All Good Things

 Recently, the famous food critic Keith Lee survived what could’ve been a fatal car crash. A drunk driver was traveling on the wrong side of the highway, heading straight toward Keith and his family. With only seconds to react, Keith swerved behind a cement mixer and narrowly avoided being hit. The car behind him also swerved but lost control and hit the concrete barrier. Tragically, the drunk driver then collided head on with another car, killing one of the passengers.

Keith thanked God for saving him and his family while offering condolences to the family who lost their loved one. As I began reading the comments on his video, I was shocked by what some people were saying. They questioned why we give God the credit when good things happen but none of the blame for the bad that happens. If God gets a pat on the back for saving Keith’s life, then shouldn’t He get the scorn for not saving the other person? I couldn’t believe their responses, but after some thought I had to admit it’s a fair question.

To get the answer we need to look at God’s character, His very nature. God is holy, God is righteous, and He’s good. His very nature is goodness, so when God created the world, it was good. Then sin entered when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, bringing suffering and death into creation. In this fallen world, bad things will happen. The only reason goodness still exists is because God is the source of it. Every breath we take and every-single-little-thing good we experience come from His grace.

Now let’s address the second part of the question. Why isn’t God responsible for the bad? Many people misunderstand what it means for God to be sovereign. God is sovereign, which means He remains Lord over His creation. Nothing is outside His knowledge or beyond His authority. But being sovereign doesn’t mean God directly causes everything that happens. Just because God allows something to happen doesn’t mean He caused it or approves of it. We live in a world where people make real choices and where sin has real consequences. God can permit those choices and consequences without causing the evil itself. The bad things that happen come from sin, not from God.

That’s the perspective we sometimes miss. It’s why we can thank God for the good without blaming Him for the bad. Keith survived, and we recognize God’s grace in that. Someone else didn’t, and their family is now grieving. Their loss is real, but as Christians, we know death isn’t the end of the story. There’s a world beyond this world, and we can take comfort in knowing that God is sovereign over both. We may not understand why one person was spared and another wasn’t, but we can still trust who God is and know that “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28).

Think about it.