“WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?”
“If God is all powerful and he loves us, then why do so many bad things happen? How could a good God allow that?”
We do not answer for God. He does not need anyone like me or you to defend him. But we should remember this: the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world was the death of Jesus Christ. And God allowed that to happen.
If God were going to stop bad things from happening, why didn’t he stop that? Because, we could not be saved without it. “Where is God when bad things happen?” The same place he was when his Son died.
If God could watch his Son die and not stop it, then maybe he has good reasons for not stopping all the bad things.
When we blame God for the bad things that happen, we should be blaming the devil. We should be aware that he is a destroyer and a deceiver. And he wants us to think negatively about God. To believe that God is bad instead of good. But instead of realizing that the devil is real, and that the world follows after him, people choose instead to question the character of God.
In the Garden of Eden, the devil tricked Adam and Eve into sinning by getting them to question the goodness of God. “God is trying to keep you from having your eyes opened. God is not good. God cannot be trusted.” It is the same approach he has been taking ever since. He lies about God.
And the real question is not why do bad things happen to good people? The question is, why do good things happen to bad people?
Good things happen to everybody on earth every single day. They are allowed to breathe God’s air and live in his world. Everything good comes from God. And we are not good. We are bad. Yet good things happen to us.
If we are going to talk about reality, then there has only been one truly good person who ever lived. Jesus. Everyone else is a sinner. Everyone else deserves the wrath of God because of our rebellion against him. Whether we understand that or not, we know it is true. Deep down, we all know that we have not treated God right.
We speak of things that God does as not being “fair.” But we do not want what is fair. Fair would be all of us being condemned to hell. Fair would be Jesus going free and we paying for our own sins. It is not fair that a perfect man died to save us.
And another interesting thing is that we never ask, “Why did bad things happen to Jesus?” We never get upset that Jesus, a truly good man, was abused and mistreated and murdered. That doesn’t seem to bother us. In fact, we are glad that that happened. Because that is how we are saved.
So it doesn’t really bother us that “bad things happen to good people.” What bothers us is that God allows things that we don’t like. That we don’t think should happen. We think we know more about how to run the world than God does.
Why do we care more about the bad things that happen to people today than we do about the bad things that happened to Jesus? Of course we should care anytime anyone suffers. The hurt and pain in this world should bother us. But we should blame sin and the devil. We should not blame God.
And nothing should bother us as much as the fact that Jesus was murdered for our sins. It was our sins that caused that to happen. That should bother us more than anything.
This does not answer all of the questions. And it certainly does not minimize anyone’s pain. It is just a reminder that if we would appreciate what Jesus has done, we would not question God the way that we do.
The Bible talks a lot about faith. God has proven that he is good in more ways than we could mention. And he has proven his love for us through the death of his Son. That should be enough for us to trust him.
Dewayne Dunaway
