The God who brings about both well-being and calamity

Bruce Ware touches on a very sensitive and, at the same time, often confusing subject in his book God's Greater Glory. As he goes through a whole "spectrum" of Scripture (which include Deuteronomy 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:6-7; Eccesiastes &-13-14; Isaiah 45:5-7; and Lamentations 3:37-38), he points out that the God of the Scriptures is portrayed differently than the "God of love" we see so often from the pulpit today - that while he is most certainly the God who brings about good things, he is also the sovereign God who brings about bad things.

Most Christians would affirm without hesitation that God has control over the good that happens; after all, James 1:17 tells us that "every good gift" is from the Father of lights. So, it is not surprising or troubling to read in these passages that God makes alive, God heals, God raises up, God makes riches, God exalts, God brings about days of prosperity, God makes straight, God forms light, God makes well-being, and God brings about what is good. But what is amazing and instructive about these texts is that they attribute to God, in the same breath, human realities on the opposite side of the spectrum. Not only does God make alive, but God kills; not only does God heal, but God wounds. Indeed, God is said to make poor, to bring low, to make crooked, to bring about adversity, to create darkness, to create calamity, and to bring about what is bad.(1)

He goes on to say further down in his argument that to "deny God's control of both is to deny the very 'Godness' of God and to remove from him his own stated basis for claiming to be the one and only true and living God." That is to say, we diminish his glory and the extent of his sovereign rule when we neglect or deny this aspect of his character as revealed to us in the Bible. He is the God who is in control over all things, that we might be comforted both in times of well-being and calamity. Both the fame of his Name and our assurance of his ability to save us from our circumstances are at stake here.

(1) Ware, God's Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith, pgs. 70-71.