Q: How can God be good when He lets so many bad things happen? Where is God when I’m hurting? Why doesn’t God just destroy Satan and evil?
A: I think all of us wonder at one time or another why God allows certain pain or hard things into our lives. I’ve had girls ask me, “If God loves me, why does he let my dad hurt me?” or “If God is good, why did he let __________ die?” or “If God really wants the best for my life, why did he let ______________ happen?” or “How could a good God let so many innocent people die in that earthquake?” Sadly, I don’t know the perfect answers to all those questions. I wish I did. I wish I could end your suffering and pain. When we’re hurting, it’s hard to see anything but the pain we feel so deeply. And the thing that makes what we’re going through even harder, is that God doesn’t have to tell us all the reasons He does things, and He rarely does.
However, there are three things the Bible tells us we can know and hold onto in the midst of pain:
1: Evil, pain, and suffering are the result of sin, and one day God will destroy Satan and rid the world of evil. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and they disobeyed God, sin entered the world, and with it, the consequence God had promised-death. If any of us get something other than death and pain in life, it’s because of God’s great mercy. So why do people hurt you? Because they have chosen to rebel against God and not love you as they should. God’s laws are set up for our good. Breaking them messes up everything.
Don’t give up hope, though. The book of Revelation describes a day when Jesus will come back to earth and take His followers with Him to the home He has prepared for them in heaven. Satan and his followers will be cast into the lake of fire, and Jesus will rule His followers in a place where there will be no more “sadness, death, crying, or pain.” (Revelation 21:4) Why won’t Jesus come back now and destroy Satan and all evil? It is actually God’s mercy that allows suffering to continue and Satan to destroy for the moment. How? Because God wants to give more people time to turn from their sin and turn to Him.
2: God uses evil for His own glory and our own good. When Moses tried to free the children of Israel from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt, Pharaoh hardened his heart and not only would not let them go, he gave the Israelite slaves more work to do and beat the slaves when they could not finish the work. What sort of a plan would God have in letting Pharaoh do that?
“For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.’ What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory?” (Romans 9:17,22-23)
God wanted to show his glory and power to the Israelites through signs and wonders so they and all the nations of the world would know for sure that He was the one and only true God. When they went to fight the people of the lands God gave them to dwell in, the people were terrified of them because they had heard of their God’s power and the ways He had worked for them in Egypt. God raised Pharaoh up and hardened His heart for that very purpose.
A lot of people want to ask why bad things happen to good people. But the truth is that none of us is good. Each of us- the terrorists who crashed the planes into buildings on 9/11 and the five-year-old who disobeys his parents -deserves to be struck down immediately for rebelling against God. But God is patient with us as He was with Pharaoh. He did not immediately strike him down so He could use Him to accomplish His purpose.
3: God’s in control and knows what He’s doing, and His plans for us are so much better than we could even dream possible. “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘Neither are your ways My ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts, and My ways than your ways.’” (Isaiah 55:8-9) Sometimes, we think we know what is best for our life. So when God does things in our life that are hard or takes things or people from us, we ask, “why?” But God knows more than we do. He has a “bird’s eye” view of our lives because He sees the end of our story and knows the best way to make that ending good. There are three stories that instantly come to mind as I write this. Two of them are biblical, and one is personal. I think they’ll do a better job explaining this than I can.
Joseph was a young man who had everything going for him. Life was good and easy, and as an added plus, out of all his siblings, he was his dad’s favorite. But then things started to spiral out of control. Joseph’s brother grew jealous of him and sold him as a slave. If that wasn’t bad enough, as a slave, his master’s wife lied about him, and Joseph ended up in prison. In prison, Joseph interpreted another man’s dream correctly, but when the man was released, he forgot to pass on the message to his boss, Pharaoh, that there was an innocent man in his prison. Joseph might have been tempted at this point to wonder how God could possibly use all that hurt in his life for a good purpose. But God was still in control, and knew exactly what He was doing. Pharaoh had a dream a few years later, and when no one could interpret it, Pharaoh’s servant suddenly remembered Joseph. Joseph was still in prison, so they were able to easily find him, and he was able to interpret his dream and warn him that God was sending a famine that they needed to prepare for or else they all would die. God brought Joseph far from his home and family, into slavery, into prison, and then left him forgotten and betrayed in prison all to save the world from starving. Joseph obviously couldn’t see that when it was happening and he was suffering, but God did!
Hezekiah was an Old Testament king. When God came to him and told him he was about to die, Hezekiah begged for more time. God allowed him to live an extra 15 years, but in that time, he bore a son-Manasseh. Manasseh was the evilest king to ever rule Israel. Hezekiah thought the best thing for himself would be to live longer. But the result of God allowing him to live longer was more suffering and pain for the people. God knows what he’s doing when he chooses the time of someone’s death.
That leads into my third story; Daniel was a young man my family knew who sincerely loved God with all that was in him. He lived every day of His life working hard at knowing God well and making him well-known. His money was spent sacrificially giving to those in need and buying 1,000 Bibles to hand out to everyone in his city. When Daniel felt distant from God, he quit his job to have more time to study the Bible. Daniel was an incredible young man. I say ‘was’ because last May, Daniel was in a bike accident that cost him his life. Daniel is now with Jesus. When he died, I wondered why God would take him. He was doing so much good for God. I knew Daniel was now experiencing complete joy with Jesus as he walked and talked with Him face-to-face, but I was upset that God would take someone who was doing so much good on earth. Daniel was bringing so much glory to God. What sort of plan could God have in taking him? But God did. Through Daniel’s funeral and the incredible story of his life, many people have come to follow Jesus deeper, and the newspaper article printed about his death lead to requests from unbelievers in the city to ask for one of those Bibles Daniel had bought and only begun to distribute. God had a plan in the timing of Daniel’s death, even when it did not match my own plan and timing!
Let me try to answer those top three questions more directly now: How can God be good when He lets so many bad things happen? By “bad things” if you mean people hurting people, that is the result of living in a world of sinners. But don’t worry-God will one day judge all sin and avenge those wrongfully treated. If you mean natural disasters, that is only what we deserve for breaking God’s law. No innocent people die in natural disasters-only guilty ones, because we all are guilty. If a judge let someone who was guilty of breaking the law go free without punishment, he wouldn’t be a good judge. We have all broken God’s law, and the punishment for breaking that law is death. If God just lets us off the hook, he is not a good judge. This is where we see God’s great mercy in not destroying all of us in natural disasters, but instead, in coming to earth as a man, living a perfect life, and dying, taking the punishment for our sin Himself. Where is God when I’m hurting? Right there by your side, working everything out for your good and His glory. Why doesn’t God just destroy Satan and evil? He will as soon as the time is right and those who are going to be saved have accepted Jesus as Savior.
So how should you respond to evil and suffering?
1- Look to heaven! God uses suffering and death to help us focus on heaven. In heaven, we will not have to experience any sadness, death or pain. Instead we will live in perfect fellowship with God. Living with God for eternity, we will experience complete joy.
2- Trust God! He is working for our good and His glory even when we can’t see it. Don’t be afraid; Satan can do nothing without God’s permission. God is never surprised by tragedy or suffering in your life. It is all a part of His perfect plan.
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you: plans to give you a future and a hope.’” (Jeremiah 29:11)
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