Why does God allow bad things to happen?
Few questions press harder than this one: if God is good and in control, why does He let disaster, cruelty and grief run their course? Scripture never answers by shrinking God's power or His goodness — it answers by showing where evil came from, who holds its limits, and what God is doing through it.
Where the trouble started
Suffering is not an accident in a good world. One writer traces it back to the moment humanity turned away from God, and to a world that has kept choosing that direction ever since.
J T MawsonGod is good, and ten thousand times ten thousand voices testify to His goodness. But the world as a whole has rejected God and despised the riches of His goodness, patience and long-suffering, not knowing that His goodness was meant to lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4). It has chosen to follow Satan, the enemy, instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to Satan's voice and turned his back on God, and by that act of disobedience sin entered the world, and death through sin.
Nothing gets past God
"Allow" is the key word. Evil is real, and evil powers are real, but they operate on a leash.
VariousThe devil is powerless to do anything unless God allows it. He is only a creature, as are all his hosts of demons. God is above them, however 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, so as to turn it into blessing for His people.
Three different reasons for one hard road
Commentators distinguish several purposes behind trouble, so that a believer stops assuming there is only one explanation.
James McBroomYes, God in infinite and tender goodness can and does bring His children through sorrow and suffering. He did it with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others, and He is doing it today. He may chasten for sin, which is corrective; or He may discipline the soul because He sees danger ahead, which is surely preventive; and, as with Job, He may put us through a great deal of trial so that we may learn ourselves and enter better into the knowledge of Him — which is promotive.
Not every sorrow is a punishment
Job's friends assumed his losses proved his guilt. That instinct — to read suffering as a scoreboard — is exposed in the book as a mistake.
William KellyMan likes to see people punished when they deserve it. It is natural to the heart... The book of Job is meant to show that they were all wrong in how they applied this truth. Not that there will be no perfect repayment when the time comes for it, by the only One able to carry it out; but it is only partial now.
Evil overruled, not excused
Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery. Years later he told them their intention was evil and God's intention was good — and one writer sees the same pattern at the deepest point of history.
F. B. HoleThey had committed a serious wrong, but God had overruled it for salvation. This at once turns our thoughts to the Lord Jesus Christ. The evil intention carried out against Joseph by his brothers was nothing compared with what the Jews did when they rejected and crucified their Messiah. God permitted it because He meant it for good, in accomplishing an eternal redemption.
The explanation may come later
Faith is not the ability to see the reason now. It is confidence that there is one.
Hamilton SmithWe may not always see how this loss, or that trial, is working for our good, but faith knows that good will be the result in time and eternity. To understand the way in which all things work for good we may have to wait, as the Lord said to Peter, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand." Another has said, "The sorrow may not be remedied, but the sorrow is blessed."
Weighed against what is coming
Present pain is measured against a future that has not yet appeared, and the comparison changes its size.
The Bible TreasuryIt is in the light of the future glory that present suffering can take its true proportions. No suffering, any more than discipline, can seem pleasant at the time, but grievous. Yet things are not what they seem, and when the present loses the exaggerated size it takes on in our distorted vision now and falls back into its true perspective, not only will the profit of what we went through be clear, but the "momentary lightness of our affliction" will be seen next to what follows it — the "eternal weight of glory."
Summary
- Source — Evil entered through humanity's turn away from God, not from God's hand; He remains good while the world reaps what its rebellion sowed.
- Limit — No evil power acts without permission; God's hand is above the devil's, and He allows only what serves His purposes.
- Purpose — Trials may correct sin, prevent danger ahead, or deepen our knowledge of God, as with Job; suffering is not automatically punishment.
- Reversal — What others intend for harm God can overrule for good, supremely at the cross, where the worst crime became eternal redemption.
- Perspective — We may have to wait to see how it works for good; the coming glory will show today's affliction in its true, momentary size.