Is God Bad?

And don’t confuse anxiety due to a lack of control with a lack of peace from God. Discerning the root of your uncertainty and lack of peace is paramount.

Tonight we will be looking at the role each wisdom book plays in the holistic understanding of wisdom. We are going to run through a suite of popular wisdom questions to help us better understand the role each wisdom book plays together.

In Job, God allows the opposer to bring the death of Job’s family via natural disasters.

Q: If God allowed Satan to bring about the deaths of innocent people through natural disasters, is God morally complicit in evil?

In wisdom literature, moral categories are probed, not presupposed

What seems "evil" (the death of Job’s family) is left unclassified.

The goal is not to condemn the accuser—but to test theological assumptions like:

“Good things happen to good people.”

“Bad things mean someone sinned.”

Job challenges those assumptions—not by blaming ha-satan, but by drawing us into divine mystery and accrediting the suffering to God.

Job 1:21 “And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.””

In Genesis, we see everything God does is good. So where does that leave me? How could a good God let such evil happen? Job questions our definitions of good rather than validating our opinions on evil.

It’s not that God is morally complicity in evil. It’s that our definitions of evil and good are incorrect.

Q: If a human permits something to happen, knowing it will cause harm to others, we call that negligent or complicit. So how is God different?

Romans 1:24 “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,”

God’s permission is not God’s participation

Just because God permitted something does not mean God condones and participated in the action. We live in a world with the free will to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. And we will live with the implications of our decision and the decision of others.

Wisdom boils down to this… who am I putting my trust in? Is it wisdom of the world or the wisdom of God? Do I choose to act on my understanding or God’s understanding?

God’s permission has the ultimate result of good.

The effects of your mistakes are not God’s fault.

The effects of your decisions, whether you knew the implications or not, are not God’s fault.

When looking at the personality of God, we do Him a disservice by defining him 1-dimensionally. When looking at questions regarding sin we say God is love, but forget God’s justice or God’s mercy.

Or when we look at Christians in politics we say Christians should just love their neighbor and not focus on division.

But we neglect the fact David was a politician, Joseph was a politician, Ezra, Daniel, and many others were government leaders, Elijah, John the Baptist, and even Jesus rebuked politicians publicly and to their face.

God isn’t only love. Or only just. Or only peace. Or only merciful. God is all of these things all the time. And Godly wisdom helps us mirror those attributes in an attempt to be more like Jesus in our daily decision making.

So If a human permits something to happen, knowing it will cause harm to others, we call that negligent or complicit, how is God different?

Because God is not 1-dimensional. And there isn’t only one variable or one data point being inputted into the formula of pain. there are many data points and many external effects that yield the result of harm or pain.

We need not look to God for blame or even answers at times. But look to God for peace in the unknown.

Job 42:3–5 “‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know… I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;”

Job is saying, “I spoke about things I didn’t truly understand. I knew about You before, but now I’ve seen You.” This is a turning point in the book: Job never gets an answer why he suffered, but in encountering God’s presence and wisdom, he finds peace and humility.

Peace doesn't come from answers but from encountering God Himself.

Job’s journey moves from demanding justice to surrendering in awe.

Q: Is it a sin to show my sadness or express my full emotions to the Lord when tough things happen?

Watch how this works together:

Ecclesiastes 3:4 “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;”

Proverbs 15:13 “A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.”

Job 1:21 “And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.””

Job 3:1 “After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.”

So how do we know when to weep? How do we know when to laugh? How do I know when it’s sin to speak my hurt and anger in prayer to God and when you are overstepping and cursing God?

These are the fundamental questions of wisdom.

How do I know when to weep? What would a good father do if he saw his son or daughter in immense distress? Wrap his arms around you, let you release your weeping, and he’d likely weep with you due to his immense passion and love for you.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job teach us to control our emotions but not to suppress our emotion. They teach us that Saul was acting in shame when he hid before being anointed King. And David acted in boldness when he asked what the reward was for killing the giant. Because David put his trust in God and Saul put his trust in himself.

David acted in honesty when he poured out his

Psalm 13:1–2 “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”

Psalm 13:5–6 “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

God welcomes raw unfiltered emotion. David teaches us you can be fully you before God. And God prefers your raw emotion rather than a mask of fake emotion.

Let’s run through an extreme case as an example. Not something that was caused by your own action such as voting in a certain individual into office or slightly loosing attention while driving and crashing your car. I want to look at something that by all means could be considered no human’s causation.

Q: A girl was born with pretty bad autism. Her parents cursed God and even though they went to church and called themselves Christians previously, they no longer consider themselves Christians. Because why could a good God do this to an innocent child. Not only that, the child ended up being pretty much evil. The child, even with autism, knows about God and Jesus and completely rejects the idea of God. How could this be a good thing that God let happen? Especially when the parents were going to church before this all took place?

Of course the given, we live in a fallen world. And Satan is the prince of this earth for the time being. But at the same time, God is ultimately in control. So what about this wisdom walkthrough?

We don’t know the state of that person’s heart. The Bible says many will come saying “lord lord, did we not cast out demons in your name and conduct miracles in your name? And the Lord will say, I never knew you. Depart from me your workers of lawlessness.”

Assuming the state of the original state was better than the prior state is not always correct.

This family could’ve been a toxic thorn in the life of the church. And God could’ve allowed Satan to cause the child to have the severe autism.

That family leaving the church by our definition could be bad. But God doesn’t only know what will happen in the future. He knows every iteration of every decision you could’ve made and what the result of that decision you could’ve made is.

You never know. Maybe they have relatives that learn to have more sympathy towards autistic children. etc.

The point is, we assume with out worldly mindset that our definition of good would’ve been better. But we don’t know the effects of the other items that could’ve occurred.

Q: If Job challenges the assumption that “good things happen to good people” then why does Proverbs 10-31 repeatedly say the good are blessed and the evil are cursed?

Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes do not stand opposed. Rather they compliment and provide a holistic picture of wisdom. Wisdom isn’t one-sided. It’s multifaceted. Proverbs claims good things happen to wise and good people. Job adds color by stating while that is generally true, it’s not always true.

So as you study Proverbs. We must have this lens of understanding.

Proverbs 15:6 “In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.”

Proverbs says a righteous man will be wealthy. And generally, that can be true. But what if it doesn’t happen? Yes, God wants to bless. God wants to provide prosperity. But that isn’t his #1 goal.

Just because you are righteous and follow God doesn’t mean God will bless you. Think of it this way. Prosperity teaching is a singular view of wisdom. It only looks at Proverbs 15:6 in isolation. And it ignores Job, the exception.

True wisdom understands God’s heart. Again, Wisdom begins from the fear of the Lord. But the cultivation of wisdom comes from the understanding of God’s love and God’s heart.

The deeper you grow in understanding God’s heart the more you won’t rely on worldly wisdom to tell you what was good and bad. By defining a salary of $500k as good and a salary of $50k as bad you are restricting God to worldly definitions. That’s defining God by the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

you are understanding God from a worldly perspective and your perspective of good is different than God’s.

Does God want to bless? Yes. Does God want you intimately familiar with his heart even more so. Does that mean a middle class person can’t be trusted with wealth? No! Maybe they could’ve been trusted more than the wealthy man. But God wants that middle class person to have extra time where they can pour into a youth group in such a manner where they can impact the next generation in ways the wealthy man never could’ve.

Joanna was the wife of Chuza, a prominent official in Herod's household, suggesting she had a high social status and likely possessed significant wealth. Because of her status she couldn’t reach people like the disciples did. Yet who had the bigger impact.

If you think God is tying impact to the 0’s in your bank account. If you overemphasize God’s financial blessings. Money is holding you back from your potential. The thing you think you need to reach your impact is holding you back from your impact.

Q: Can God permit death for a greater good without being unjust?

God alone has rightful dominion over life and death (Deut. 32:39)

No one "deserves" life as a right—life is always a gift (Ecclesiastes 3:20; Romans 6:23)

God can bring judgment, testing, or discipline through calamity, and still remain just and good (Lamentations 3:38)

But here’s the key: this does not mean those who died were guilty or that death was their punishment. It means that within God’s providential design, their lives and deaths participated in a larger story—one that transcends immediate moral categorization.

The story of Job isn’t isolated from the story of Job’s servants and children. God allowing suffering in Job’s life could be considered evil just as death could be considered evil.

Q: Why do bad things happen to good people?

God doesn’t answer “why”—He answers “Who.”

Job is likened to Jesus’ crucifixion:

Another innocent sufferer, who is righteous yet afflicted.

Another cosmic drama, where the justice of God is questioned.

Another moment where evil is permitted, but redemptively woven into God’s larger plan.

In Christ, God does not just permit suffering—He enters into it, and ultimately defeats it.

Job's moral mystery is a setup for a deeper revelation:

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

But the end of wisdom is found in the God who suffers for us—in Jesus.

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