Why Bad Things Happen

God is so effective at bringing good out of evil circumstances that it may look like He planned the entire event, evil and all. But a God who would have to plan everything would be much weaker than our God. Our God is so capable and wise that in events that He does not want to happen, He can bring about things that He does want to happen.

Evil does not accomplish good. God accomplishes good. That is why we praise God for the good that happens in any event. At the same time, we recognize the devil as the ultimate father of all evil that happens in any event. This is completely compatible in the Biblical understanding of God.

While that does not answer all of the questions that face us in personal tragedy, it does give us the foundation we need to survive until we leave this world.

We are relieved of accepting tragedy and death as part of God’s good design. They are not. The world today is not as God created it, nor as He desires it to be. God did not choose a world of tragedy; man did.

Being a faithful Christian does not mean that we need to be happy about death and that we need to say we wouldn’t have life any other way. God isn’t happy about death, and He would rather have the world another way.

We can rejoice in spite of tragedy. God does! We can be at peace in spite of death. God is!