By Olukorede Yishau
ALMOST EVERYONE, irrespective of religious leanings, must have at one difficult moment or the other asked this rhetorical question: Is God really good? It is a question for days when faith trembles like a candle before a restless wind.
It is a query reserved for when the centre, no matter what, refuses to hold. When, despite all prayers, despite all praises and worships, and despite fasting sessions, results are not forthcoming.
At times like this, even the most devoted believer can ask: Is God really good? It is not because they have abandoned faith, but because they are trying to reconcile deep pain with their belief in a loving God.
Let’s go to Orire Local Government Area of Oyo State, where, I believe, there are families and friends who must have wondered why God has left pupils and teachers in the custody of kidnappers for weeks unending.
It all started this way: On May 15, 2026, heavily armed gunmen stormed three schools, Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota, Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele and L.A. Primary School, and rounded up thirty-nine pupils and seven teachers before marching them into nearby forests.
A teacher, identified in several reports as Joel Adegboye Adesiyan, was shot dead while trying to protect his pupils or escape with them during the assault. Later, another teacher, according to a viral video, was beheaded.
They have demanded ₦100 million for the release of the captives. To say the kidnapping has devastated the affected communities is an understatement. It must have made not a few, who have lost faith in government, to wonder where God was when the incident happened and why He hasn’t helped to get them freed. It is even worse for the families, friends and well-wishers of the two dead teachers. Unlike those in captivity, they will never come back. Hope is not an option for their people.
Aside kidnapping, there are other instances that can make God receive a query from believers.
This rhetorical question rises from hospital corridors where machines breathe for people who once sang loudly in church choirs. It is whispered in cemeteries where tiny coffins are lowered into the earth while parents stare at the fresh mound of sand, unable to understand why a child should begin life only to leave it so soon. No parent is prepared to bury a son or daughter. It is an inversion of life’s order, a wound that time merely teaches one to carry.
The question grows louder when a husband leaves home one morning and never returns because a reckless driver ended his journey. Or when a wife, who was the heartbeat of a family, breathes her last after a long battle with disease. Dreams collapse in a single phone call, promises become memories, and prayers seem to hang unanswered somewhere between earth and heaven.
There are men and women who have spent decades serving God faithfully, only to hear doctors pronounce names of diseases they can barely spell. Cancer. ALS. An incurable condition. They prayed. They fasted. They gave generously. Yet the diagnosis arrived without seeking permission. It is difficult not to ask difficult questions when your own body becomes your greatest enemy.
There are couples who decorate empty rooms in anticipation of babies who never come. Every miscarriage feels like another funeral. Every baby shower invitation becomes another reminder of what has been denied them. They smile through the celebrations of others while carrying invisible grief that refuses to loosen its grip.
Some people do not lose one loved one. They lose many. Death becomes a regular visitor. One funeral follows another until condolence messages begin to sound painfully repetitive. They wonder how much sorrow one heart can contain before it breaks beyond repair.
Then there are families whose loved ones never return because terrorists decided that innocent blood was cheap. They pray through sleepless nights, bargaining with heaven, wondering why divine intervention seems delayed.
Entire communities have been erased by war. Villages have become ashes. Mothers have buried children. Children have buried parents. Survivors walk through landscapes that no longer resemble home, asking where God was while humanity devoured itself.
Nature too has its own terrifying vocabulary. Floodwaters swallow entire neighbourhoods. Earthquakes flatten cities. Hurricanes rip roofs from homes. Tsunamis erase coastlines as though they were drawings on wet sand. They do not ask who is righteous before they strike.
There are honest men who rise before dawn every day, work until their bodies ache, and still cannot feed their families adequately. Meanwhile, those who manipulate the system, steal public funds or exploit the weak seem to flourish. Wealth appears to reward dishonesty more generously than integrity.
Sometimes death chooses those whose stories seem barely begun. The brilliant student. The gifted athlete. The young doctor. The compassionate humanitarian. Lives filled with promise suddenly become framed photographs adorned with black ribbons. Instances like these can lead to the question: Is God really good?
We can also find ourselves asking this rhetorical question when financial ruin arrives like a thief. A thriving business collapses. A job disappears. A home is lost. Years of sacrifice vanish within months. They wonder why diligence did not produce security.
Imagine this scenario: Justice can be painfully slow or absent altogether. Innocent people have spent years behind bars for crimes they never committed. Their youth is stolen by prison walls. Their names are stained by accusations they could not prevent. Some, they ask: Is God really good?
Picture this: Some wake every morning already exhausted because pain never sleeps. Chronic illness and disability become lifelong companions. Others fight battles that cannot be seen. Depression darkens sunny days. Anxiety steals peaceful nights. Mental illness isolates them even in crowded rooms, leaving them wondering why prayers seem unable to silence the storms in their minds.
Then there is the puzzle that has troubled generations and make us query God. Why do the wicked prosper? Why do corrupt politicians grow richer while the honest struggle? Why do those who cheat seem to laugh louder than those who choose integrity?
In fact, imagine people across the world, who continue to suffer simply because they refuse to deny their faith. They are mocked, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Their courage inspires, but their suffering also raises uncomfortable questions. Will you blame them if they ask if God is really good.
For many who have prayed until words ran out, they may query God. They have prayed for healing that never came, for reconciliation that never happened, for employment that remained elusive, and for protection that seemed absent. Silence became the only answer they could hear.
We can also find ourselves query God when we endure injustice because of the colour of our skin, our ethnic identity or the circumstances of our birth, when we face discrimination that has little to do with merit and everything to do with prejudice.
It is not uncommon for those who lose everything in a single afternoon to query God’s goodness. They do so when fire reduces decades of labour to ashes, or floodwaters carry away homes built over a lifetime, or economic collapse wipes out savings carefully accumulated over many years.
This rhetorical question can also arise in families held hostage not by armed men but by addiction. Imagine when a son disappears into drugs, a father into alcohol, a mother into gambling.
Then there are those who grow old alone. They desired marriage. They prayed for companionship. They attended weddings and rejoiced with others, yet their own waiting stretched into decades. They wonder whether heaven somehow overlooked their address.
My final take: When people ask if God is really good, it is the cry of hearts trying to reconcile unbearable suffering with a Father in heaven they have always believed to be good. The question is born not in rebellion, not in arrogance, but in pain.
Quote
When people ask if God is really good, it is the cry of hearts trying to reconcile unbearable suffering with a Father in heaven they have always believed to be good. The question is born not in rebellion, not in arrogance, but in pain.
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