When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Why do bad things happen to good people? Surely this is a
question all of us ask from time to time. Some of Jesus'
listeners asked Him the same question. (Luke 13: 1-9). They
brought up the recent news about some Galileans who had been
cruelly offered as human sacrifices by Pilate; and about the
tower that had fallen in one of the cities in which 18 innocent
bystanders had been killed; and they wanted to know if these
people's tragic deaths were due to their sins.
Jesus had already dealt with this question when confronted with
a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples wanted to
know if it was his sin or his parent's sin that was responsible
for his condition. Jesus consistently condemned the notion that
human tragedy is punishment for sin.
In His sermon on the mount, Jesus established the principle that
God makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good; and sends
rain of the just and the unjust. In other words God does not
reward us according to our virtues because we do not have any
virtues. Scripture makes it clear that "all of our goodness is
as but filthy fags in the sight of God." So, it would seem that
God does not reward us according to any virtues. Neither does He
punish us according to our sins.
Let me hasten to add that I believe God does discipline His
children because He loves us. But remember, God's discipline is
always forward looking and is designed to bring us back and keep
us in fellowship with Christ. Punishment, on the other hand,
looks backward, and repays an offender in proportion to the law
he has broken. All punishment of this nature that was due our
sins was borne once for all by Jesus on the cross. If Jesus paid
the punishment for our sins (past, present and future) on the
cross, it would be redundant for God to punish us again
for sins His Son suffered the cross in payment for.
So now, if God doesn't reward us for our virtues or punish us
for our transgressions - then it seems reasonable to infer that
there are some things in this world that happen as a consequence
of the physical laws which govern the universe and man's
inhumanity to man. And sometimes they happen to those we
consider to be "good" people. Church buses loaded with
Christians get swept into the river. A young girl on her way to
Bible study gets fatally shot. Christians die aboard a plane
that explodes on their way home from a funeral. Some things in
life we cannot control.
I might add in passing that I get a little disturbed when I hear
people say of victims, he or she was at the wrong place at the
wrong time. There is something inherent in this statement that
subtly suggest the victims made a bad decision by being where
they were at the time they were there. In my mind, they were at
the right place at the right time but unfortunately, they
encountered the dark side of life.
But I digress.
Jesus did not want His interrogators to get bogged down with
this question about why bad things happen to good people. He
wanted them to understand their responsibilities for making good
things happen. He tried to get them to see that we are better
off not concentrating so much on those areas over which we have
no control. Rather, focus our concern with those things which we
can control.
Some folks sit around and talk pitifully about what life has
done to them. Jesus says to them and to all of us that on the
Day of Judgment we will not be asked what life did to us but
what did we do with life. We are constantly asking God to solve
the world's problems and God is asking us to do the same thing.
We need the spirit that Winston Churchill embodied so memorably.
As Great Britain was fighting for its life during World War II,
before we got involved, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt
stating: send us the tools and we will finish the job (British
Library of Information).
Sometimes I think this ought to be our approach to prayer.
Rather than always praying for peace in the world, every now and
then we need to pray that God would make us peacemakers. Rather
than begging God for more, we need to pray that He shows us
someone who needs our assistance. Rather than always praying
that God heals someone, pray that God use us as instruments of
His healing powers; give me the tools Lord and I'll do the job.
Why do bad things happen to good people? That's a tough one. But
here's one that is even tougher. Are you reaching out in love to
the good people or their families that bad things happened to?