> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thegreattapestry.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # When the Reason Remains Hidden - URL: https://www.thegreattapestry.com/when-the-reason-remains-hidden/ - Published: 2026-09-21T02:05:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T22:05:41.000Z - Description: Case-specific providential opacity does not, by itself, defeat warranted belief in God’s goodness and power. - Author: Jessie Kiran - Tags: Attributes of God, Faith Under Pressure, Apologetics, Faith and Suffering, Providence, Faith is Trust, My Personal History, #toc ![audio-thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f1/af/f1af4f38-3944-45ef-b74b-87e07aa7854e/content/media/2026/09/When-the-Reason-Remains-Hidden_thumb.png) When the Reason Remains Hidden 0:00 /405.9428571428571 1× ## Can we rationally trust God’s goodness and power without knowing why He permitted a particular instance of horrific suffering? My experience with a housefire started me on the journey of questioning the existence of suffering. But it was my experience with some deep relational betrayals over a period of many years that finally broke me. I remember walking around feeling dead inside. I felt like a vase that shattered on the floor – not broke – shattered. There was no kintsugi artistry that could repair me. I remember listening to a friend’s experiences with foster care and thinking “neither the free-will argument nor the sovereignty argument is sufficient to answer *that*.” There are many stories I’ve listened to that have blown me away. Just how much can a single human being really take before everything is too devastating to come back from? ## Why? I’ve also heard many people hesitate to admit that they questioned God because of their pain. But a chaplain once told me that if Jesus could feel forsaken and ask “why” on the Cross, we certainly can do the same. The “why” question is neither trivial nor obnoxious. There is a specific unspoken tension underneath the word “why”. If God is good, then how can He allow such suffering? If God is all-powerful, then why didn’t He stop all suffering? Or at least most of it. Therefore, the question becomes, “Given my experience or environment, how can God be both good *and* all-powerful?” The tempting conclusion is that God can be good, but not all-powerful. He can hate the suffering but be incapable of stopping it. Or God can be all-powerful but not good. He can stop the suffering but is not interested in doing so. Let me give you an example that illustrates this dilemma. A friend of mine told me that a man raped her. Then he grabbed a knife and was about to kill her. She said she saw a flash of light and the man immediately fell dead. Her conclusion is God intervened to save her life. I admit I sat there speechless. God stopped the murder…but He didn’t stop the *rape*? How do you explain that? Answer—you do not. In this example, if her conclusion is correct and I think it is, God showed both goodness and power in saving her life. But if the Lord had struck the man down ten minutes earlier, her suffering would have been astronomically less. There is no answer I have ever dug up that explains why He did that exact intervention at that exact moment. I will not even *try* to offer a case-specific defense. However, I can do something much better. I can evaluate the perspective from which I am approaching the enigma. I can figure out what exactly I am trying to figure out. Am I trying to figure out why God killed the man after the rape? Or am I trying to figure out if God is still good, or maybe still all-powerful? Those are not the same questions. The former asks for case-specific information that I don’t have access to and the latter asks for information that God has explicitly made available. I cannot test why God did x and y instead of z. Nor do I think I am entitled to reconstruct the private providential logic of another person’s suffering. I believe every life is entitled to a certain level of opacity. Nor can I assume that gaining that specific an answer would make anyone feel better. “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief” (Eccl. 1:18, NIV) ## God's Attributes Unlike my friend’s specific situation, I *can* probe into the question surrounding God’s attributes. God’s goodness can be tested. God’s power can be tested. How so? Jesus claimed to be the very revelation of the Father (Matt. 11:27). He also claimed God is good (Mk. 10:18). And finally, Jesus claimed God is all-powerful (Matt. 19:26). So if God raised Jesus from the dead, that Resurrection functions as divine vindication of Jesus’ identity and revelatory authority. Therefore, Jesus’ testimony about God’s character carries substantial evidentiary weight. If we establish the Resurrection, that may be sufficient to establish that Jesus’ testimony about God’s goodness and power is divinely vindicated. Don’t want to take His word for it? We can do an internal audit of the Bible for coherence between God’s behavior and His claimed attributes. If there is incongruency, let that stand. If there is consistency, let that stand. And if we confirm that God is both good and all-powerful, then we don’t need to know why something specifically happened when it happened. We already know God’s attributes. Once we know God’s attributes, then all of God’s actions will necessarily be consistent with those very attributes. In other words, we can know that God’s restraint and intervention must remain in perfect alignment with His goodness and power. We can know truly without knowing exhaustively. An event can be recognized as evil or tragic without us knowing every aspect connected to that event. Likewise, we can know that God acts consistently with His goodness. There is a massive difference. Peace becomes possible when we can acknowledge the horror of an event while also knowing that God remains both good and all-powerful. Trust in those attributes gives our soul a place to rest. This is why I think the Great Tapestry is such a powerful metaphor. We only see the messy backside but if we can learn to trust God, then we don’t need to know what’s on the right side. We can see individual threads of individual lives and events – and we can observe how tangled or unpleasant those threads may appear without feeling despair. Trust in the Weaver cushions us from hopelessness. The prophet Jeremiah laments the following when faced with a catastrophic environment: > I remember my affliction and my wandering, > the bitterness and the gall. > I well remember them, > and my soul is downcast within me. > Yet this I call to mind > and therefore I have hope: > Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, > for his compassions never fail. > They are new every morning; > great is your faithfulness. > I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; > therefore I will wait for him” Lamentations 3:19-24, NIV Jeremiah’s circumstances remained unchanged. His grief was still stifling. It is his perspective that changed. Trust does not undermine suffering. Trust acknowledges suffering while simultaneously remembering that God is faithful and compassionate. We place our hope in God, not in exhaustive knowledge. So the question “Why did God allow this to happen?” may not be as helpful as “Do we have reason to think God is trustworthy even when we cannot reconstruct His reason for permitting a particular horror?” I believe that we do and the job of this blog is to show why.