Do We Really Want All Things to Work Together for Good?

To share in the glory of God is to be drawn near to God by acknowledging that God has first drawn near to us. The otherness of God that [Karl] Barth identified in his commentary on Romans is the God of love whose distance from us is constituted by what Barth was later to call "the humanity of God." God's glory has been made present to us in Jesus Christ, which decisively puts an end to all of our attempts to make God a god of our own devising.

It is so tempting to read Paul, as many of the great representatives of the liberal Protestant enterprise did and as some who now think of themselves as religiously conservative do, to confirm what we think being human is all about. "We know all things work together for good" too often is used to justify what is taken to be progress or to recommend patience in the face of difficulty. But Paul says all things work for good for those who love God. Paul then observes that such a good may mean that those who enjoy that good may suffer hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or the sword. that list should surely make us think twice about wanting the good made possible by all things working together. Is it any wonder that Paul suggests that we do not know how to pray as we ought.
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Stanley Hauerwas, Preaching Without Apology: Sermons for Christ's Church, pp. 13-14.