Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

            The topic for this week is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”   The easy answer is that we have an enemy who has, from the beginning of human existence, tried to trip us up and trick us into forsaking the good gifts that God has for us.  Don’t believe me? Read Genesis 3.  The more complicated answer is that, although God is good, and wants the best for us, we have (with a lot of help) managed to mess this world up pretty badly. 

            What it really comes down to is that we are free moral agents, and we are free to make our own choices.  Sometimes we will make choices that are good for us, and sometimes we will not.  I’m guessing that Adam made a lot of good choices in the Garden of Eden, but he is mostly remembered for the one bad decision he made.  We don’t get into fixes because God puts us into a mess, although sometimes He doesn’t protect us from other people’s bad decisions, even when we think He should.

            Another problem that we run into is that sometimes things happen that seem bad, but really aren’t.  In some instances, good and bad are relative.  Think about Jonah for a minute.  When he was in the belly of the whale, he believed that he was being punished for his transgression, and that he was going to die in that whale (or great fish).  In other words, he believed that God had devised a plan, intended to kill Jonah slowly, that would be worthy of a villain in a bad spy movie.  The Scriptures make it clear that God prepared the ‘great fish’ for Jonah, not to kill him, but to keep him alive, because God wasn’t done with Jonah yet.  In any case, I’m sure that Jonah didn’t think that he was in a good place, but consider that he placed himself in a position that the alternative was certain death by drowning outside of the will of God.

            Elisha once found himself in a situation where Jezebel, Queen of Israel, threatened his life, and he took her very seriously.  He went and hid himself in a cave.  While he was in that cave, he must have felt that things just couldn’t get any worse; he probably felt that God had forsaken him.  That’s speculation on my part, but, it seems to me that he knew that God was greater than Jezebel, and that Jezebel couldn’t kill him without God’s permission, so I have to believe that he was hiding from Jezebel specifically because he believed that God had forsaken him.  Looking back at his situation, we can see that God hadn’t forsaken him, his basic needs were taken care of; in fact, he could have been sleeping safe and sound in his own home if he had simply believed God instead of Jezebel.  Part of me is tempted to call Elisha a coward, but, from everything else I have read about Elisha, he was a much braver man than I am.

            In the Gospel of John there is a story about a man that was born blind.  In those days, people tended to be somewhat superstitious about such things and assumed that if someone was struck blind, it was because God (or, in the Gentiles’ case, the gods), were displeased with this person.  Even Jesus’ disciples were confused: why was this man born blind? was it because of his sin (how could he sin before he was born?) or his parents (but then why didn’t God punish the parents directly?)?  Jesus told them flat out that the blindness was not the result of sin, but an opportunity for God to be glorified.  I can’t help but wonder how he felt, all those years being blind; I can’t believe that he thought his blindness was a good thing.

            Sometimes God lets us get into situations just to show people how we will react.  Remember Job?  He did nothing wrong and yet God allowed him to be tested, not because God doubted Job’s integrity, but just to show off Job’s integrity.  Of course, Job had no idea what was going on, he only knew that he was going through a lot of suffering and torment that he wasn’t accustomed to.  His ‘friends’ assumed that Job’s situation was due to some malevolence on Job’s part, but they ended up getting schooled.

            The bottom line is, if it seems like things are bad and getting worse, and everything that can possibly go wrong has gone wrong, the situation is dire and bleak and only getting darker, then you really just aren’t seeing the big picture.  God has promised that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  Remember the three Hebrew “children” (I’m not sure that they were children when this happened) who told King Nebuchadnezzar that they were not careful to answer him, that they knew that there God was able to save them, but that, even if He didn’t save them, they were still not going to bow down to the image that the king had made?  They were willing to stand up and do what was right, even if got them killed, because they knew that God had a reward for them after their deaths, IF they remained faithful.

Walking On Water

I had someone recently tell me that they wouldn’t want to be like Peter, because he didn’t have enough faith to be able to walk on the water without Jesus’ help.  I can sort of see that point, but it occurs to me that I would like even less to be like the other eleven who didn’t have enough faith to get out of the boat.  To be perfectly honest, most of the time I have more in common with the other eleven than I do with Peter.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise:  In Isaiah, we are told that our righteousness is as filthy rags.  Any time we try to do anything on our own, we are going to come up short.  The Bible even says that we are not sufficient of ourselves even to think as of ourselves.

Jesus once taught that a servant shouldn’t expect thanks for a job well done; after all, he (or she) is just doing his job.  I suppose that it has become courtesy to thank an employee, or to give some recognition when a worker does well, but, realistically, as a worker, you do what you do in order to earn a paycheck.  The words, “Thank you” may sound nice, but they don’t help pay the bills.  Don’t misunderstand me, I understand that a little appreciation goes a long way towards building up morale, which, in turn, helps people to put more effort into their jobs.  A good manager will thank his/her employees when they do a good job (whereas a poor manager will only criticize), but the worker should understand that the expression of gratitude that really matters is the paycheck.  Jesus went on to say that, when we have done all that has been commanded of us, we should say, “We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do.”  To be perfectly honest, there are very few days that I feel comfortable saying that I am an unprofitable servant.  Most days I am just one striving to be closer to being unprofitable than to being a liability. 

The Bible says to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  This is hard for human beings to hear, but when one considers the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, it is hard to escape the realization that He asks less from us that what He has done for us, and even now, He continues to make intercession for us because He knows and understands that, in this life, we will never be perfect.  God understands our limits and our human frailties, and He has made a way for us to overcome.  If we ever think that we have done this by our own strength or by our own righteousness, however, then we are essentially just exalting ourselves.  Of course, God understands human ego, also, and will, if we allow Him, make away for us to get past ourselves.

To get back to the reference I started with, Peter may have needed Jesus’ help to walk on the water, but each of us needs Jesus’ help to do anything worthwhile.  None of us are “man enough,” or holy enough, or righteous enough to achieve salvation on our own, much less  impart salvation to someone else; we have enter through the door that Jesus provided.  Peter walked on the water, even for the short time that he was able to do it, by keeping his eyes on Christ.  When he took his eyes off of Christ and started looking at the physical things around him, then he lost his focus, and he began to sink.  When he cried out to Jesus, Jesus reached out and saved him.  Some would have you to believe that this represents the absolute worst of mankind; I am telling you that this represents the absolute best—we just don’t get any better than that.  We do well when we focus on Jesus, when we “keep our eyes on the prize,” as they say, but, ultimately, we allow ourselves to become distracted; when we turn back to Jesus, He saves us from whatever trouble we’ve managed to get ourselves into.  This is humanity at its best.  Strive to do better, but, this is basically who we are.