By: Steve Wilmot
Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s an age-old question that puts God in the crosshairs.
The heart of the question is why a good God allows bad things to happen to people — especially people who are trying to live a good life.
There are no easy answers, but here’s my best attempt at offering some possible reasons. REASON #1 – Bad Things are the Consequences of Sin [Bad Decisions].
A man who commits murder may be given undeserved forgiveness by the loved ones of the person he killed, but he still must stand before a judge and jury, and most likely go to prison. It doesn’t matter the family forgave him. There are still consequences for bad actions.
God created us with free will — the freedom to make our own decisions. But God also made clear that the decisions we make carry consequences — good or bad.
“And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’” (Genesis 2.16-17).
Adam and Eve used their freedom to disobey a clear and direct commandment of God. That decision caused awful circumstances, and not just for them but for every generation that came after them… including ours.
As a result of that bad decision, their knowledge of God was screwed up. Belonging was replaced by rejection. Fear and anxiety took the place of peace. Innocence was traded for shame and guilt. Intimacy in relationships was exchanged with strife and conflict.
It’s easy to be misled into thinking that deciding to do what we know is wrong won’t hurt us. It might happen to other people, but not to us. God says differently.
“Don’t be misled; remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows! If he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life that the Holy Spirit gives him” (Galatians 6.7-8).
This truth is self-evident in agriculture. If you plant corn, you’ll harvest corn not tomatoes. If you plant an apple tree, you’ll reap apples not grapes. Sadly, we don’t carry this universal pattern into our decisions.
When we sow a sinful action, we will not reap good results. When we plant a bad decision, we will not harvest something good in return. We reap what we sow.
This is often the reason bad things happen to people — they make decisions contrary to the revealed will of God in the Bible.
When bad things happen to us or others because of the wrong choices we’ve made, all we tend to see is the hurt and the suffering. We fail to realize there is a cause for it, and the fault doesn’t lie at God’s feet.
REASON #2 – Bad Things Can Develop Character. “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Rom. 8.28).
Most Christians know that verse by heart, but we don’t know what God’s “purpose” for us is — that purpose for which he is working everything, good AND bad, together for good. Read the next verse.
“For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
God’s aim for you and me is to develop the character of Jesus in us. Below the surface and behind the scenes that’s what God is up to in our lives, including bad things that happen to us.
You want to know what the character of Jesus looks like? “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” [Gal. 5.22-23].
We can’t grow in any of these character qualities without experiencing bad stuff. You can’t grow in love unless you’re around people who rub you the wrong way and hurt you and talk about you behind your back and irritate the snot out of you. When you choose to love them like Jesus does anyway, then Jesus’ love is more fully developed in your life.
Joy is the assurance God is in control; the confidence everything is going to be alright. Without going through challenging times and choosing to trust God will get you through them, joy will always be absent from your life.
You can’t mature in patience unless you go through hard times that don’t immediately go away when you pray.
You can’t foster faithfulness without facing difficult times which enable you to demonstrate your commitment to God and not give up no matter what.
When you begin to figure out what God is trying to develop in you during the “bad” things that happen, you’ll quit complaining and blaming and start waiting to see what God is up to.
More next time, but until then may you look and cooperate with what God is trying to do in you through the bad things that happen to you.
———————–
Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.