God Can Allow Evil is a part of a quote I read in Dr. Michael Messina’s book Death, Disease, Disaster, and Despicable Evil, and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for just five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 34 of Lent 2025 – April 7

I read this book because Dr. Messina reached out directly to me and asked me to read and review it. I have to admit, it’s not an easy read at all. It directly takes on the problem of good vs. evil which has caused many debates for centuries. Yet I found it to be brutally refreshing in that it doesn’t sugarcoat the hard truths of faith.

Dr. Messina is no stranger to death, disease, disaster, and despicable evil. His father died a tragic death from suicide. In his training to become a Christian psychologist and counselor, he has been exposed to the worst sides of humanity. Also, even though he’s in his 40s like I am, he has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which is a slowly debilitating disease that has no cure. With all that suffering in his life, I was more than willing to listen to his stories.

Though Dr. Messina is a former pastor with a compassionate heart, he does not share any Christian platitudes in this book. That’s why I find it refreshing because I’ve heard overly simplified words of “comfort” from well-meaning Christians my whole life. Those words never cut it for me. As I was exposed to the hard truths in this book, I had to come to terms with them in my own life.

I wish I could be transparently honest and list the excruciating traumas in my life. But because evil people still try to stir up dissent against me, I’ll spare you the detailed play-by-play. Suffice it to say I’ve been through a harrowing divorce, endured intense betrayal in multiple relationships, faced high-level spiritual warfare right in my face, and dealt with a stalker in the past three years. That’s why this book was hard for me to read because I’m still processing the trauma. Yet it was what I needed to read, like a bad-tasting medicine to help me heal.

God Can Allow Evil

Dr. Messina spends much time describing this nuanced truth in his book. I’ll do my best to pull some quotes for more context. Yet I encourage you to get a copy of the book to dig in deep. Here are some other quotes to ponder, along with today’s quote.

• Letting this truth sink in, that God has the ultimate, decisive control of all evil tragedies, will help us in our emotional healing when we consider that this sovereign God loves us (Romans 8:39), is for us (Romans 8:31), and works all things together for our good (Romans 8:28).
• God is constantly at work in our lives, shaping us into who he wants us to be. And that shaping is often painful.
• Sometimes God allows suffering in our life so we will change our price tags. The world holds great value when things are going well, and heaven is kind of meh. When things aren’t going great here, the value of here goes down and we see heaven as the greater reward.
• The Western diet of comfortability simply does not have the capacity to bring repentance, sanctification, and glorification in the Christian life.
• Experiencing God in tragedy is perhaps the best way to grow deeper in your relationship to him.
• Taking God off the causal hook in tragedy does not help us; rather, it produces more emotional distress, especially anxiety. If God is not the ultimate cause of tragedy, then who is…I would rather take my chances with God, who loves me and has my best interests in mind…We can rest in the knowledge that neither disease nor disaster happens outside God’s will, which is always good and perfect, even when it doesn’t seem that way.

I first read this book months ago, and quite frankly, I felt angry because the trauma was so fresh at the time. Now that I’ve had some time to heal, I can assent to these truths with both my head and my heart. They are hard truths to accept but necessary ones. That’s why I can be thankful for this book because when the next severe storms in my life occur, I now have a healthier cognitive pathway to process them.

Get your copy of Dr. Messina’s book HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

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