I hope you can’t relate to this, but I suspect you can. The last eight years have made the previous years of my life seem like a cakewalk. Abandonment, divorce, depression, struggles with my kids, health scares. At times, it has seemed so out of control.
My problems weren’t nearly as big as Job’s, but I’d recommend that the book of Job be retitled, “God, what the heck?” because that is what I thought many, many times. I didn’t question God’s God-ness, but his goodness? Oh yeah.
You’ve had those moments, haven’t you? You’re minding your own business and suddenly find yourself splayed out awkwardly on life’s pavement. A loved one is gone. Your career path isn’t working out. The sting of betrayal won’t subside. Health is failing. A child reveals a hidden, shocking secret.
In one rough patch I was visiting a new church. The pastor exulted, “God is good” and congregation shouted in reply, “All the time.” The pastor responded, “All the time” and the people cheered, “God is good!” To me, it sucked the oxygen out of the room. In my misery I imagined that those around me were saying more about the kind of week they had than what they really believed to be true.
That’s why “God is good all the time—all the time God is good” made my list of unquestioned answers that Christians ought to abandon. Not because it isn’t true, but because it risks sounding naïve and self-centered at the very moment when our culture is crying out for answers to its pain.
Maybe we should instead focus on those answers:
1. God is purposeful. He didn’t make us to be puppets. But he has arranged things so that when we come to the place where our choices take us, we can see that he was there all along.
2. God created good. God didn’t just make things good, he made the very idea of good itself. We can only know the difference between good and evil because good does exist, and it really exists because of God.
3. God made us free. God does not take away the freedom that makes it possible for us to do evil. Instead, he willingly withholds his own power so we can be free to choose good.
4. God directs us to take responsibility. We don’t have to make things turn out right, but we must act. We can relieve the suffering that he directs us to.
God is indeed good all the time, not just when I like what he is doing for me right now. God’s answer to evil is a person—Jesus. At the cross God declared victory. Our toughest questions may never be answered this side of eternity, but I have learned this: each day is a gift God has given us to bring glory to him and do good to our neighbors.
