Why Do Bad Things Happen? (Part 1)
All you have to do is check out your favorite news source. Bad things happen. Every day.
Hurricane Issac brings flooding to people who were just beginning to recover from Hurricane Katrina. When I've seen these people, people living close to my own hometown, being interviewed on the news, my heart goes out to them. They are so tired and sad.
Incidences of innocent people being killed in public places are becoming more and more frequent. Many people are afraid to go to work, school, and especially church. A few years ago one of my students was sitting in my class concealing a machete in his hoodie pocket. I thought we were all just sitting there practicing writing skills. I was wrong. Thankfully no one was hurt, and I can honestly say I feel relatively safe at my school. However public school just hasn't been the same since Columbine.
Friends are diagnosed with cancer, children die, and millions of people live in poverty around the globe.
As a Christian I hear this question a lot, "If God is so good, why do bad things happen?" It isn't an easy question to answer. Honestly I've struggled with it myself over the years, and I have given it a lot of thought and read a lot about it. The answer is a complex one and although I don't think I know everything about it, I have come to some conclusions that have helped me get to the other side of that tough question.
I want to share the conclusions I've come to, but you'll have to be patient. I'm afraid one blog entry isn't going to do it, so I've decided to break it down into three basic parts.
I'll summarize a little for you. The Serpent (Satan) tells Eve that she should eat of the forbidden fruit, the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They have a little conversation in which Satan tells Eve that God has lied to her, "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (vs.5).
Whoa! Did you catch that last part? If you didn't, don't feel bad. I must have read this passage hundreds of times before I got it, and I'm sure I read a book that pointed it out to me although now I can't remember which one. Satan tells Eve that she will be like God, able to differentiate between good and evil. It sounds great. Who doesn't want to be godlike and awesome? There's just one problem. Eve isn't godlike and awesome. She's a human being with human limitations. Unfortunately she doesn't think this through and eats the fruit.
Now Eve has disobeyed God by taking things into her own hands. She's given up the innocence that allows her to trust God fully. She has taken action on her own, thinking that she knows what's best. I don't think there was some mystical chemical in the fruit that changed something about Eve. It wasn't the fruit itself; it was the action. It's what she did.
Guess what? We are Eve's descendants, so we aren't exactly godlike and awesome either, and we keep doing the same thing every day. It's our curse, our legacy from our great-grandmother a million times removed. We look at a situation in the world or in our lives and declare that it's "good" or "bad." How do we know? How do we make that kind of judgment?
There are two answers to that question. 1. It feels bad to me personally, so it is bad (and of course, the reverse: It feels good to me, so it is good.). 2. God says that thing or situation is "good" or "bad," so it is.
If we are living out our lives based on answer number one, dangerous things can happen. Suddenly right and wrong is relative. Something that someone else thinks is right might be wrong to you. We all become free to do exactly what we please. Chaos ensues. Come to think of it, aren't we living this one out already? Isn't that part of the problem?
I'll give you a great example. Hitler. If you read about him, you will see that he really believed in all the things he did. He thought he was right -- all the way. He even thought he had divine protection; that's why he thought so many of the attempts on his life failed. With a few notable exceptions, like Ahmadinejad the president of Iran, most people agree that Hitler was one of the most heinously evil people to ever draw breath.
If you follow the relative line of thinking, you end up on shifting sand. There's nowhere safe to build your life. There is no "just" cause worth fighting for. There's no point except self-indulgence, which quickly becomes sad and dissatisfying.
All this brings us back to answer number two. Please remember at this point that the first part of our original question hinges on the goodness of God. We're asking how things can be "bad" in relationship to a good God. If God is good, all powerful, all knowing, and ever present, the only way we can determine the difference between good and bad in our limited human minds is if he tells us the difference between the two.
Have you ever read the 119th Psalm? It is super long, and the whole entire thing is a song of praise for the blessing we receive through God's word, namely that by reading it we can know right and wrong and be able to do it. This psalm calls us away from the same mistake Eve and Adam made. (Uh, Adam ate too. Plus, he stood by while his wife chatted with the Serpent, and he didn't intervene.)
Why do bad things happen? The first part of our answer is simply that we can't be 100 % sure that those things are bad. In fact, sometimes the most painful things turn out for our good. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose." Some of the most painful things I've experienced, that certainly seemed awfully bad at the time, have brought me to unbelievably new growth in my relationship with God.
Paul talked about that very thing in 2 Corinthians too, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." (4:17) That verse is so important that a series of WWII sermons from C.S. Lewis is named after it. All Paul is saying is that times are tough now, in this life, but all these things will bring us to a stronger, better, unimaginably great place on the other side in Heaven.
Okay, I know this first part can be hard to wrap your mind around, especially if you aren't a Christian. It's hard to accept that only God can truly say what is right and wrong -- that our opinion about the matter is just that, an opinion. You might be sitting there thinking, "This in no way answers our original question fully." You're right. It doesn't. Hang on for Part Two: Free Will.
image credit: http://suckmytrend.com/2012/08/29/hurricane-isaac-hits-new-orleans-on-7th-anniversary-of-katrina/
Hurricane Issac brings flooding to people who were just beginning to recover from Hurricane Katrina. When I've seen these people, people living close to my own hometown, being interviewed on the news, my heart goes out to them. They are so tired and sad.
Incidences of innocent people being killed in public places are becoming more and more frequent. Many people are afraid to go to work, school, and especially church. A few years ago one of my students was sitting in my class concealing a machete in his hoodie pocket. I thought we were all just sitting there practicing writing skills. I was wrong. Thankfully no one was hurt, and I can honestly say I feel relatively safe at my school. However public school just hasn't been the same since Columbine.
Friends are diagnosed with cancer, children die, and millions of people live in poverty around the globe.
As a Christian I hear this question a lot, "If God is so good, why do bad things happen?" It isn't an easy question to answer. Honestly I've struggled with it myself over the years, and I have given it a lot of thought and read a lot about it. The answer is a complex one and although I don't think I know everything about it, I have come to some conclusions that have helped me get to the other side of that tough question.
I want to share the conclusions I've come to, but you'll have to be patient. I'm afraid one blog entry isn't going to do it, so I've decided to break it down into three basic parts.
Part One: Making Judgments
If we want to understand our world, we have to go back to the beginning. If you haven't read Genesis chapter three, or if you haven't read it in a while, read it. Adam and Eve are hanging out in the Garden of Eden when it all goes terribly wrong. We'll be looking at this event in all three parts of our discussion. I'll summarize a little for you. The Serpent (Satan) tells Eve that she should eat of the forbidden fruit, the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They have a little conversation in which Satan tells Eve that God has lied to her, "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (vs.5).
Whoa! Did you catch that last part? If you didn't, don't feel bad. I must have read this passage hundreds of times before I got it, and I'm sure I read a book that pointed it out to me although now I can't remember which one. Satan tells Eve that she will be like God, able to differentiate between good and evil. It sounds great. Who doesn't want to be godlike and awesome? There's just one problem. Eve isn't godlike and awesome. She's a human being with human limitations. Unfortunately she doesn't think this through and eats the fruit.
Now Eve has disobeyed God by taking things into her own hands. She's given up the innocence that allows her to trust God fully. She has taken action on her own, thinking that she knows what's best. I don't think there was some mystical chemical in the fruit that changed something about Eve. It wasn't the fruit itself; it was the action. It's what she did.
Guess what? We are Eve's descendants, so we aren't exactly godlike and awesome either, and we keep doing the same thing every day. It's our curse, our legacy from our great-grandmother a million times removed. We look at a situation in the world or in our lives and declare that it's "good" or "bad." How do we know? How do we make that kind of judgment?
There are two answers to that question. 1. It feels bad to me personally, so it is bad (and of course, the reverse: It feels good to me, so it is good.). 2. God says that thing or situation is "good" or "bad," so it is.
If we are living out our lives based on answer number one, dangerous things can happen. Suddenly right and wrong is relative. Something that someone else thinks is right might be wrong to you. We all become free to do exactly what we please. Chaos ensues. Come to think of it, aren't we living this one out already? Isn't that part of the problem?
I'll give you a great example. Hitler. If you read about him, you will see that he really believed in all the things he did. He thought he was right -- all the way. He even thought he had divine protection; that's why he thought so many of the attempts on his life failed. With a few notable exceptions, like Ahmadinejad the president of Iran, most people agree that Hitler was one of the most heinously evil people to ever draw breath.
If you follow the relative line of thinking, you end up on shifting sand. There's nowhere safe to build your life. There is no "just" cause worth fighting for. There's no point except self-indulgence, which quickly becomes sad and dissatisfying.
All this brings us back to answer number two. Please remember at this point that the first part of our original question hinges on the goodness of God. We're asking how things can be "bad" in relationship to a good God. If God is good, all powerful, all knowing, and ever present, the only way we can determine the difference between good and bad in our limited human minds is if he tells us the difference between the two.
Have you ever read the 119th Psalm? It is super long, and the whole entire thing is a song of praise for the blessing we receive through God's word, namely that by reading it we can know right and wrong and be able to do it. This psalm calls us away from the same mistake Eve and Adam made. (Uh, Adam ate too. Plus, he stood by while his wife chatted with the Serpent, and he didn't intervene.)
Why do bad things happen? The first part of our answer is simply that we can't be 100 % sure that those things are bad. In fact, sometimes the most painful things turn out for our good. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose." Some of the most painful things I've experienced, that certainly seemed awfully bad at the time, have brought me to unbelievably new growth in my relationship with God.
Paul talked about that very thing in 2 Corinthians too, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." (4:17) That verse is so important that a series of WWII sermons from C.S. Lewis is named after it. All Paul is saying is that times are tough now, in this life, but all these things will bring us to a stronger, better, unimaginably great place on the other side in Heaven.
Okay, I know this first part can be hard to wrap your mind around, especially if you aren't a Christian. It's hard to accept that only God can truly say what is right and wrong -- that our opinion about the matter is just that, an opinion. You might be sitting there thinking, "This in no way answers our original question fully." You're right. It doesn't. Hang on for Part Two: Free Will.
image credit: http://suckmytrend.com/2012/08/29/hurricane-isaac-hits-new-orleans-on-7th-anniversary-of-katrina/
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