Everything Happens for a Reason

In the later stages of Second Kings, the Editor of the final version of the book, who some scholars call the "Deuteronomistic Historian" evaluates individual kings and ultimately the fate of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in light of how well they kept the law given to Moses as explained in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Everything happens for a reason.
The Northern Kingdom's first king, Jeroboam establishes alternate places of worship so that "his" people don't have to go the the Southern Kingdom of Judah to worship at the Temple (the one built under Solomon's reign.) He fears that the people will have mixed loyalties if they continue to make the journey to his rival's kingdom. So, he builds alternate worship sites for God and then the "high places" spring up where people begin to worship all sorts of gods commonly worshipped by other nearby nations. This, the historian writes, really angers God, who eventually abandons the Northern Kingdom. Assyria swoops down and utterly destroys their nation and sends the people into exile into various other nations that it has conquered. This leads to a (sort of) funny story in which Assyria resettles some other conquered people in the land of the Northern Kingdom. They do not worship God and lions come and attack them until the king of Assyria sends for a priest of Israel to teach the newly arrived people how to worship God so that the lions will go away.

Everything happens for a reason.

But here's the thing. As a theological history, where the laws of Deuteronomy become the measuring stick, of course, everything will happen for a reason that happens to be God's reason.
Jesus, in the New Testament goes right after this notion that everything bad that happens is some how tied to God's judgment for sin. Consider Luke 13:
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

Jesus is telling them that when bad things happen to people it doesn't mean that they were particularly "bad" sinners. The tower fell because it fell. Pilate was one sadistic man and people suffered as a result. Not because of what they did, but what he did. That's the reason.
Focus on salvation and that all die apart from it, Jesus says.
Everything does happen for a reason, but not everything that happens is God's will (the reason).

Earlier I shared about King David's conniving in the murder of Bathsheba's husband. Obviously that is not God's will - King David is judged for it - and severely. As Jesus says, some things happen because people chose against God's will. And some things happen because of other reasons. Like shoddy construction, perhaps, in the case of the tower. Or perhaps the actions of untamed nature (think modern Hurricanes and tidal waves and so forth.) It is only when folks want to interpret such events in light of Old Testament theological history in order to push their own theological point of view for their own ends that trouble runs deep.