Question: “If God is always a good God, is there a bad god? Is there somebody bad who God fights with, like the Green Goblin?”

Answer: You have asked two very important questions. Sometimes there are things that are scary or people who do really bad things. That is when we wonder if God, who is good, is really in charge of everything.

The way we can be sure that God is the only one in charge — even when there are bad things and people — is because of what happened to Jesus. Very bad things happened to Jesus. He was beaten up and hurt. He was put on a cross to die. Even his best friends ran away. But God raised Jesus from the dead! That's how we know that no one else is God!

Even though there is no bad god out there, we do know there are bad things in the world. Those bad things sometimes hurt us as they once hurt Jesus.

Christians call the worst things "evil" and often say the cause of this evil is the devil (also called Satan). When Jesus died and rose again, he fought with and defeated every evil thing. This includes bad things people (including us) do, scary things in the world, death, sadness and even the devil.

When you were baptized, God joined you to Jesus' victory over evil. That is why in every baptism we say, "No!" to the bad things — "the devil and all the forces that defy God."

Even though bad things and people may still hurt us sometimes, we know Jesus has defeated all of the bad stuff. Nothing can separate us from God's love.