Bad Things in the Hands of a Good God

This is the eighth in a multi-part series on what the Bible says about why bad things happen to ‘good’ people. You can read Part 1 here.

We’ve talked about how the idea of good people and bad people is one of those things that sounds right to us, but actually isn’t Biblical.  That’s because Biblically, there is only One person who meets God’s standard of goodness. Only One good enough to earn God’s blessing.

In today’s article we’re going to look more closely at the idea of ‘bad things’ as we continue to explore the question ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ Perhaps it sounds silly to ask ‘what do we mean by bad things?’. However, in order to properly answer the question of why bad things happen to good people, we need to make sure we accurately define the terms.  So let’s look at some examples in the Bible to try and understand more deeply what makes something a ‘bad thing’.

Some of the bad things we experience could be described as difficult life circumstances.  These aren’t necessarily life threatening, but they are painful to endure in some way.   The Apostle Paul talks about some of the suffering he experienced in life.  He was beaten, hungry, cold and had to face numerous dangerous things as he traveled. 

Five times I received the forty lashes minus one from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the open sea. On frequent journeys, I faced dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, and dangers among false brothers; toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and without clothing. 

2 Corinthians 11:24-27 (CSB)

One of the remarkable things about all of these difficulties Paul faced, is that these are the experiences he had as he was simply trying to share The Gospel around the world.  These ‘bad things’ he was experiencing were happening as he was giving his entire life to serving Jesus and helping people.  Paul is not alone.  He writes to his spiritual son, Timothy, that everyone who wants to live a godly life will face persecutions.(2 Timothy 3:12)  Ouch. Not the kind of promise we get printed on our mugs.  At the same time, when we experience our own difficult life circumstances, it can be encouraging to realize this is to be expected.   

Paul’s difficult circumstances go on.  He, like Joseph, is even thrown into prison unjustly.   But while Joseph's story seems to have a happy ending, Paul’s story ends more like Abel’s did. Eventually he is killed for telling the truth about Jesus. 

From a temporal perspective,  some stories of people in the Bible seem to end with a triumphant happy ending!  We see this in the lives of Joseph and Job, whose earthly lives end with restoration of the things that were lost.  But even when we read about those happy endings, we have to remember that these were real people, and we are only seeing the highlight reel of their life.  One IG story does not give us the whole picture.

It’s hard to imagine that even after Pharaoh released Joseph from prison and gave him an incredible career opportunity, that Joseph didn’t still have a little post traumatic stress anytime he walked past a ditch.  Or perhaps he double and triple checked that multiple people were around when he set foot in someone’s home after being imprisoned for years for something he didn’t do.  Maybe Potiphar’s wife continued to post on her social media (metaphorically 😉), doubling down on her lies about him and causing the people in Joseph's life to treat him with suspicion even after he’d been released from prison. In Part 4 we talked about how it’s hard to imagine that Job and his wife, even after being blessed with 10 more children from The Lord, didn’t grieve the 10 they lost for the rest of their earthly lives.  So even when the story seems to end with ‘happily ever after!’,  real life after bad things may not ever feel quite as happy as before.

It may seem easy, from these examples, to conclude that bad things are bad things. Clear. But as with many things, the truth isn’t that simple.  God used Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers to later provide for all of the people of Israel during a famine.  When Joseph’s brothers come to him after their father dies, a bit fearful that Joseph will seek revenge, he tells them not to worry.  Joseph says in Genesis 50:

 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 

Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

We see something similar in the life of Paul when we see how God is working in the bad things he experiences. One example happens when Paul and Silas are in prison (unjustly) in Philippi.  The jailer guarding him decides to follow Jesus after hearing Paul and Silas pray! 

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,  and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened… And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas.  Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.  And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.

Acts 16:25-26; 29-33 (ESV)

This is just one example of how bad things play out in the lives of those trusting in Christ. It's one of the beautiful truths that we can hold on to as we endure the difficulties of bad things in our own lives.  In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul summarizes the truth of how God works, even through bad things, in this way:

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 

Romans 8:28 (CSB)

Even more than Paul, Jesus experienced the depth of bad things.  Jesus’s suffering is infinitely more unjust than Joseph’s, Paul’s or any other human’s, because He is sinned against by the very people He gave life.  He is dying for the sin of even some of those killing him.    He was killed as Paul and Abel were.  But Jesus was killed by the creatures who live and move and have their being in Him.  (Acts 17:28)  

That day which was the culmination of every 'bad thing' any human would ever experience, the day Christ was brutally crucified on the cross, have you ever thought about what we call that day? Doesn’t it seem ironic that we call that day of the worst thing that’s ever happened, the most grievous sin- killing the Messiah,  Good Friday?  

The day of the ultimate 'bad thing', we call Good Friday.

So when we ask the question ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’, this is why it’s important to understand what the Bible says about ‘bad things’.  The complexity in calling them ‘bad things’ is not that the things themselves aren’t bad. Some are downright evil (like murdering Christ).  It’s that anything- anything, whether good, bad or neutral, in the hands of a Good God- He works for good.  Because He has all power.  Because this is His character.   Because this is His promise. Romans 8:28.

When we are experiencing suffering, it’s important to understand that this beautiful promise doesn't always take away the pain of the hard things we experience. Paul, even knowing these beautiful truths, suffered deep pain as he endured his ‘bad things’.  Paul describes how he felt during one of these trials this way:

We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed ​— ​beyond our strength ​— ​so that we even despaired of life itself.  

2 Corinthians 1:8 (CSB)

The book of Hebrews  talks about even Jesus despising the shame of the cross.(Hebrews 12:2) When we see how God uses these ‘bad things’ though, and promises to work them for good, it’s hard to think of them as simply bad things.  But it also can seem like it minimizes the difficulty of our experiences to only focus on the good God is working, as if the suffering doesn’t matter.  So maybe the better way to describe these things,  to account for both how God is working them for good and for how much they hurt, is to call them painful things.  If we believe God’s Word.  And we believe He will work all things together for good…Maybe the question we are really asking is:

Why does God allow painful things… 

And we’ll pick up on that question a bit later in this series.

Thank you for reading.  This is part of a multi part series on what the Bible says about why bad things happen to ‘good’ people. You can read Part 1 here.

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This copy in this article was written by a real person, me 🙂, not AI.

For true hope and joy,

~m