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Christian Network

We are to give thanks in all things, not for all things. It is a mistake to thank God for intrinsically evil happenings in our lives. God can bring good out of such events, and for that we can and should be thankful, but He does not expect His children to pretend that the events themselves are good. Furthermore he does not expect us to subtly imply that He is involved in any way with evil that others have brought upon us or that we have brought upon ourselves.

Many years ago there was a film that depicted the "hazing" ceremony involved in pledging for a certain college fraternity. In one scene a pledge is literally being lashed repeatedly as a part of this ritual. Each time he is struck he is required to say, "Thank you sir, may I have another." Some Christians feel that they should say something similar to their Lord when someone does something bad to them. They wrongly believe that He has somehow endorsed, or even caused, the pain that comes as a result of someone else’s sin. This is never true. God is not the author of the sin in our lives.

It is true that He allows evil to exist in our world today. God created a moral universe populated by beings designed to be moral "free agents". When some of His creatures took advantage of that freedom by rebelling against their creator, evil came into existence and we have been affected by that evil ever since. We are the benighted descendents of two of those free agents, Adam and Eve. We, like they, are sinners.

We live in a fallen world in which catastrophe can befall us due to our own transgression, the transgression of others, or as a result of the fall of nature which accompanied the Fall of man. All of these catalysts are ultimately our own corporate fault as we belong to a race, which has been justly cursed by a holy God.

All this is to say that when bad things happen to us we should not imply that our Lord has any personal responsibility for them. We should not curse Him for the evil which comes into our lives and, by the same token, we should not thank Him either. The reason some believers do thank Him is because they think that it is somehow an act of deep humility to give thanks for the hurricane that destroyed their house. But hurricanes and tornados were not a part of the original creation; they came about when human sin entered the picture. It is foolish, not humble, to thank God for something that ultimately results from human transgression.

God does not gain any pleasure from seeing the misery we often go through in this life. He brings good out of our trials because, as His children, He desires us to ultimately be redeemed through and from those trials. We need to be thankful for the blessed ability our Lord has to bring good out of evil and for the fact that His love for us compels Him to do so whenever we are afflicted.