Questioning God's Goodness

There are moments in life that shake us to our core. A phone call we never wanted to receive. A diagnosis that rewrites everything we thought we knew about the future. A relationship fracturing in ways we never anticipated. A season where it feels like no matter how hard we try to do the right thing, the weight of life just keeps pressing down harder and harder.

In those moments, a question rises up from somewhere deep inside us. We may not say it out loud. We may barely even admit it to ourselves. But it is there, quiet and persistent: Is God really good?

That question is not new. It is not a product of modern cynicism or a sign of weak faith. It is a question that has been wrestled with by people of deep conviction throughout all of human history. And one of the most honest, raw, and ultimately triumphant examples of that wrestling match is found in Psalm 73.

The Honest Struggle

Psalm 73 opens with a declaration: God is truly good. But the very next breath is a confession. The writer, Asaph, admits that his feet had almost stumbled. His steps had nearly slipped. This is not the testimony of someone who had it all figured out. This is someone standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down.

What got him there? He looked around at the world and saw something that did not add up. The wicked were prospering. People who lived without integrity, without compassion, without any regard for what was right were seemingly untouched by hardship. They were comfortable. They were celebrated. They were increasing in wealth and influence.

Meanwhile, Asaph was doing everything right. He was keeping his heart clean. He was living with integrity. And what did he have to show for it? Struggle. Ridicule. Suffering. Morning after morning, he was met with difficulty while those who deserved difficulty seemed to sail right through life without a scratch.

That tension is not unique to Asaph. Most of us have felt it at one point or another. We look at the landscape of our own lives and the lives of those around us and we cannot make the math work. We have been told that God is good, that righteousness matters, that living with integrity and faith means something. And then life happens, and the equation stops balancing, and we are left standing in the gap between what we believe and what we see.

The Turning Point

The shift in Psalm 73 does not come through an argument or a theological explanation. It comes through a change in focus. Asaph describes the moment things began to turn: he went to the sanctuary of God. He stepped out of his own perspective and into a space where he could see things differently. And in that space, everything began to look different.

He began to see the bigger picture. He began to understand that what looks like prosperity in the short term is not the whole story. The apparent success of those living wickedly was not the final word. Their footing was far less secure than it appeared. What looked like solid ground was actually slippery.

More importantly, Asaph began to see what he actually had. He was not alone. He was being held. God had not abandoned him in the middle of the struggle. God was guiding him, walking with him, holding his hand through every moment he had mistakenly assumed he was navigating on his own.

That realization led him to one of the most powerful declarations in all of Scripture. He acknowledged that his flesh and his heart might fail, but that God was the strength of his heart and his portion forever. Not his circumstances. Not his comfort. Not the absence of difficulty. God himself was enough. God himself was good.

What You Focus On Matters

There is a reason Asaph's turning point began with a change in where he directed his attention. What we fix our minds on shapes everything about how we experience life. The Apostle Paul understood this deeply. Writing to the church at Colossae, he urged believers to earnestly and intensely seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. He called them to focus their minds on things above and not to get stuck in low-level thinking about temporary things on the earth.

That word earnestly carries weight. This is not passive. This is not a gentle suggestion to occasionally think nice thoughts. This is an active, intentional, effortful redirecting of the mind toward something greater than what is immediately in front of us. It requires something of us.

Because the truth is, our emotions will not always cooperate. There will be seasons where focusing on the goodness of God feels completely at odds with everything we are feeling. Anxiety will tell us to spiral. Fear will tell us to catastrophize. Grief will tell us to despair. And in those exact moments, the call is still the same: set your mind on things above.

Whatever we consistently fix our attention on becomes the thing we are functionally trusting in. If our thoughts are consumed by fear, we are trusting fear to tell us the truth about our situation. If our minds are saturated with worry, we are trusting worry more than we are trusting God. The invitation is to make the deliberate, daily choice to refocus.

God Is Still Good

The troubles we face are real. No one should ever dismiss the weight of what genuine hardship feels like. Suffering is not something to be minimized or explained away. The struggle is real.

But so is the goodness of God.

And here is the thing about that truth: there is never a bad time to arrive at it. Whether you are on the far side of a difficult season looking back, or whether you are standing in the middle of the hardest moment of your life right now, the goodness of God is not waiting for your circumstances to improve before it becomes true. It is already true. It has always been true.

The question is simply this: will we choose to fix our eyes on it?