Is “God’s Good Even When Life Isn’t” a Positive or Negative Statement?

I recently had a conversation with my brother about this quote, as it’s on the back of my phone case and he asked me about it. He made the argument that it carries a negative connotation, stating that the quote suggests life isn’t good. “Life’s always great! God’s given us a beautiful world!” he said.

Here’s the thing – I know what he’s saying, and I would be lying if I said I never questioned the underlying tone of my thoughts. My goal, both in life and in this blog, is never to keep someone in a bad place, but rather to shed light on the fact that none of us are alone even in our deepest of thoughts, and that beautiful things can come out of negative emotions and experiences. The goal is to be uplifting, without fear of discussing what most people choose to keep to themselves. So, as for my brother’s perspective, I understand his point and his desire to keep me out of getting stuck in a negative mental space.

HOWEVER – I’ve gotten tons of compliments from strangers regarding the message on my phone case. So, my argument for why the quote actually carries a positive connotation, goes as following…life in itself does not solely encompass our physical, surrounding environment – it includes both our environment, our internal thoughts, and our human connections, and how we feel internally can be triggered by all of the three. That being said, life really isn’t always “good” then, right? For example, you can have all the money in the world (a strong physical environment) and still be unhappy (lack of human connections, negative internal thoughts). And on the contrary, there are impoverish people that are happy – life to them may be “good,” and though their physical environment is stressful, their thoughts and human connections influence their positive perception on life. So, yes, if you have good people in your life, healthy thoughts, and emotional resilience, you can say something like, “life is always great,” regarding you let no experience ever affect you emotionally for the rest of your life. This is so rare, though. If somebody shot your sibling, you’re not going to wake up the next day like, “wow, life is good!” You’re going to choose to react to the situation, as it would be near impossible to emotionally ignore, and suddenly this beautiful world has a bit of a cast on it.

Tying in religion, if life was “always good,” we wouldn’t be living life on Earth, we would be living life in Heaven. We, as humans, will not be able to fully understand nor appreciate the true glory of Heaven, if we don’t know what it is to feel pain, on Earth. That doesn’t mean we were put here to suffer, but rather, it means that God will temporarily put us in situations that lead to internal suffering, as suffering can separate us from worldly issues and bring us closer to a higher power, and it allows for internal growth. Suffering is not the point of our existence, but growing into the strongest, most evolved versions of ourselves from these experiences may be. Shifting our focus to what we have, not what we lost, takes courage and practice through similar experiences, but at the same time, never feeling the pain of what we lost would insinuate that we never felt love for it in the first place.

So, in my opinion, life can look “good” without always feeling “good,” and we’re not being ungrateful for feeling negative emotions – it’s an unavoidable part of the human experience. Still, God is always good, working behind the scenes for the greater good of our lives, closing doors for us to learn from, and opening new ones for us to grow towards.