school is."
So at the 10 kilometer mark, he said, "There's the road, turn right." But she's not very experienced in driving. She couldn't stop in time, you see. So she went past — missed it. But the country road is very narrow and her driving skills were a bit limited. So she couldn't turn the car around because it takes three-point or five-point turns, and she couldn't manage it. So they kept going straight. So the husband said, "Okay, go to the next right turn, then you turn around and come back again."
So driving on, driving on. And the husband said, "Hey, there's a road on the right." And she went right past it again. The husband said, "How much notice do I have to give you?" By the time you see the road, she already couldn't stop, you see. So the second one was missed. So what to do? She said, "All right, drive on. When we come to the next right turn, then you turn in and turn around and come back onto this road." Okay, okay.
So she's going on, driving, driving. And you can guess what happened. So the husband said, "There is the right-hand road. It's coming up now. Slow down, slow down." And she went past it again. He said, "Where are we going? We're going to end up in the Arctic Circle." By now, of course, you notice I didn't mention who is the teammate who did the driving.
So missed three roads already. By this time, it's long past the 10 kilometer mark, you see. So they're wondering whether they're ever going to get to this riding school. So, all right, this is it — the next one, I'll go very carefully. So she's driving slower, much slower now, because it takes her a long time to slow down and to brake, you see. So this time she's going slower. Then, finally, they see the fourth one on the right. "There it is." Ah, she's okay. And now at a speed she can manage to slow down. And she turned into this fourth junction, into this fourth right-hand turn. Oh, what a relief — actually managed to get into this turning.
And then they opened their eyes and they took a look in front. And what did they see? They see a signboard there that says, "Riding School." It took four mistakes to get to the riding school. In other words, if she had followed the instruction and turned off the first time, they would never have found the riding school. Not even at the second. Not even at the third. She had to miss three in order to get to the riding school.
So they sat there and thought, "How come this is the case?" And then they realized that the instruction given to them was wrong. The person should have said 10 miles, not 10 kilometers, because by now it was actually 16 kilometers. And you know that 10 miles is 16 kilometers. She had gone so far ahead, beyond the point that was stated.
And why we were laughing about it was simply this: we remembered the words in Romans, Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 8 and verse 28, where Paul says that God works together all things for good. To whom? To those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose. He worked it all for good. The mistake of the person who gave the information as to where the riding school is, how far it was, was an error. The errors, the mistakes of the sister who was driving — multiple errors — and it came out with the right result. God? That's really amazing, isn't it? God works out all things for good.
You see, had they stopped at the first one, they would have been confused, because it's a very deserted road. There's hardly anyone to ask where the riding school is. They wouldn't have been able to find the riding school. It took all these mistakes for them to find the riding school. Do you call that a coincidence, maybe? Yes, if it happens once, you can call that a coincidence. If it happens twice, the statistical probability of coincidence falls dramatically. By the time it keeps on happening, then it's no longer coincidence.
So Paul says, God works all things — notice the word — for good. To those — to whom? To everyone? Not necessarily. To those who love Him. So those of us who by the grace of God have been drawn into loving Him can say we have experienced the goodness of God. Now if I went on to give you illustration after illustration of this kind, I could go on for a long, long time — that we have tasted and experienced the goodness of God.
But it very much depends on many factors. Just now I mentioned, for example, how you experience life, how you experience God, depends even on your physical condition. If you have a terrible headache, you may be living in the most beautiful environment, but you can't enjoy any of it. Is the environment good? Yes, it is good. But do you taste it as good? The answer is no. You don't taste it. You don't experience it as good. Why? Because the environment is no good? No, it's because you are no good — your physical condition is no good. Now that is very important for us to understand in our relationship to God.
The other day, Brother Caleb introduced himself. In the end, we got a little confused because he said he was known as Khalid, he was known as Yao, he was known as gay or not gay, and he was known as Hyeong, you see, and I hope Hyeong means fragrant. So in the end, we are not quite sure which of all these names to call him. Now, God too has many names. The Bible lists God as having very, very many names. And each one of these names means something to the person who uses that name.
Jesus, the name high over all, the name sweeter than all other names. There are some names that mean something to you, some names that mean nothing to you. Why does one name mean something and the other mean nothing? It's because you have an experience of that name. That name evokes a certain experience. For example, that name evokes the experience of sweetness. Like the name of your boyfriend or your girlfriend. Mmm. Oh. Mmm. You see, now his name may just be John, and there may be 10,000 Johns in the world. But this John — this John is special. Mmm. The sweetness of the name.
So when I say John, John is John. But when I say John to you, your eyes light up, and I thought, "What happened? What did I say?" In the same way, when Wesley wrote this song, he says, "Jesus, the name high over all," and your eyes are singing into harmony. You see, the name means something to John — John Wesley this time. It means something to him. But what does the name mean to you? Maybe not very much, because Wesley experienced Jesus in a way that made that name sweet. It put content into that name.
Take this name, Eric Chang. Who is he? Oh, you say, "I think I saw this guy walking around the other day there. Snobbish fellow. The nose high in the air. He thinks himself to be something." So I thought I might talk to him, but because his nose was so high up in the air, I thought maybe I forget it. Leave it for another time. Or another person may think, "Oh, this guy, Eric Chang, he's not so bad, you know. He's not so bad. He's got his faults, but once in a while, he has quite a nice smile." But another person will say, "Oh, this fellow, you know, hard man. Looks so severe. How serious looking. Every time I look at him, gives me nightmares."
So you see, the same person, but different people looking at that same person have totally different perceptions of that person. Isn't it remarkable? So when we say, "Taste and see," or experience the character of God, I'm sure that all of you have a different perception of God in the same way as you would have a different perception of me.
But why do you have a different perception of me? Well, it depends. You see, if I happen to be sitting next to you at lunchtime, and by mistake I put my curry sauce on your trousers, you have a certain perception of me that is quite different: "This guy is exceedingly clumsy. He doesn't even know how to eat curry properly. He can't find his way to his mouth, and he goes and pours it all on my nice trousers." So that one act, that one mistake, you can say, or one act of clumsiness, determines completely your perception of me.
On the other hand, if you were very hungry, and I found that I was not that hungry, and I could spare one piece of chicken claw there, and I passed it into your plate, and you said, "Oh, he is such a lovely man. Oh, he is so generous. He even gave me the chicken claw he didn't want to eat." So you have a totally different perception of me. These kinds of things — it's quite remarkable how one incident determines one's perception of a person.
It's quite remarkable. I was listening to a report about the Long March in China. And you know, the Long March that the communists made, what in Chinese is called the 25,000 li chang zheng, the 25,000 li march. I think 25,000 li is something in the region of what, 3 or 4,000 miles. It's a very long march. And some veterans of that march were being interviewed. There are still some old men alive who made that Long March. And one of them was asked about his impression of Mao Zedong.
Oh, he said, "Mao Zedong, a wonderful man." Why? Well, he said, "You see, we were all in that Long March where everyone was exceedingly hungry. Very hard to find anything to eat. We were all starving at various times. And one day, Mao Zedong happened to come by and sat down next to me, and he was just an ordinary soldier. Looked at his tin plate so that he had not much there to eat. And Mao Zedong took three little bao, you see, and put it on his tin plate and said, 'Eat it.' And so, he being very hungry, very gratefully gobbled down the small bao. And then Mao Zedong walked away."
And then somebody said to him, "How can you go and eat up Mao Zedong's three bao?" He said, "He gave it to me. He must have more bao, you know. He is the number one. He has lots of bao." He said, "No, Mao Zedong has the same rations as all of us. You ate up his bao, that means he doesn't have any to eat." Oh. He said, "Well, now I realize what a wonderful man he is." Now, his perception of Mao Zedong was based on only one incident, that he ate three of his bao. It's amazing how one incident makes such a deep impression on a person's mind.
But of course, for those people — the san fan, wu fan — I don't know how even to translate this, the anti-revolutionary and counter-revolutionary measures which were taken after the liberation, when the communists took over China — you know, that thousands were purged, thousands were shot, thousands, tens of thousands were imprisoned and sent to hard labor camps. Now, you can see that those tens of thousands of people who never tasted the three bao of Mao Zedong would have a totally different impression of who Mao Zedong is: "This man is evil. This man is vicious."
Now, you see, what am I trying to say? We can see the importance of the word "taste." It is not a theoretical thing. We do not determine whether Mao Zedong was good or bad simply by having read some pieces. What we read affects us, but what we experience affects us even more deeply.
Now, the Bible tells us something very important. We have been talking in this camp about God as good, but many people do not experience God as good. Let's be very straightforward about this. Maybe you are one of those people who have either not experienced God at all, or if you have anything to experience, it wasn't good. And the Bible tells us that you are right. The Bible doesn't say that everyone tastes and sees that God is good. In fact, those who have experienced God as good in this world are relatively few — very relatively few.
If there were more people who experience God as good, we would easily see that there would be many more people who would be in love with God. To them, the name of God would be very sweet. But how many people do you know who think God is good? Not very many, I'm sure. Not even among the religious people, and I mean religious people includes Christians, Protestants, Catholics. If you want to push it wider, you can include the Muslims, the Buddhists, whoever. The Buddhists don't believe in God at all. Whatever it is, the majority of people either do not know God at all — they're not even sure that He is around, that He exists. Maybe the world just fumbles on its way through the universe, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. Or if they have any perception of God at all, it is negative.
And this problem we must deal with if we are going to do any justice to our subject today. We cannot just go around propagandizing God as though He is always experienced as good. Well, He isn't. And the Bible tells us this. And this is very important for me to pass on to you.
Let me read to you a passage from the book of 2 Samuel. In fact, it's also repeated in Psalms. Maybe I'll just read it from the Psalms. Psalm chapter 18 and verse 26. Because our time is very, very short, and very soon we have to close. But Psalm 18 and verse 26, and this is what we read here. We'll read at verse 25: "With the kind, thou dost show thyself kind. With the blameless, you show yourself blameless. With the pure, you show yourself pure." And now notice this: "And with the crooked, you show yourself to be crooked." Surprising? Surprising? Evil.
In other words, God shows Himself to be kind to who? To those who are kind. He shows Himself blameless to those who are blameless. But to the evil, He shows Himself to be evil. Now, let me qualify this statement about evil. Evil is used in the Bible in two senses: in a moral sense and in a non-moral sense.
You know, in the history of religions, there was a religion, a very powerful religion which has died out for the most part now, a religion called Gnosticism, which dominated the whole Western world in the early part of the first millennium after Christ. That is, from about the first century A.D., from when the church was established, in the first century after Christ, and it continued to thrive to sometime in the sixth or seventh century — a very powerful religion. And you know what they taught about their God? They said that the God who created this world is bad. That God is evil. And one must look for another God who is a good God, but has nothing to do with this creation. The God who made this creation was evil, because for them, matter is evil.
You know that in Greek philosophy, matter is evil. The body is evil because it is matter. All material things are bad. The body is bad because the body captures the spirit of man, holding the spirit of man as in a prison. Your spirit, according to this teaching, Gnosticism, is locked up in your body. Your spirit is imprisoned in your body. And you must be released from your body in order to be saved. How are you saved? You are saved through Gnosis. What is Gnosis? Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. That's why you have the name Gnosticism. It is the doctrine of salvation by a secret knowledge. You
# O Taste and See That God Is Good (Part 2)
The notion that matter is bad, and the God of matter, the God who created matter, is bad. Now you will understand from this teaching that to those who are bad, even God is bad. To those who are pure, all things are pure. But to the impure, even God is impure — everything is impure. That is why the way you look at God, whether He is good or bad, is determined by what you are.
Now that is a fundamental principle in biblical teaching. Always remember this important verse in the psalm, Psalm 18, verses 25-26. Get it imprinted in your mind. Because the way you look at God tells us not about God, but tells us about you. I just said, "Look at this world, isn't it beautiful?" No, it's not beautiful if you right now have a migraine headache. But then isn't the world beautiful? It is. But not to you. You cannot be objective.
In the matter of life, there is no such thing as pure objectivity. Only in the very small, narrow confines of purely physical science is there some degree of possibility of objectivity. But not in the matter of life. Life is existential. That means it has to do with existence, with the way you are now, the way you are existing now. And one headache can spoil all your enjoyment of life. So please grasp this first fundamental principle. This is my first and fundamental principle that I must impress on your mind: God is good. But He may not be good as far as you are concerned, because you are not good. And I am not good. And when I am not good, I don't find God to be good. When you are not good, you don't find God to be good. That is an absolute truth that you can experience for yourself, as I have illustrated even from daily life.
So how can we experience God to be good? That takes me quickly to my second point. Unless we ourselves are set free from evil, we will think even God is evil. And we will even find justification for thinking that God is evil, because we have a brain and we think we are clever. And we are — usually not as clever as we think, but at least we may be quite clever. It's better that you don't think you are too clever. You might end up like Nietzsche, in the mental asylum. That's where most people who are too clever end up, who haven't learned to be humble.
I just said that there are two kinds of evil in the Bible. There is moral evil and there is natural evil. Now there is another important passage in the Bible I would like to read to you very briefly, to show you why some people will not experience God as good — because God is not good to them. God is not good to them, especially religious people. If you are a religious person, I want you to take special notice of this. God is particularly harsh, if I may use that word, to religious people. Why? Because He expects more from you. That's easy to understand. If you are in primary school, you do not expect the primary school teacher to be as hard on the primary school student as the professor to be as hard on the student at university. Why? Because he expects more from the student at university than from the primary school student. God expects more from you if you are a religious person than from a person who has not yet had the chance to get to know Him.
Now if you are a religious person, let me make your ears buzz with these words in Deuteronomy 27. God sets before the Israelites, after He has redeemed them — notice, after He has taken them out of Egypt with tremendous miracles, the likes of which nobody had ever heard of before. And these miracles were not done in private. Sometimes there are faith healers going around claiming to have healed this person and that person, but nobody was there to see it, and very few witnesses were there, and if there were witnesses, they might all have been partisan or prejudiced, so that their evidence is worth nothing.
But when God took the Israelites out of Egypt, He parted the sea in front of them. He split the sea apart in two walls on both sides, and the people walked over on dry land. And you know how many witnesses there were to that? More than two million people. Two million people were there to witness that. Now that is really, under law — Western law or any other law — two witnesses are enough to establish a case. Three is even better. But with two million witnesses, the case is incontrovertible.
God brought Israel, the people of Israel, out of Egypt. He saved them from being a nation of slaves to become a free people, because God always wants to set us free. He is the God of freedom, freedom from bondage, freedom from the bondage of sin. He took them out. The famous words of Moses: "Let my people go." Thus says the Lord to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, the mighty superpower king. The Lord to Pharaoh of Egypt was equivalent to Gorbachev today, President Bush of the United States, you know. And Moses would come to him and say to them — either Gorbachev or Bush or whoever — and say, "Let my people go. Thus says my God." "Who are you?" "I am nobody, but my God is somebody. And when He says, 'Let my people go,' you do well to let them go."
It took ten plagues. Ten plagues. Read the account in Exodus. And finally the superpower was broken, you know. God can break any superpower, no problem. Egypt was shattered after ten plagues, and President Pharaoh said, "Okay, go, go. I have had enough. My economy is going to be ruined. My people will be crushed to pieces. Just take your people and go."
Two million people witnessed the Exodus. And when two million people came into the desert, God fed them. Fed them. The fact of the matter is, if God didn't feed them in the desert, there wouldn't be two million witnesses left — they all would have died in the wilderness. If ever you are going to make a trip one day, if you have saved up some money and are going to take a holiday, I ask you to walk in that desert that the Israelites crossed, between Egypt and Israel today. Walk in that desert and look at that desert and see if you, one person alone, or two people, could survive in that desert for three days, maybe four days. Two million people — where do you get water in the desert? Where do you get food? These things are matter of fact, they're witnessed.
But when God brought Israel out of Egypt, when God brought them out, He said, "You are my people, and now I am going to set before you two roads — one good. You can choose good, or you can choose evil. You can choose life, or you can choose death." You see, God is God of freedom, as I told you. He doesn't drag you in by the neck with a chain around your neck to serve Him.
Somebody asked a question yesterday: if we are Christians, must we serve God? Must we go into full time? Let me tell you — you must not. It is a privilege to serve God. Nobody will ever drag you into serving God. If we are given that privilege, we consider ourselves unworthy of that privilege. You must not. Nobody puts the "must" on you at all. In fact, for our full-time training, we reject an awful lot of people who are applying for the training, because we feel that they are not yet ready for that training, or they are not having the spiritual experience or qualities necessary to enter the training. We turn a lot of people away. So it is not a question of must; it is a question whether you can qualify, by God's grace, for that training.
Well now, in Deuteronomy chapter 27, I will not read the blessing part. I will just read the curse part. God will curse — not good, not good. God will curse His people who disobey, who live in sin, who choose evil. I am not going to read it all, but let's read only Deuteronomy 27 verse 15 and a few verses like that. Verse 15 says this: "Cursed is the man who makes an idol or a molten image." Verse 16: "Cursed is he who dishonors his father or his mother." Verse 17: "Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary mark." That's trying to steal his land. Verse 18: "Cursed is he who misleads a blind person on the road." The list goes on to twelve curses.
Now, you know what happens when God brings a curse upon a person for choosing evil. You don't want to know. The book of Hebrews says, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Is God good? No, He is not good to people who are evil. If you do not experience God as good, don't start blaming God. Because I tell you something: God is committed to good, and that means He is committed to destroying evil. And if you choose evil — sorry — He is committed to destroying you. How good is good? That good. He is so good that He will not compromise with evil. Do you think God would be good if He compromised with evil? Is that a good God? If you do every kind of evil — if you dishonor your parents, if you commit fornication and adultery and murder and robbery and stealing — and God closes His eyes, is that God called good?
Twelve curses. And all twelve curses are against His own people that He redeemed out of Egypt. He said, "I have set you free — not just from political bondage under Pharaoh, but I am a God who sets you free from sin. And if you insist on living in sin as my people, I will deal with you." I heard of a pastor who committed sin, and when the people in the church found out and pleaded with him to repent, he was too proud to admit his sin. So they prayed, and you know what? God killed the pastor. He dropped dead. A pastor was slain by the hand of the Lord. He just dropped dead. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, because He is so good that He will not tolerate evil.
And that's why there are those who fear Him. Those who do evil have reason to fear Him. They don't find Him to be good; they find Him to be frightening. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, we read in the Bible a case of a man who committed fornication or incest in the church. Again, he failed to repent. Now, God will forgive if you repent — I will come to that very briefly. But because he failed to repent, God's judgment came upon him. God will not compromise with evil.
So once more, I am trying to deeply impress upon your mind that whether you experience God to be good or not depends on you. God is certainly good, but you may not experience Him to be good. That is the thing that you must understand. Therefore you must deeply appreciate that the goodness of God is a goodness that is so absolute, it knows of no compromise. But if you are willing to change, if you say, "God, I know that I am bad. I ask Your forgiveness. I have committed all those sins before. I have stolen, I have robbed, I have been bad to my parents, I have done every kind of evil. But I beg You, mercy upon me." You know what? You will experience the kindness of God. God is kind to those who are humble enough to recognize that they are not good. Only He is good.
Let me pause for one moment to deal with the question of natural evil. I said there was moral evil, and I have been talking about moral evil up to now. There is also what is called natural evil. What do we mean by natural evil? Natural evil are things like famines, diseases, cancer, AIDS. AIDS is spreading like wildfire. I was talking to a friend, one of our church members in Hong Kong — in fact, a school friend of mine from university days in London. He is a medical doctor. And he said to me two years ago, when AIDS began to spread, he said, "You know, it is a remarkable thing about the living God. It is a remarkable thing that every time when we think that we in medical science have conquered a disease, God brings a new disease that we have not even heard of before, and we don't even know how to deal with it." Every time we thought we have wiped out one disease, God brings another one that has never existed before. Let man not be so foolish, my doctor friend says, to think that we can conquer even natural evil, let alone moral evil.
Today, of course, you know, and even some of my scientist friends are all engaged in AIDS research, trying to find some way to beat AIDS — still a long way to go. And the number of AIDS patients are increasing by geometric multiplication at a frightening rate. Now what can we say about natural evil? If you think God is responsible for natural evil, you obviously have not been doing much thinking. You think God is the one who wants everybody to have AIDS? It started with homosexuality, something that was condemned in the Bible. It is a sin that brought this kind of immune deficiency disease. I told you that God will not tolerate evil. He will not compromise with evil. If you insist on sin, you must be ready to bear the consequences. This world is God's world, and He will not allow people to carry on with homosexuality, even if the law permits it in the United States. God does not permit it.
Now, unfortunately, of course, AIDS has spread long since from the homosexual communities of Los Angeles to heterosexual people. That is, it has spread all over the place, through prostitutes and all kinds of things. Famine — are we going to blame God for famine too? It's amazing how we want to justify our rejection of God because we are evil. We want to blame God for the evil. Do you think God wants us all to hunger? You know where famine comes from? There's famine in Cambodia — why? They are fighting each other non-stop. How are the farmers ever going to plant any fields if the crops are going to be destroyed the whole time? There is famine in Ethiopia, but do you know why? Because the civil war is raging on and on, and they are killing each other every day, and they would even allow the suppliers coming in from outside to reach the people who are dying — their own people. They let their own people die, and we blame God for the famine. Man creates the disaster, and they say, "God, why are there famines?"
What about cancer? In Hong Kong, one out of three people, according to the latest statistics, one out of three people will die of cancer. One out of three. In Japan, one out of four. But do you know that in the last century, cancer was not even known as a disease? But you heard of cancer — that's a modern disease. Why? Well, if we could keep polluting the air, if we could pour all kinds of strange chemicals into the sea, if we are going to let all kinds of strange unpronounceable chemicals — have you seen those chemical names sometimes? I don't even know how to pronounce those names. The word is so long, you are wondering, "How do you read this?" And we are swallowing that kind of stuff all the time.
Every time you go to the doctor, he gives you a drug. Do you know how to pronounce the name of that drug? Do you know how many chemical combinations there are? And we keep swallowing this thing. We don't know how the body deals with this. My biochemical friends tell us, we don't know how this thing affects the body. Even relatively harmless things, he says, will in the long term produce unforeseeable consequences. Take one example. Today we all like diet drinks, all sweetened by something called NutraSweet. This is supposed to be a form of protein, something that is supposed to come from something natural. But one of my friends who works — one of our church members, in fact, in Montreal — who works at a very famous pharmaceutical firm, says that this NutraSweet thing may be relatively harmless if taken in small quantities. But you keep taking this thing every day for a few months, and it will affect your brain.
We are every day taking in all kinds of strange chemicals. In the air you breathe — every time you walk down the road, what are you breathing? The lead that is in the gas. Do you know that lead in petrol, when breathed in in sufficient quantities, will damage your brain too? Do you know that many of these chemicals are so complex, it will cause cancer in your system, because the body cannot handle these kind of chemicals. It was not meant to handle these kind of chemicals. We don't know what we are drinking in our drinking water. Is it mercury? When you eat fish, the fish may be contaminated with high doses of mercury, which is poisonous. So we have cancer, so we have brain deterioration, so we have all kinds of strange diseases we haven't heard of before. And we say, "Why does God permit this?" Did God make those things that you should eat these kind of things? Did God ask us to pollute the world that He made?
Now, clearly there is a direct relationship between moral evil and natural evil. These are not two separate things. With moral evil, there comes what we call natural evil, like diseases. With the moral evil of homosexuality, for example, there comes the disease of AIDS, which then affects also non-homosexuals. The way to deal with natural evil, for example, is to deal with moral evil. Stop the wars. Stop the slaughter. Get on with planting.
Do you know that the Sahara Desert in Africa, which is the cause of so much famine — from the latest satellite photos taken of the desert, every year it is expanding by several feet. It is getting bigger and bigger. The desert is expanding all the time. It is covering a larger and larger domain. Once it was very, very small. Once, in fact, it was non-existent. But now it spreads. Why? Because people are chopping down the trees at one time. Look what they are doing in Brazil — they are destroying the rainforests. They burn the whole rainforest down, producing so much smoke and pollution that it is destroying the ozone layer. What happens when the ozone layer is destroyed? Radiation from the sun comes through. What happens when radiation from the sun comes through? We get skin cancer and other forms of cancer. Man is doing all this, and we hold God responsible for natural evil?
In Genesis, He created all things good, all things beautiful, all things for the benefit of man. And man makes a mess and then he blames God for it. Of course, if you get cancer, if you get hit by cancer — you see, just like having a headache, your whole perception of facts is distorted. You can't be objective anymore. The radiation that comes through does not single out one person and bypasses another. Even the righteous person will get cancer because of the radiation caused by other people. A careless, drunken driver will kill a good man as well as a bad man. It doesn't happen that the car suddenly avoids a good man and runs into the bad man standing next to him. The carelessness of one person affects another.
We live in a society. In Hong Kong, we're famous for what? Every time you walk out, I wonder if I should be wearing a helmet, because of all of these high-rise things, you know. You never know when the flower pot will fall on your head, or somebody throws a beer bottle out of the window or something of this kind. And every year, people are killed or crippled by this kind of thing happening. And our flower pots do not distinguish between whether you're a churchgoer or not. Neither does cancer. We must collectively bear the consequence of man's sin. And Christ bore those consequences for sins He never committed. He died for our sins.
Now let me bring this quickly to this point. I have tried very hard to help you to see by what means you can taste and see that God is good. By now, I think the answer is clear to you. If you are bad, you will never see God to be good. Only when you are good do you experience God as good. If you say, "No, I'm not good," I have already indicated to you what is the second step. The second step is to come to God and confess to Him that you are not good, and say, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." You know what God will do? He will do a miracle — to my mind, a miracle as great or greater than parting the sea. He will take a bad person and make him good. He will take your life and change you around into a new man. He will take a bad person and make him good. Is there a greater miracle than that? That is amazing.
I often look at people in the church and I say to myself, "I knew this person before. And look what God has done to that person." He has made this person — selfish, arrogant person that he used to be, that I used to know him as — into this beautiful, gracious, humble person. That is a miracle. So God is not only good, but He is able to make us good. And when He makes you good, what happens? Well then you experience God as good. It is in the process of salvation that we experience God's goodness.
The other day, we had a brother coming to our church. A brother who used to be in the church that I pastored in England, in Liverpool. In those days he was doing his PhD in engineering in Liverpool, in England. And now he is a professor of engineering in Hong Kong University. And he greatly encouraged us to do more work in Hong Kong University. In fact, we had our Bible study in his office. We started our Bible study in his office in Hong Kong University. And he was coming — he was in church the other day, and he said to me, he was looking around and he was so full of joy. And he said, "Look, look, look at the pianist over there." I said, "Yeah, what about her?" "She is from Hong Kong University." I said, "Yeah, I know." He said, "You know, two years ago she wasn't even a Christian. She came to my office to the Bible study. And look at her now — she is a new person."
And then he pointed to different people in the congregation, all of them who were or are now graduated from Hong Kong University, whose lives have been changed, transformed. They had become new people — good people. Good not just in some superficial sense of being nice, but deeply, inwardly transformed. So he said to me, "Send more people to Hong Kong University. We need more transformation in the university." I said, "Yeah, we don't have enough manpower. All our manpower is all tied up everywhere." I said, "Try, try, try." So now our Bible study in Hong Kong University gets bigger and bigger all the time, and we really have a manpower problem now. He was able to see the goodness of God in making these people new persons, good persons.
I never understand sometimes why parents are so worried about their children becoming Christians, as though becoming a Christian means that they are going to become bad. Well, if they become bad, please take them out of church quickly. Maybe in some churches they might become bad, I don't know. But what is the gospel about? The gospel is about making people good, by God's power, not by man's teaching.
Now this brings me briefly to a question about religion that was asked, and I tried to answer it very briefly yesterday. Every religion teaches us to be good, right? Of course. Every religion teaches us to be good. There's nothing new about that. In fact, even non-religions teach us to be good. You don't have to be religious to want to have teaching about being good. I think the Boy Scouts are also taught to be good. I'm not sure whether Boy Scouts have a Christian origin or not. Maybe they do.
But what is the difference? The difference is in one vital point. Do the Buddhists teach people to be good? Certainly. Do I mind reading a Buddhist book? Of course not. I have no fear of reading Buddhist books. I read Buddhist books, Hindu books, Islamic books, any books. I'm willing to learn from anybody who has anything worth saying. But I notice one vital difference: to want to be good is one thing; to be able to be good is something quite different. I'm sure that every genuine Buddhist wants to be good, and I appreciate my Buddhist friend — he wants to be good, I commend him. I think my Islamic friend also wants to be good, I commend him. Good, I agree with you, that's fine, we have much in common. And the Hindu friend too. Everybody wants to be good. My problem is not whether you want to be good; it's whether you are able to be good. And to what standard of goodness? Is it God's standard of goodness?
Now becoming a Christian, then — I hope you don't become a nominal Christian. We have lots of Christians that are not worth talking about, I'm sorry to say. Let's be honest about it. I just mentioned a pastor who committed sin and the Lord destroyed him. The Lord literally struck him down. I want every Christian to know that God will not tolerate evil. But there are lots of Christians who do tolerate evil. I make no defense for Christianity. I make no defense for the church. I make no defense for myself either. We are not saying the church as it is today is good. We are saying here in the Bible that God is good. I'm not asking you to believe in the church. You're asked to believe in the God who is good.
And what is the difference? Well, Paul was a very religious man, and he said this: he said, "The good that I would do, I could not do." And he was a very religious man when he said that. "And the evil that I didn't want to do, I did it anyway." That is the problem of religion that Paul found out. We don't preach religion. I ask you not to be religious. Please don't be religious. Religion is most often the enemy of true faith in God, of true spirituality. So Paul discovered that being religious was no use to him. What did he need? He needed a new life, a new power to enable him to be what he wanted to be but could not be.
That new power is what is being proclaimed in Christ. That is what those Bible studies have been about, that you have heard about this living water that sounds so mysterious. This living water is nothing other than the new life that God gives to us in Christ through the Holy Spirit. When that new life comes in, you have a power that you never knew was possible. You can be good without your trying to force yourself, drag yourself through an obstacle course. No, you have a new life that enables you to be what God wants you to be. That's the difference between religion — whether Christian or Buddhist or Islam or whatever — and truly knowing the living God. The living God who puts His life into you. That's what being a true Christian is about: God's life in your soul, giving you the power of a new life.
My time is gone. I must close. I wanted to say something about the new community too, but we have no more time to talk about it. Because what really excites me, and what I don't have time to talk about now, is that God is producing a whole new community of people — a whole new community of people who show forth the goodness of God. Where can we see that goodness? You know what led me to become a Christian? I went to Christian school, I went to Roman Catholic school, and all it did was put me off from Christianity. I was sick of Christianity after that. I had enough of Christianity. I had enough of catechism. But I'll tell you something. When I saw the goodness of God manifested in the life of one particular person, and then later on through him a whole group of people, I said to myself — and this was under the communists in China, this was back in 1953 when I had already been liberated for four years (I'm not quite sure what I was liberated from, but I was liberated for four years by that time) — and I saw in these people something unusual. I didn't know at that time what that something unusual was. Later I realized it was this new life of God. It was not religion. It was something dynamic, something powerful. This goodness is the goodness of God's life. And I said, "These people have something that I don't have." And now I'm really thirsty for what this something is. And later on, when I too was able to experience this new good life of God, this goodness of God in the new life, then I was able to taste and see — God is good. God is good.
Our task is to build a whole new community, not a religious community, but a community in which God's life is plainly seen in the battle against evil. We are here to fight. We have a mission and a task.
One last question, very briefly, and we must close. But it's an important question, and a question that every thinking person is bound to ask, and I'm sure that you are thinking people, as I hope we are. And that question is: if God is good, why did He allow evil to exist? Now that is a very big subject. I want to answer it very, very briefly in one point only, because God in His wisdom knows that without evil, there cannot be genuine goodness. We must understand the nature of goodness. Goodness is something that is produced in reaction to evil. If there is no evil, there is no way to produce goodness either. Those of you who are in science, who understand something of this kind — but I have no time to go into illustrations. It is through the battle with evil that we become stronger and stronger in good. Is it not? It is every time I have to overcome a sin that I have made progress in the life of goodness. If there are no sins to overcome, how do I progress in goodness? God in His wisdom has to permit evil to exist for a time. God will wipe away all evil in due time. But right now, in His wisdom, He knows that only through fighting with, battling with, struggling with evil, do we become stronger and stronger in goodness. That is a very simple answer that I have only time to give now, but it is a very important thing to understand: that evil is here for a purpose. And through victory over evil, we experience how great is God's power.
When God has overcome evil in my life through His power, then I have discovered something very important. There is another related question: Is the world getting worse and worse, or is it going to get better and better? Related to this question is: Can evil be overcome, yes or no? I know the answer to that question. Why? Because I have discovered that in my life, God can overcome evil. Evil can be overcome. And through overcoming it, I become strong in fighting that battle. And that is why the outlook for everyone who knows God is very bright. You cannot help but be an optimist, because you know that evil can be beaten, because it has already been beaten in my life, and is still being beaten in my life. Good will triumph. And we will taste and see that God is wonderfully good.
Let us close in prayer. We will keep going.