Why does God let terrible things happen?

The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man — the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils — the fruit of sin — should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences — sin excepted — of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.

Suffering comes to us from different quarters and for various reasons, but that which is testing the greatest number now, and causing the most suffering at this time is the war, and many are asking why it should be? Why, if God is good, should there be any war at all? That is a question that calls for an answer. God is good, ten thousand times ten thousand voices bear witness to His goodness, but the world as such has rejected God, and despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back upon God and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:13) and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away. “There is no peace, says the Lord, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). The world has been Satan’s world since that day and “suffering and sweat and tears and blood” are the result, they are part of sin’s foul brood.

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

Thus, although the world be a ruin before God, and although it is too evident that Satan is the restless worker of all evil here below, which is brought before us in the plainest manner in this book, God who is above it all, and who seems to take no part in it, carries on His gracious ways, and this to convert and deliver those who have been wretched, vile, and rebellious. It is not that retributive government to which man's heart would constantly limit God, but a government of souls while the world goes on in pride. Man likes to see people punished when they deserve it. It is natural to the heart. There is something in our nature which, when one is not actually suffering or dreading it, likes to find some (shall I say good or bad?) reason why another should be punished if he does suffer. This was at work in the three friends. But the book of Job is intended to show that they were all wrong in their application of this truth. Not that there will not be perfect retribution when the time comes for it, by the only One capable of carrying it out; but that it is only partial now. Christ alone will act perfectly in it by-and-by; but the time awaits His coming. There will be no adequate retributive government till the Lord Jesus takes the reins. He Himself was in this world the greatest of sufferers, as we know; and so the saints were sufferers before Christ, and still more since Christ. At any rate, the grace now displayed is such that God counts it a privilege given us to suffer for His sake; so that we surely ought to be able to bless God for it in a way that Job and no other could, because we have Christ fully revealed. Job did not know why his gracious Master gave him up to such tremendous and reiterated trouble. He had to learn why, and to learn it slowly and painfully, but blessedly at the end. We begin where he ended. Having in Christ the true light of God, we have not only His perfect love, but that there goes on a kind of divine government quite different from retribution; that there is a gracious dealing of God for the good of souls, and connected with it a moral government, unheeded by the world, which, spite of all appearances to the contrary, never fails. It is not a government consisting in what is public, or what natural men can judge of. It is none the less God dealing with souls, and to all that bow to His word and to Himself ineffable blessing. The discipline may be painful, not to say that it must be. What blessing can there be without it in our nature and in this world? The cross tells what it cost the Lord Himself to make our blessing a righteous thing; the manifestation of the same truth in the highest and deepest way. Where is there a single joy for us, once dead in sins but now saved by grace, that had not its root in the sorrows and sufferings of Him who bore our judgment? And so it is for those that learn what sin is in the presence of God.

Down the ages, God has often allowed His own to be evilly entreated, and it is not always possible for us to understand why He should allow wicked men to persecute and slay His saints and His servants. We do know that God allows these things for the purifying of His people, and that all His actions towards His own are in the perfection of His love and wisdom; and even if wicked men seem to prosper, and the righteous are put to grief, yet the day is surely coming when, at the judgment seat of Christ, we shall understand as we cannot now, the ways of God, which are past finding out.

The devil is powerless to do anything without God allowing it. He is only a creature, as are all his hosts of demons. God is above them, no matter how mighty they may be. So even if we see the devil's hand in what happens, we must not forget to see God's hand above the devil's. God only allows him to go as far as it suits His sovereign purposes, to turn it into blessing for His people.

How great is the patience of God! He has tolerated Satan's malignity and scheming through all the sad centuries of fallen man's history — permitted him indeed to tempt our first parents in their innocence — and allows him to make his accusations and insinuations that there is no good, before His very face. But all is permitted to bring out lessons for eternity. Satan is surely heaping up added wrath for himself, and meanwhile his very malice can but serve God's righteous purposes of blessing, as we shall see in Job's case.

Yes, God has allowed it, and why? That is a question for each nation concerned to solemnly and seriously answer for itself. A reason there must be. It is impossible to think that He who has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked”—nay, who in love for a guilty world spared not His own Son, can find it in permitting affliction and misery to come upon His creatures without a very sufficient cause. That were incredible.

In His providential dealings with us He either orders or allows all that comes into our lives. He has the almighty power to prevent anything from happening, so if it happens, He has allowed it. Therefore, complaining is the same as saying that we know what is best for us better than God does, or else that God does not care enough to give us what is best. One is pure pride, the other is distrust of His motives.

The psalm is divided into two parts, which are in contrast with one another, the first seven verses being faith's challenge of this mighty one, as the last two verses give us the man of faith himself and his portion from God. The "mighty man" who uses the little might he has in bitter persecution of the saints is here put in contrast also with El, the "Mighty" God, whose attribute is mercy — mercy enduring daily. How blessed is this gentle goodness of Almighty power. And it is not contradicted either by the presence of this wicked one himself: for even such an one "the goodness of God" would "lead to repentance." The awful end of unrepented evil makes this slowness of dealing with the evil man unspeakably solemn; while he may use it for "storing up wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." Meanwhile faith knows that this power of God, with all its apparent slowness, has things completely under its control: so that "He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him; and the remainder of wrath He will restrain." Nothing escapes from this all-seeing, perfect control, which maketh all things work together for good, to them that love Him.