Little Coffins and God’s Goodness

God is Good. All the time. God is good. We repeat the phrase over and over but I don’t think we really stop to consider what we are really saying. What do we mean when we say, “God is good”? One writer notes, “God’s goodness is that He is the perfect sum, source, and standard (for Himself and His creatures) of that which is wholesome (conducive to well-being), virtuous, beneficial, and beautiful.” He always seeks our well-being, our flourishing, our peace, and our happiness. He is inclined and resolved to bless us.

How can we say, “God is good” and yet live in a world where parents bury children? How can the goodness of God be reconciled with those little caskets? First, one thing that has helped me tremendously is realizing that I am not the standard. I don’t determine what is good in the final sense. It is likely the case that my understanding of goodness is often molded more by my culture, feelings, and experience than how God describes. One writer agrees saying, “He is good, but his goodness is not determined by ideas that we find cozy. God’s goodness is actually terrifying.”

Second, God can be good and seek our ultimate good while also ordaining difficult things. I’m reminded of the famous line from C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed, “What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?” Of course, he was writing in a time when dentists did not utilize the pain-numbing measures we know today. The dentist was good and even doing good, all the while doing his work where excruciating pain existed. The experience and feeling of pain did not deny or doubt the dentist’s goodness or even the goodness of what his work was accomplishing.

I told a friend the other day that, “God’s goodness contains some rough edges.” What I meant was, “He is good and He allows some things that don’t feel good that work for our good in the end.” His goodness does not preclude things that feel bad. He is good and often smashes my expectations of what good means. The famous hymn-writer and preacher John Newton reminds us that, “God often takes a course for accomplishing His purposes directly contrary to what our narrow views would prescribe.”

Where then does that leave me? All I can do is reject glib and sentimental notions of God’s goodness and affirm that He is good, wise, and sovereign even in the midst of child loss. I occasionally can’t see it. I don’t often feel it. Nevertheless, God remains good in, through, and despite burying my son. God’s goodness remains over those little coffins.

Don Fortner notes, “As a wise, skilled pharmacist mixes medicine, our heavenly Father wisely mixes exactly the right measure of bitter things and sweet, to do us good. Too much joy would intoxicate us. Too much misery would drive us to despair. Too much sorrow would crush us. Too much suffering would break our spirits. Too much pleasure would ruin us. Too much defeat would discourage us. Too much success would puff us up. Too much failure would keep us from doing anything. Too much criticism would harden us. Too much praise would exalt us. Our great God knows exactly what we need. His Providence is wisely designed and sovereignly sent for our good!”