Many, many people in this world sincerely believe they know God, or at least, know what God is like. I’m talking about the biblical God. The God and Father of Jesus Christ revealed by the Old and New Testaments. Sadly, a great number of them are inaccurate, or are simply ignorant, or are unwilling to accept the true nature of the true God. I realize that many of my own friends would react with shock and horror at what I have to say about Him, but here goes...
Right at the very beginning of God’s revelation, that is, in Genesis chapters one through three, He makes several very basic factors about Himself, and us humans, extremely plain and simple.
First of all is the fact that He is our Creator and our Lawgiver, the Source of all that is good and right and true and beautiful. While He has given people the ability of choice, He has given Himself the preroggative of limiting those choices and holding people accountable, requiring us to perfectly obey his moral law, preferably out of love and gratitude for His creating us in the first place. Of all the creatures, we were made in His image and expected to reflect His nature.
Second, the overarching TRAGEDY that befell humanity is what is known as “the Fall.” People used their freedom of choice to disobey His law. This tragic act of rebellion, made by those created to reflect His perfect character, plunged the human race into a cursed, broken world and a wayward, sin-filled history. And yes, even though God COULD have prevented this tragedy from happening, He did, in fact, ALLOW it to happen. Why? We don’t know the answer to that question. But if we are willing to accept God’s nature as absolutely and eternally GOOD, then we must accept that allowing sin into the world was somehow God’s WILL. Like it or not.
Third, God responded to this Fall of mankind in several ways. Genesis 3 tells of three curses He pronounced as one response: a curse on the man, a curse on the woman, and a curse on the serpent. But along with His curse came a promise of GRACE. In a rather cryptic prediction, the Creator declared that a “Seed of the woman” would eventually bring destruction upon the one who tempted Adam and Eve, in effect, reversing the results of the curse and restoring our right standing with God. This prediction was His first promise of SALVATION. And a further hint of what that promise entailed was given in the way God clothed our first sinful parents: He clothed them with the skins of a dead sacrifice, an animal. In a very clear way, God was telling us that SIN leads to DEATH. Tragedy upon tragedy. Since then, the death of an innocent substitute has been the only way sinners can approach their HOLY Creator.
So, we find that in the opening chapters of God’s word, TRAGEDY in general came into God’s perfect world as the direct result of human disobedience. And the fact that our Creator allowed this to happen shows us that He is not just a passive “bystander” in this arena of tragedy. While He certainly didn’t CAUSE mankind’s Fall, it was His preroggative and right as our Sovereign to use the Fall and its consequences for His own good purpose. He actually used the occasion of our sinful rebellion to set his PLAN OF REDEMPTION into motion.
God’s curse on the man and the woman resulted in His good world being marred and broken: producing natural disasters, diseases, accidents, etc. And man’s Fall changed our natures to be twisted and bent in on themselves, no longer willing to fully obey our Maker, but selfishly insisting on our own way, even to the point of denying the reality of our true Lawgiver and the validity of His LAW. We routinely resist His right to rule us, refuse to believe His revelation, and reimagine the nature of our Holy God. We create new “gods” more to our own individual tastes, gods who wink at our sins like a tolerant grandparent, gods who would NEVER use tragedy in our lives for an eternal purpose. We don’t want to let the TRUE God be our God. In effect, we think we deserve better: a more acceptable, more manageable deity.
I’ve actually heard people trying to make excuses for God when it comes to facing tragedy. I’ve heard them say---even SHOUT--- “My God would never allow such and such a sorrowful loss to occur! I believe in a God who is out of the picture when tragedy happens! It would never be His will to cause someone pain!” And, here’s where it becomes an anger-eliciting reality:
There is NO ONE who is more involved in tragedies when they happen...than God is.
And I’m so glad He is!
If you read the biblical stories of Job...of Abraham...of David...of Jesus, of scores of others, you will see that the worst tragedies imaginable befall people to achieve a divine purpose. Sometimes to TEST his choicest servants. Sometimes to cause repentance. Sometimes to judge our sins. Sometimes to punish entire nations. And, in the case of God’s Son, to obtain eternal salvation and relief from any and all tragedies whatever.
If we attempt to let God “off the hook” when bad things happen, we are failing to believe several biblical truths about our good Creator. The fact of His sovereignty over his creation, means that there’s nothing that happens that is outside His control. His divine will is perfect and comprehensive. He sees and knows all that goes on down to the tiniest particle of this universe. “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). His absolute power has the ability and the right to ordain and permit everything that takes place.
One of the chief ways that denying this truth does God a disservice, is that we are denying those who experience tragedy the opportunity to turn to God as a source of comfort and strength during those times of grief and pain. We’re telling the suffering person, “God’s not even involved in your pain, you needn’t bother Him about it. It was just a purposeless accident, a chance occurence.” We’re intimating that God only loves us when we are NOT suffering, and that when we are, He wasn’t around loving us at that moment, He was off someplace else.
To trust the God of the Bible entails the belief that His will is involved in ALL that befalls His creatures. Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without His knowing and permitting it. Along with this trust, we must accept that His purposes are, very often, HIDDEN from us. In the story of Job, for example, God never explains to His servant Job the WHY behind all He put him through: the loss of his family, the loss of his wealth and his health. His only answer to Job’s challenge was to just show up and reveal HIMSELF. And rather than insist on a clearer explanation, Job said, “I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke without understanding. I repent in dust and ashes.”
God IS involved when you and I suffer. Tragedy is to be expected in a sinful world that will one day be totally redeemed. Our broken world makes us LONG for that final restoration that began when Jesus Christ arose from the dead after paying the price for our sin that broke God’s world. Untold thousands of men, women, boys and girls have actually turned to God and believed on Christ as the RESULT of tragedy in their lives. God often uses it for that purpose. If God allowed a sinful race to continue without facing brokenness and pain, would ANY of us seek Him?
Gently reminding a suffering person that God’s purpose might be hidden for now, but He is with us in the midst of our suffering to comfort and reassure us, far from being cruel and heartless, is a loving and truthful thing to do. We can also reassure the victim of tragedy that their fear that God is punishing them is very likely NOT the case. Christ answered his disciples when they questioned whether the man born blind had sinned, or his parents had... “No, but so that God’s glory could be revealed” when Christ came and healed him.
When we tell a suffering person that God is involved in their situation, even though His purpose remains unknown, it very well could point them in a positive direction, leading them to a deeper relationship with their sovereign Creator. It might make their bitter cup sweeter if they take their pain and anguish to the Healer of broken hearts. The compassionate Shepherd of our souls.
November 11, 2025
M.N.A.
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