Many people ask the question, “why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? If God is all-loving, and all-powerful, and all-good, why does He allow so much evil and conflict in our lives and in our world? If God really is all-loving and all-powerful, then He wouldn’t allow bad things to happen like this.”
One main thing I want to point out in the difficult coexistence of God and suffering is this: We are assuming that we, by default, deserve His catering to our protection, comfort, security, and peace….or that we can earn it because of our good/bad deeds. [But are we ‘good’? What makes us ‘good’ before God? We will come back to this.]
1. A main, yet subtle premise in question of “why does God allow bad things to happen to good people” is the tendency to emphasize God’s love and goodness while neglecting His justice. We all agree that God is 100% loving, 100% good, and 100% just. But here is the thing: because He is completely good, He is completely just as well. And to say it from another angle, He is completely good because He is completely just.
Indeed, His goodness and justice are one in the same. They define one another, and goodness and love cannot exist apart from justice. Do love and injustice, or good and injustice work perfectly together in God-like holiness? Surely not. Because God is completely loving and completely good, He is also completely just.
But from the way this question is asked, it is opting to emphasize God’s love and goodness at the expense of His justice. In this scenario, we are detaching God’s essential qualities from each other, and are trying to configure a ‘what-we-think-is-good’ kind of God.
And usually, what makes sense to us is a relationship with God that is ‘works based’ – meaning, we believe that good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people in light of who follows God’s righteous decrees more closely; and then God rewards and punishes in accordance to our deeds. It seems logical to us, so we live and think and act according to it. (But just because it seems logical does not mean it is true. In fact, it might seem logical because our sin nature cripples our ability to grasp God’s profound meaning and implications of His grace.)
Which leads me to my second point:
2. The question, “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”, is underlined with the assumption that some people are good and some people are bad. (This results from believing in a works-based relationship with God). And this perception says that our works before God make us good or bad, deserving or undeserving before Him — and this determines whether good or bad things happen to us.
But here’s the thing: if our standing with God was based on our works and performance before God, then we would be better than others, and could deem ourselves rightly so. And what does this produce? Self-righteousness and judgmentalism, which is not good nor pleasing to God. Back to square one then: we are in need of a works-based record that needs to be done for us, so that our boast is not in ourselves, but in God. That’s what creates humility and a transformed heart that loves God. We boast in Christ’s work for us, and not in our works to God.
In Christ, God’s justice to us is not measured to us in accordance to what we have done, but what Christ has done for us. Now, in Christ, God’s justice to us is good, hopeful, joyful, and anticipating of what is to come. Why? because God sees us connected and unified to Christ, who displayed perfect obedience in love for God. Therefore, because we are connected to Christ by believing the Gospel, we receive Christ’s justice–heirs unto God in fellowship for eternity–and thankfully not the justice we deserve.
But God’s justice to us outside of Christ’s work for us is wrath, and everything bad. In fact, how could we expect that God owes us when our sin blasphemes a cosmological treason against God?
The fact is, we are not good. And there is nothing we can do in our own works/deeds to be ‘good’ before God. Why? because sin stained us from birth, and we live out its genetic spiritual encoding naturally. But God came and revived our spiritually dead lives by connecting to us to the life-giving pulse of Christ’s life, which was perfect in obedience and love.
Christ is our goodness, and Christ was the only good person who had bad things happen to him. And bad things or harsh circumstances did not come to him because he had done wrong; and none of it was outside God’s control. Christ willingly volunteered to drink the cup of God’s wrath – the wrath that was justly and rightly earned by our sinful deeds. Why did Jesus do that? because His love compelled him to do whatever it took to reconcile us to God – even to absorb God’s torrentially just wrath so that we may be found holy before God and truly live — enjoying communion with the Father during the 80 or so years here, and in the 80 trillion years and more in eternity. We were made for that.
Therefore, the question, “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” stems from a false understanding of our standing before God in sin and in grace, the value of our deeds, the value of Christ’s deeds, and His work on our behalf.
As R.C. Sproul says, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered for it.”
