How Can A Good God Let Bad Things Happen?

I have to admit, I struggle when I am misunderstood. Whether it be words, actions, or intentions, I want there to be clarity and it bothers me when others have misunderstood me. Interestingly, God does not seem to hold this same expectation. He is misunderstood by us more often than not and does not feel the same urgency to explain Himself. For many of us, this bothers us. When we consider how many bad things happen in this world, we long for God to explain what He was thinking and we can get deceived into thinking He is either toying with us or worse, He isn’t all that good. 

Take for example, the death of a child. This is a deep, deep tragedy that haunts parents, siblings, and even just people that hear of it. How can a loving, good God allow this? The truth is, even if we knew and understood the intentions of God in that situation, the pain and loss would still exist. The heart issue runs much deeper than the mind’s comprehension. That kind of grief can only find healing in trusting that God is good despite how things may appear. 

The truth is, God does stop tragedies sometimes. What bothers us is that He doesn’t always stop the ones we want stopped. We want God to order things so that our lives go the way we want. However, this is not a spiritually mature perspective. If God did things our way all the time, He would simply be a genie and our slave. We would be taking God’s place and turn into really terrible gods. 

What we tend to forget is that God is obviously good 99% of the time. Every breath, every laugh, every sunset, God is showing His goodness. The 1% that is not obviously good, will be obviously good someday. However, God is not in a hurry to prove Himself to us. What we need to realize is that if God is good 99% of the time, we have every reason to believe the remaining 1% is good also, we just can’t see it yet. Our enemy wants us to obsess about, make a big stink about, and question that 1%. Don’t fall for it.

Don’t be like Jonah, who could not stand the idea that God might possibly show His goodness to an enemy nation. He was so obsessed with this, that he completely missed all the good things that God had done for him. And then when the unthinkable happened, his enemy repented and turned to God, Jonah became angry at God. Notice, Jonah was angry at God’s goodness. The reality was that God had been good to Jonah as well, he just didn’t notice because God wasn't doing things exactly the way Jonah wanted. Don’t be like Jonah.

God has given us incredible minds. We can see part of an image and fill in the missing details to make sense of it. No doubt you see a circle and a rectangle in the picture at the top, it’s what we call closure. We need to use this same principle when it comes to God. The Bible and human history has a wealth of examples of God’s goodness. Let those remind you that the parts that are not clear, where the details are missing, still connect and paint a picture of the beauty of God’s goodness. God will fill in the details someday, trust in His goodness till then!

Here are some questions to ask yourself and others to spark some spiritual conversations: 

1. What is an example of a time you were misunderstood (could be words, actions, or intentions)? How do you typically respond to misunderstanding? 

2. What are some common things that make people question God’s goodness? How can we encourage each other to seek God in those situations?

3. What’s a current situation where you need to utilize the concept of closure and trust that God’s goodness is still there even if you can’t see it?