Theological Test - Question 5

We posted the questions from a recent Ligonier theological test survey, and now we want to answer the questions to see how our readers answered.  We also show the results Ligonier found in their survey.

The fifth question was “God controls all things, good and bad.”  The right answer is that this is true, so Christians should answer “strongly agree”.

Surprisingly, many Christians don’t believe this (as is demonstrated by the low survey numbers below).  The logic for many seems to be that if something “bad” happens, we can’t assign blame to God, because God is good.  Indeed, Scripture affirms that ONLY God is good (Luke 18:19).  However, just because something appears bad from our perspective does not mean that God does not control it; nor does it mean that God caused it to happen with bad intentions.  We see this with Joseph and his brothers in Genesis.  Because of their great jealousy of Joseph, his brothers sought to kill him, but ended up selling him into slavery.  Joseph ended up becoming the second most powerful man in Egypt, storing up enough grain to avert the famine that God brought about.  When Joseph finally meets up again with his very surprised brothers, he explains the situation as follows, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” (Genesis 50:20)  Importantly, notice that while God brought this about with a good purpose, He worked through the evil purposes of Joseph’s brothers.  Such is the mystery of our great and sovereign God!

According to Ligonier, the general survey results are shown below.  Note how many people did not agree:

Strongly Agree:  58%

Somewhat Agree:  11%

Don’t know:  8%

Somewhat Disagree:  8%

Strongly Disagree:  15%

As expected, Ligonier listeners did much better:

Strongly Agree:  93%

Somewhat Agree:  3%

Don’t know:  1%

Somewhat Disagree:  1 %

Strongly Disagree:  2%

Let us know how you did!

Continue the test...