Why do bad things happen to good people?

Personal Illustration
I questioned God…
But not his goodness

Lament – mentioned a few weeks ago
•Cry out to God
•Remind yourself of his goodness
•Express Trust that he will work things to his glory

This is such a huge question.
•I don’t want you to think that I think that I know it all. I don’t think you know it all.
•No one knows it all and no one likes a know it all
•What is true is that we don’t know what we don’t know
•But we have to come to terms with and develop a framework that enables me to grasp the big picture of this question.
•We need to have a way to accept what
oWe cannot change and
oChange what we can change and
oNot blame God for either!

Why?
All God’s Children Got Problems
Perspective
•My problem is here and now
•And big and hairy and horrible
•But is it the worst thing ever?
•The worst thing in the world?
•The worst thing that’s ever happened to me?
•Is this a 1st world problem?
oDie of infection?
oMalnutrition?
oExposure?
oViolence?

Please hear me – I’m not minimizing your problem
I’m not minimizing your hurt
What I’m trying to do is to
Help inoculate you from crashing your faith on the rocks of disappointment
And
Help you come close to a God who cares deeply for you in your hurts

Should I be exempt from all problems?
IS that the bargain I’ve struck with God?
· I’ll serve and love you if everything is easy & perfect in my life?
· If you heal my sister?
· If you take my problem away?
· If you give me what I want?
· When I want it?
· How I want it?

Does God heal?
Unequivocally Yes!

Frame our thinking like this:
1. our concept of God,
2. our understanding of the universe,
3. the nature of humanity,
4. the power and purpose of God and the sufficiency of grace.

What is your concept of God?
· One thing to think about is why we even have a standard of what is good
· When things are good how do we know it?
· When our sense of justice is violated and we say
-That’s not right!
-That shouldn’t have happened to me – him – them!

God is Good

God is the standard of good –
That’s part of his image in all of us – why we have sense of justice at all
Along with self-awareness, self-determination, and other qualities
· A sense of right and wrong
· A sense of how the world should work
· A sense of fair – fairness
· A conscience

This idea of Justice is actually an argument for the existence of God!
How would you know goodness or badness without a standard provided by God?


But still…

If God can stop evil and he loves us and he knows about the evil
Why is there evil?

What do you think the implication is when people say:
God has a plan . . .

When we talk about evil and suffering we have to begin with a just concept of God.
· This is subtle but huge –
· Like throwing shade on God…
o He could have intervened but didn’t so he’s
§ Not good?
§ Not totally good?
§ Not good for me?
o He helped her and answered her prayer –
§ He likes her more
§ She’s better than me

Exactly what the enemy did with Eve in the garden
· “Did God really say?”
· Is God really for you?
· Does God really want the best for you?
· We begin to question God’s goodness
· We begin to question God’s good intentions for us and the world he created
· We begin to blame him for all the bad in the world

Too often people’s concept of God borders on the demonic.
· God is depicted as vengeful, jealous, and manipulative,
· Natural disasters called “acts of God”
· willing to do anything to get our attention even things that if done by others would be morally questionable.
· This kind of God sends suffering, pain, cancer, heart attacks, tornadoes, disease, car crashes, AIDS and babies born with deformed hearts.
· This is a God to be feared.

“We’d put a person in jail for the kind of things people attribute to God,
when saying after a tragedy or loss, ‘It must be the will of God.’”

Does your God deliberately send suffering and pain upon the world?
When we picture God in this way, I believe we have a distorted and unjust concept of God’s nature.

Can we proclaim that “God is good and God is great”
if we believe that God willfully sends evil, calamity, and suffering upon us?

God does use these things for his glory – turning them into goodness
And when people say that life’s calamities are God’s way of getting our attention….I say:
“Calamities may indeed turn our attention to God.

You know what follows that declaration about God?

Truth is, life is full of hurt and suffering….
most of it caused by us and other human beings . . . or by natural causes.

But from God?
Not in my mind

What is your concept of God?

In Christ, we don’t see a God who is vengeful, demonic, hateful, or manipulative.
Rather, God reveals himself in Christ as a God of love, of grace, whose nature is compassion, forgiving, redeeming.

From Jesus we see that God is like a parent who cares for their children.
· It is a parental model where love is the bottom line.
· The cross on Good Friday is the evidence of God’s heart.
· God’s love is so enormous that sacrifice describes his love.

We see the true picture of God by looking into the eyes and heart of Jesus Christ.

Second, we need an accurate concept of the universe.
One of God’s great gifts to us is a universe where natural laws can be observed and therefore
predicted.

Predictable cause and effect rules play out – and as one scientist says:
“The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we don’t have any difficulty building a space ship, sending a person to the moon and we can time the landing with the precision of a fraction of a second.”

· Gravity
· Water freezes at 32 degrees
· Weights, measure, time

So you and I learn to live in cooperation with these laws of our universe.
· Hot stove is hot
· Knives cut
· Playing on the freeway is dangerous
· We cooperate with these established laws

In God’s world, natural laws are impartial.

When the natural laws are operating, devastation may occur to a city or people who are in
the path of a tornado, or hurricane, or raging river or wildfire.

Natural laws are impartial. A tsunami does not play favorites with Hindus or Christians, Japanese or Americans.

But how we use our understanding of natural laws is a value judgment...such as using nuclear energy to light up Los Angeles or build a bomb that will destroy it.

Which leads us into a third piece of the framework:
We need an honest assessment of the nature of human beings.
Truth is
· We are flawed, sinful and selfish;
· Look at any toddler – No! Mine!
· we hurt others, we hurt ourselves, and we make poor choices.
· And other people hurt us, and make choices that often negatively affect us.

Most of the evil in the world is caused by people; and
Much of the evil we experience could be prevented by human choices and different priorities.

Do you think it is God’s will and hope that we love and take care of each other?
But our choices often reflect a fallen and flawed price tag.

Fourth: What is the purpose and power of God.
The question behind “Why bad things happen to good people,” is often,
“If God is good, and if God is all powerful, why then does God not prevent evil?”

It seems to me that God has set some limits upon God’s powers . . .
· To say God can do something does not mean he does that thing

The world is a school of human and spiritual learning, rather than a place of comfort.

But these limits I believe are somehow connected to God’s purpose and
God’s purpose is to redeem mankind
For us to love God, to love each other.

True love requires freedom
· Freedom has consequences – good and bad
· Without freedom and human choices there is no potential for human growth and love.

Why did he create the world like he did?
· Why not a world where we were indestructible until we were 80?
o We’d be reckless and uncaring –
o consequences are a good teacher when we let them apply
· One of the keys to good parenting is letting children experience the consequences of their choices.

We learn far more from failure than from success
· A baby learning to walk
· Riding a bike

Even pain has a purpose –
· We learn what not to do and touch and how hard or soft or fast we can go
· Great book by a doctor who studied leoprosy –
· One of the first things to go is the sense of pain in the extremities
· People become careless and don’t notice cuts and then infections and then real damage

What if he just lessened the evil?
Then we’d just have a different standard of what was the worst thing – and we’d ask the question again.

I guess God could have created a perfect world, with perfect people, with no illness, evil or flaws.
God seems more interested in love than perfection.
· Robots cannot love.
· God, in creating this place and us, ran the risk of a world’s pain and suffering…
· but with hopes that we would learn to love.

Lastly, God’s grace is sufficient.
No one avoids suffering, All God’s children have problems
· not God’s most faithful,
· not the most innocent,
· not even good people with the purest of hearts and motives.
· Not the Disciples
· Not Paul
· Not Jesus

Jesus even promised suffering . . .

Good people don’t expect to suffer

Some of this misconception comes from the Jewish part of our Bible
· Reads at times like Karma
· You do good and good will happen
· Is that true in general – yes – for sure – you work hard you’ll achieve
· Follow God’s laws and instructions and life will be good
· Love – Give – be unselfish –
· But when specific evil happens we feel entitled or exempt

Some of this is a misconception from the name it claim it faith movement
· Christianity is about financial prosperity
· But Jesus taught His disciples “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24).
· It was not a call to come and prosper but rather the opposite- a call to come and suffer.
· Wealth isn’t the goal – Jesus is the goal
· If he’s blessed you with wealth it’s for you to build his Kingdom

The power of faith is when we experience God’s assurance that even in the midst of our sufferings and affliction, God is with us.
Paul once asked God to remove his “thorn in his flesh”

That is the power of God and the power of faith.
· Often God’s grace is manifested in and through people.
· So the doctors break the news that it’s malignant and there nothing anyone can do.
o But that is not true. There is something we can do.
o We can show up. We can be there. We can love.
o We can be Christ to those who need us.
· And when you and I are in that low place of struggle and pain, Christ shows up for us as well.

Card’s dealt
Box of chocolates
Not what happens to you but what happens in you

Does God allowing something mean he causes that thing to happen – even just a little?
What about a parent that “allows” their child to borrow the car . . .
and then the child wreaks the car because they were negligent?
· Who’s “fault” is that?
Could the parent have taught them to drive better?
· Be more cautious?
· Driven ahead and controlled the child’s speed?
· Set up a computer device on the car that put a governor on the speed?

How controlling would God have to be to prevent all “evil” and still give you free will?
· We live as if we have choices in everything.
· But then we don’t want to be responsible for them

What about natural evil?
If we believe the account in Scripture – The world is fallen too

· And awaiting redemption like we are
· The world is amazing, complex and full of wonder but it is also winding down
· We can see it going from a state of complex to less complex
· Entropy
· Like your bedroom – you keep cleaning it and it keeps piling up clothes

Science confirms that our Universe seems to be slowing down and expanding
· As if it started at some point and will end
· Big Bang – God said it and it banged

So the world isn’t in the perfect state that God intended and our sin set that in motion

That’s why there’s death and decay
It’s the current cycle of life
Producers – plants – animals – they die and smaller animals eat them and replenish the earth’s nutrients

We don’t always know why God allows a thing to happen but
· We know he’s good
· He can be trusted
and
We know why we don’t know
· He’s infinite and we’re finite –
· He sees all of this world – time – history – purpose –
· We may not know why a specific event tragedy happened but we know in general why

But we do Know God takes every situation and makes it good if we let him!

And we learn so much more through hardship!!
James – count it all joy when you go through various trials
· Sports teams practice
· Weight lifters tear muscle so it grows back stronger
· Military & Police train so they can perform in high stress situations!

Joseph – what you meant for evil – God used for good to save many lives
· Deeper stronger character
· You push farther and can do more
· We are motivated to find solutions and fixes and invent – necessity is the mother of invention
· Perspective
· Wounded healers
· Learning
· Make the world better

For me, when I put together these pieces:
• A just picture of God
• An accurate understanding of the universe
• An honest assessment of the nature of human beings
• God’s power and purpose
• See the sufficiency of grace available to us

“God is great and God is good.”