Is God Good?

Knowing the answer to this question is the crux for all belief in god; positive or negative. Most Christians who have struggled with their faith are only able to overlook certain contradictions or problems with their beliefs because they strongly hold to the fact that God is good. Whatever question they cannot answer or confusing passage of scripture they encounter, if God is good, then no matter how the situation appears, faith remains intact. For example, I long struggled with the passages in the New Testament from Paul stating women's place in the church; that women were the weaker sex and they are not even allowed to speak at church but must ask their husbands at home. On the surface, this doesn't sound like God loves women as much as he loves men, but under the basic assumption that God is good, I always found a way around the evidence. Christian apologists state that these were just cultural norms to help unruly Greek women get along in church with more orderly Jewish women. It is possible to make excuse for any of God's actions by saying that we don't understand his ways and even though it seems the opposite, God is good.
The moment of my grandpa's death finally poked a hole in this philosophy. It is not good if God condemns a man who spent his life caring for others to eternal death just because he did not say the sinner's prayer. I had always been taught that God doesn't send people to hell, but they choose it. They reject God and refuse to follow him, so they get what they asked for. I was able to compartmentalize that thought because I never had to consider the ramifications of someone I loved going to hell. My grandpa was not a case of someone actively denying God, but someone who had a difficult time accepting that there was only one way to heaven. God states that we all deserve to die and none of us can measure up to his standards, yet some of us accept what we have been taught about God and some of us don't. Does that really merit eternal punishment?
I think that as humans, we have a longing to be intimately known and loved for exactly who we are. We desire to be cared for and know that our lives have a purpose. Doesn't it make more sense that we designed God to have these characteristics (loving father, best friend, even lover) and then use our theory to twist the evidence?