I was 16 when my mom sat my younger brother and me down for a talk. I knew something was wrong—my first clue was that we weren’t sitting in our usual spots on the sofa in our living room. While I can’t remember exactly the way she phrased things, my world was rocked by what she said. “I have a terminal illness. There is no treatment. There is no cure, and it will take my life.”
My precious mama had known about her diagnosis for three years; but because she didn’t want us living under its shadow, she had kept it from my brother and me for as long as possible. Her symptoms were starting to show, and she wanted to have a conversation with us about her illness so we wouldn’t internalize our questions.
Mama had done a fantastic job preserving my childhood. My world revolved around sports and school and friends—the superficiality of being young—but that wrong-couched conversation was the beginning of a crisis of faith, a questioning of God, an ongoing conversation with Him that lasted nearly 20 years until Jesus called Mama home in 2013.
When hard times come, our natural inclination is to look to the One who controls all things. “If You’re good, God, how can You allow something so bad?” we wonder. Students are no different. Their hearts ask the same question.
The Cosmic Question
This cosmic question is at least as old as humankind.
At creation, God made a perfect world—a sun overflowing cheerful warmth, air sweetly scented, plants flowering in beautiful fireworks, seas teeming with life, the earth full of frolicking critters, and two very good humans made in God’s own image. When God introduced Himself, when His heart overflowed into physical reality, it was good, good, good.
Every aspect of creation proclaims the foundational truth of the universe: God is good. Creation is good because God is good; but soon, Satan slithers into the garden and slyly poses the cosmic counterargument: “Is He really?”
This is the great cosmic trial. This courtroom drama is being played out throughout human history. God is good and worth loving, and Satan and his forces of darkness spend human history trying to get us to believe He isn’t.
This cosmic trial also is being played out in every human heart. The truth is God is good; but at some point in our lives, Satan will use a broken circumstance to sneak his accusing question into each of our hearts: “Is He really?”
Not every question hits as hard and fast as mine did. Often, it comes more subtly; and it may not come while a student is under your care—but it will come.
As youth ministers, we are stewards of this cosmic question.
“God is good,” my youth leader, Meg, was telling me. I was spending the summer at a camp in Colorado. For some reason, right then, I finally mustered up the courage to ask my version of the cosmic question: “How can you be so sure? How can He be good if He has the power to heal my mom but isn’t?”Tenderly, beautifully, Meg didn’t shy away from the question. Instead, she dove right into the hard heart of it. “Will you love God even if He lets your mom suffer, if He lets her die?” she asked. “Is God still good even if God chooses not to heal?”
Then she gave me a blanket, told me to get my journal and my Bible, and pointed me in the direction of the park down the street.”Why don’t you ask Him?” she gently instructed me.
So in a grassy field in a Colorado park, I was finally honest with God. Actually, I let Him have it. As the tears flowed, my honesty poured out, too. I didn’t want to follow a heartless, cruel God. I wanted Him to know that from my view, that’s exactly how He seemed.
Job’s Cosmic Question
Because we’re all living in this broken, distorted world—and because Satan doesn’t want any of us to believe in God’s goodness—we’re all fellow sojourners, looking for God’s good heart here in the shadowlands. That includes everyone in the Bible—they all journeyed through this broken world, too.
God in His goodness allocated a sizeable part of His Word to zoom in on one man’s cosmic questioning—Job’s. Job’s microcosm of the cosmic trial gives us insight into what God thought about the process, how He responded, and how we as fellow sojourners, along with our students, can help them on this part of their journeys, too.
Process, Not Pat Answers
Commendable as it was, Job’s friends sat with him while he wrestled with the cosmic question, but they offered pontifications and platitudes. This is what God thought of their verbal offerings: “After the Lord finished speaking to Job, He spoke to Eliphaz the Temanite. He said, ‘I am angry with you and your two friends. You have not said what is true about Me, as my servant Job has. So now get seven bulls and seven rams. Go to My servant Job. Then sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer. I will not punish you for saying the foolish things you said. You have not said what is true about Me, as my servant Job has'” (Job 42:7-8).
When a student’s heart is asking the cosmic question—when God’s heart is on trial in their hearts—pat answers will not work.
Students haven’t had enough life experience to be aware of the reality that “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Rom. 8:28). Most haven’t been through enough seasons with God to know He only paints in dark colors for a season and that in His good sovereignty He always uses those blacks, browns and grays to make His painting better and more beautiful.
We arrive at a heart-understanding of God’s goodness through a process, and as stewards of the cosmic question, we can’t give our students neat and tidy answers. Just as Meg allowed me, we have to allow our students to go through their processes, too.
Spilling the Beans
While Job’s companions talked about God, Job went straight to God with every question that was on his heart.
In my situation, Meg sensed that I’d been bottling up my cosmic question. I didn’t know I had the freedom to tell God what I was thinking, but Meg did. She gave me license to go to God and spill out what He already knew was there.
When students are questioning God’s goodness, they need to know it’s OK to tell Him everything: to accuse, wail, shout or whatever they need to do to express how they feel and what they’re thinking. They need to know He welcomes honest dialogue. While your students may know this in principle, you may need to offer your own version of sending them off with their Bibles blankets. In other words, you might need to help them by setting up an appointment with God for them.
God Honors Honesty
After Job’s questioning, God honored his honesty by responding. Job didn’t get an answer or an explanation; he got God Himself. God responded in knock-you-to-your-knees power, and Job’s heart was changed by the encounter.
“God, are You really good?” It’s a deep question, a big soul question, a question so big and so deep that in order to be satisfied with the response, it must come from God Himself.
While you might feel that your students haven’t had many talk-and-listen dialogues with God, this deep, cosmic question is a good place to start. Encourage them to get alone with Him, pour out their hearts to Him, then sit in silence for a while and wait for His response.
God, because He cares so deeply for each student, will speak to each student’s heart. If a student will keep seeking God, He will draw near to them. He promises (James 4:8).
No Timeline on Relationship
While the timeline isn’t clear, it seems that God responded fairly quickly when Job called His heart into question, and God’s response satisfied Job’s heart. However, there is no formula with relationship. It might take a much longer time—and many more conversations and many more life experiences with God—for a student’s trust in God’s goodness to stretch over deep hardship. If a trial is really hard, a student’s questioning of God’s goodness might linger beyond the time you’re his or her shepherd.
After an hour or so at the park, Meg found me and my blanket and helped me process my conversation with God. Again, she didn’t bring answers. She just brought tissues. God hadn’t given me any explanations for my situation with my mom, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that; but it was good for me to hear that the conversation that I’d just had with Him would be ongoing.
The Choice
By dialogueing with God, Job showed that he was choosing, in some way, to trust Him. Initially, Job’s wife told him to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9), but He didn’t. He honored God by seeking Him. Then, once God responded to Job’s questions, Job continued to follow Him.
Students, similar to all other believers who have gone before them, have a choice when it comes to the cosmic question. They either can put the weight of their lives on the truth that God is good, or (sadly) walk away from Him. God has given them a free choice.
Choosing to follow God one more day, to continue the long conversation, to seek Him in the dark fog of hardship, is a choice of deep trust and faith. It’s a choice that honors God greatly. One day, whether this side of eternity or when we see Him face to face, all of us will see that what we have chosen to trust in the darkness is the universe’s deepest truth in the light. God is—as creation proclaimed at the very beginning—good, good, good.
Similar to Job, in that grassy field of that Colorado park, God didn’t give me any answers to my questions or explanations, but I learned that it was OK for me to come to Him, perhaps especially if I came with my heart hurting, tears streaming, and accusations flying. That was the greatest gift Meg could have given me because in the end—as Job learned and as our students should learn for themselves—I don’t need answers or explanations in the hardships. I just need God Himself.
