The Good and Beautiful God

1.Smith argues that our biggest problem is not that we don't believe God exists, but that we don't truly believe God is good. Do you agree that this is the more fundamental issue? Why or why not?

1.Smith distinguishes between believing that God is trustworthy as a doctrine and actually living as though God can be trusted. Where do you see the gap between these two things most clearly in your own daily life?

1.Smith opens this chapter by sitting with the sheer scale of the universe — its age, its size, the number of stars — as a way of evoking the grandeur of God. How does that cosmic perspective make you feel? Awed? Insignificant? Both?

1.Smith points out that in popular usage, 'holy' has come to mean morally proper or prim — but in Scripture it means set apart, blazingly other, overwhelmingly pure. How has the thinned-down version of holiness shaped the way you've thought about God, or about what it means to live a holy life?

1.Smith argues that grace is not merely God's reluctant willingness to forgive, but an active, overflowing desire to give good things to people who don't deserve them. How is this different from the way you typically think about grace? What would change if this were your working definition?

1.Smith observes that 'God is love' (1 John 4:8) is one of only two places in the Bible where the writer makes an equation of God's identity with an attribute — not merely that God loves, but that he is love. Why does that distinction matter? What does it mean for love to be not just something God does but something God is?

1.Smith argues that what makes the Christian God unique among conceptions of God is not just that he loves, but that he sacrifices — he gives himself away. What other pictures of God (from religion, culture, or personal experience) contrast with this self-giving portrait? What makes the self-sacrificing God surprising?

1.Smith opens with a distinction between believing that God forgives sins in general and personally receiving God's forgiveness for your specific sins. Which do you do more easily? What is the difference in how each one actually feels?

1.Smith argues that one of the most damaging false narratives is the belief that God is present only in certain times or places — in church, during quiet times, in moments of intense spiritual experience — and absent from ordinary life. Does this resonate with your own experience? What triggers the feeling of God's absence most strongly for you?

1.Smith suggests that most people, if they are honest, picture God as patient but not particularly delighted — tolerant rather than joyful. Where did that image come from in your own formation? What would have to change in your picture of God for him to seem genuinely happy?

1.Smith argues that the kingdom of God is not primarily a future location or a political program but a present reality — the rule and reign of God available here and now to anyone who will apprentice themselves to Jesus. How does this definition differ from how you have typically heard 'kingdom of God' described?

1.At the start of this study, Smith asked you to identify the narratives about God that you were operating from. Looking back now: what were the one or two most significant false narratives you discovered you had been believing? Where did they come from, and how have they affected your life?