There’s a moment—perhaps you’ve had it—when someone tells you that God is good, and something inside you breaks a little. Not because the words are inherently offensive, but because they collide with your actual life. The phone call from the doctor. The empty chair at the dinner table. The relationship that ended not with a bang but with a slow, suffocating silence. In those moments, “God is good” doesn’t sound like theology. It sounds like a lie told by someone who hasn’t really suffered.
This tension—between what we’re told about God and what we experience in the world—may be one of the oldest questions in the Christian faith. It’s not a problem to be solved with a clever argument or a motivational poster. It’s a wound that requires something far deeper: a willingness to look at God’s character not from the comfort of prosperity, but from the rubble of actual loss.
The medieval monk and theologian Thomas Aquinas once said that we cannot know what God is, only what He is not. But Scripture refuses to be that abstract. It doesn’t merely tell us what God is not; it invites us into an experience of His presence, especially in the places where His presence seems most absent. This invitation comes to us through the testimony of a man named David, who wrote during one of the most frightening seasons of his own life.
The Testimony of a Fugitive
Psalm 34 is attributed to David and carries a particular historical moment: it was written when he “pretended to be insane in the presence of Abimelech.” In other words, this is not a man writing from a position of security or ease. David was on the run, afraid for his life, humiliated. He had been hunted by a jealous king, forced to flee, stripped of everything that had once defined him. His reputation was in tatters. His circumstances were anything but good.
And yet, from that exact vantage point—from the debris of a shattered life—David wrote some of the most compelling words about God’s goodness in all of Scripture:
I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. I will boast in the LORD; the humble will hear and be glad. Psalm 34:1–2, CSB
This is not the bravado of someone playing dress-up in prosperity. This is the testimony of someone who has tasted genuine fear and found God faithful anyway.
The most striking moment in this Psalm comes in verse 8, where David issues an invitation that reads like a gentle command:
Taste and see that the LORD is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him! Psalm 34:8, CSB
Notice the language here. David doesn’t invite us to understand that God is good—though understanding matters. He invites us to taste and see. This is experiential language, the language of direct encounter rather than abstract doctrine. You don’t really know the sweetness of honey by reading a nutritional label. You know it by tasting it. In the same way, you don’t fully grasp God’s goodness by nodding assent to a theological statement. You come to know it by seeking Him, calling upon Him, and finding Him faithful—especially in moments when faith feels impossibly fragile.
But what does “good” actually mean when we talk about God in this way? The word carries several layers of meaning in Scripture. When we say God is good, we’re saying that He is morally excellent—perfectly righteous, incapable of wrongdoing. We’re also saying that He is benevolent, that His heart genuinely turns toward the welfare of His creatures. And we’re saying that He is kind, generous, and compassionate in the texture of His dealings with us. The prophet Nahum captures something of this texture when he writes:
The LORD is good, a stronghold in a day of distress; he cares for those who take refuge in him. Nahum 1:7, CSB
Notice the combination of attributes here: good, stronghold, cares. God’s goodness is not soft sentimentality. It’s not a greeting-card platitude. It’s muscular, protective, the goodness of a strong hand extended in the moment of greatest vulnerability. In a day of distress—in trouble, in grief, in the kind of fear that makes breathing difficult—He becomes a stronghold, a place of refuge.
The Hardest Arithmetic of Faith
But we must reckon with the obvious tension. David’s Psalm continues:
One who is righteous has many adversities, but the LORD rescues him from them all. Psalm 34:19, CSB
This verse doesn’t say that righteousness leads to an absence of hardship. It says the opposite. A person devoted to God might experience many adversities. The promise is not that suffering disappears. The promise is that God rescues us from them all.
For many of us, this is where faith becomes genuinely difficult. We’re not wrestling with an abstract question about theology. We’re wrestling with the actual architecture of a life that includes both God and grief, both divine goodness and real pain. How do these fit together? How can we say that God is good when the evidence seems to contradict that claim?
The Apostle Paul addressed this directly in one of the most theologically dense passages in the New Testament:
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified. What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Romans 8:28–32, CSB
This passage requires careful unpacking, because it’s often misread in ways that damage rather than heal. When Paul says “all things work together for the good,” he is not claiming that all things are good in themselves. Death is not good. Sin is not good. Betrayal is not good. God does not call evil “good.” To suggest otherwise is to confuse God’s ability to use suffering with approval of suffering, and that distinction matters deeply.
What Paul is actually saying is that God, in His sovereignty and wisdom, possesses the ability to take even the evil and pain of this broken world and weave them into a larger purpose that ultimately leads to our good. And what is that good? The next verse clarifies it: being conformed to the image of His Son. The deepest good God pursues in our lives is not merely our comfort or our happiness, but our Christlikeness—making us progressively more like Jesus and bringing us safely home to glory.
This matters because it reorients our entire framework for understanding divine goodness. We tend to evaluate God’s goodness by how much comfort He provides or how much pain He prevents. But God evaluates His own goodness by a different standard: the standard of transformation, of drawing us into deeper likeness to Christ, of refining us in the fires of adversity so that what emerges is more precious than what went in.
The cross itself is the ultimate expression of this paradox. At Calvary, the most wicked event in human history and the greatest act of redemption in human history occurred simultaneously. Those who betrayed Jesus and nailed Him to the cross did so with wicked intent. God took that evil and transmuted it into the means of salvation for all who believe. As Paul concludes this passage:
He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Romans 8:32, CSB
The cross is God’s way of saying something that no amount of explanation could convey: “I am for you, not against you. Even when you don’t understand My ways, you can trust My heart, because I have already given My Son for you.”
The Testimony of Redemption: Joseph’s Story
The Old Testament story of Joseph provides another window into this mystery. Joseph’s life was a masterclass in suffering. His own brothers betrayed him, sold him into slavery out of jealousy. In Egypt, he was falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit and thrown into prison. From Joseph’s perspective, for years—perhaps for what felt like a lifetime—his circumstances were anything but good. There was no visible hand of protection, no immediate rescue, no evidence that God was orchestrating anything but his destruction.
But God was working. By divine providence, Joseph was eventually elevated to a position of extraordinary authority, second in command to Pharaoh himself. And in that position, he was uniquely positioned to save countless lives during a severe famine—including the very brothers who had betrayed him.
At the end of the Genesis narrative, when their father Jacob dies, Joseph’s brothers grow terrified. They fear he will finally exact revenge for the treachery they committed decades earlier. Here is Joseph’s response:
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people. Therefore don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your children.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Genesis 50:19–21, CSB
This response contains a crucial theological insight. Joseph does not minimize what happened. He doesn’t say, “Everything worked out fine, so it was all basically okay.” He clearly distinguishes between what his brothers intended and what God intended: “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good.” The evil they chose was genuinely evil. Their intentions were genuinely wicked. But God’s purpose was redemptive, saving, oriented toward life and flourishing.
This is the delicate balance we must maintain when we speak of God’s goodness in the midst of suffering. God is never the author of sin. God never calls evil “good.” And yet—and this is where the promise becomes almost staggering in its scope—God is so wise and so powerful that He can take the evil intentions of human hearts and the genuine suffering that results and weave them into a larger narrative of redemption that extends far beyond what the sufferer can initially see.
When Appetite for the Divine Disappears
Yet there’s another dimension to this reality that we must acknowledge, because it reflects the experience of many people who have endured genuine suffering. Sometimes the most honest thing we can say about faith is not “I believe” but “I believe, help my unbelief.” Sometimes we know in our heads that God is good, but our hearts have lost their appetite for Him. Everything tastes flat. The spiritual resources that once nourished us seem to have evaporated.
The Psalmist understood this experience. In Psalm 34:18, he offers a word that feels almost surgically precise in its tenderness:
The LORD is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18, CSB
This verse doesn’t say that the broken-hearted will feel God’s presence. It doesn’t promise that the crushed spirit will immediately experience comfort. It simply states something that becomes a refuge precisely because it makes no false claims: the Lord is near. This is not a feeling. This is a fact about God’s character and God’s commitment. When everything inside you feels abandoned, when your emotional capacity for faith has been hollowed out, when you can barely say “I believe”—the Lord is still near.
This nearness doesn’t require that we feel it. It requires only that we trust it, and that trust often has to be chosen moment by moment, breath by breath, when choosing it feels absurd.
The Three Postures of Response
How then do we live in light of God’s goodness, especially when life still hurts and the pain shows no sign of relenting? Scripture suggests three interconnected responses.
The first is gratitude. This doesn’t mean pretending that everything is fine or that our suffering serves some obvious purpose we can articulate. It means, in the midst of real sorrow, honestly naming the good alongside the hard and saying, “Lord, thank You.” Even in the most impoverished circumstances, there are evidences of God’s goodness: breath in lungs, people who love us, small mercies in hard days, and supremely, salvation in Christ. Gratitude is not denial of pain. It’s the stubborn decision to not let pain be the final word about reality.
The second is trust. The Psalmist says he will call upon the Lord “as long as I live.” This kind of trust doesn’t require that we never ask “why” or that we never weep. It means that beneath the questions and the tears, there is a settled conviction: “The LORD has been good to me,” and He will not stop being good, even when I cannot see how. This trust is grounded not in our circumstances but in what God has already proven at the cross.
The third is witness. When we talk about God’s goodness—not in a shallow, sanitized way, but honestly, with our scars visible—we become living testimonies to something that mere words could never convey. There is something profoundly powerful when someone can say, “My life has been hard. I have wept. I still have questions. But God has been good to me, and I will keep trusting Him.” That kind of testimony carries a weight that cannot be manufactured or imitated. It can only be earned through the actual experience of holding on when holding on feels impossible.
The Architecture of Hope
To stand where David stood—on the run, afraid, humiliated—and still declare that God is good is not the response of someone engaging in spiritual fantasy. It’s the response of someone who has genuinely encountered God in a way that transcends circumstance. It’s the response of someone who has tasted and seen, not in perfect conditions, but in the worst conditions imaginable.
This is why the invitation at the heart of Psalm 34 remains so compelling: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” Not “understand it in theory.” Not “accept it as doctrine.” But taste it. Experience it. Know it in the deepest fibers of your being.
The medieval theologian’s insight that we cannot know what God is but only what He is not finds its answer in the cross. At Calvary, God showed us what He is: a God who suffers with us, who enters into our pain rather than standing aloof from it, who proves His goodness not by delivering us from every hardship but by promising to walk with us through every hardship, and ultimately to redeem it.
When life doesn’t feel good—when the diagnosis comes, when the relationship ends, when grief becomes the texture of ordinary days—we are invited to hold onto something that reason alone cannot defend: the goodness of a God who has already proven Himself at infinite cost. Not because everything will suddenly make sense, but because the One who holds us can be trusted to make something redemptive of our deepest suffering.
That conviction is not born of naive optimism. It’s born of testimony, across centuries, from people who faced suffering at least as severe as our own and found that God’s goodness did not depend on their comfort. It was real even in the cellars of despair. It was real even in the silence when prayer felt like talking to an empty room. And it’s real still, for anyone desperate enough to taste and see.