Today’s world has forgotten the old children’s prayer that started: God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. (This prayer actually started as a TV skit.) In googling the origin for this prayer weird stories popped up, including several articles that said we should stop teaching children to pray this prayer.
Another forgotten precept is that God is the standard for what is “good”. Seven times in the creation account God proclaims that what He has made is “good”. Genesis 1.4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31
Jesus tells the rich young ruler that “No one is good except God alone.” (Luke 18.19) Jesus is correcting him in his statement calling Jesus “Good teacher”. Did you catch that? Jesus is demeaning Himself! He, in the only place that I know of in the entire Bible, refuses rightful worship! (The reason being the quid-pro-quo nature of the statement) But the statement still stands, that “God alone is good”. To call something “good” is to denote that it is from God. And remember James 1.17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”.
Secondly, God made the world perfect and man brought imperfection into the world. Evaluation of Genesis 1.31 (And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.) is made by the writer of Romans (Romans 5.12, 18 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men”) when cross referenced with what Isaiah says God said (Isaiah 59.2 “but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God). The meaning is, therefore, that man cannot be trusted as the standard for morality, but God can. God is great, God is good. No one is good except God alone.