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.