The Problem of Suffering

These questions have been around as long as language has. Throughout scripture and history as a whole, we see similar questions come up. I want to tee up this mini-series with an intro here to get a couple house-keeping things taken care of.

First

I know these conversations can be a sensitive topic for people, especially if you've gone though trauma or other extreme difficulties. My statements on this reflect my personal views based on what I've gone through and how I apply what the Scriptures teach to what I experience in the world. I hope they help as you wrestle with your doubts or anger about whatever suffering you've faced in the past or are going through now.

My wife and I have been through 3 miscarriages, and on the last one, she almost bled out and died. When I was younger, I was in a foreign country and was held at gunpoint and told I'm going to be killed, and I've been 1000 miles away while my family was in a terrible car accident that could've killed them. I know many people have more traumatizing moments in their lives, and I'm not telling you these things to compare life's difficulties, but rather to show that I've had some "bad things" happen to me and I tend to think of myself as a pretty "morally good" person.

Second

How you define "good" and "bad" will determine much of your views on these topics.

There's what I'll call the "moral" good and bad, which is basically just karma, but with a different name. You do more good then bad stuff, and you're a "good person". There's some universally unspoken score sheet that rates what you do and how it compares to other stuff you do. Most people won't admit this view of being a good/bad person, but when pressed, it basically boils down to this.

Then there's the Biblical "good" and "bad", which basically comes down to Romans 3:23 - all have sinned and fallen short. In looking at that verse, learning about justification/Jesus' sacrifice on the cross/etc, it boils down to that all of us are sinners (ie - bad), but we're freed from that sin by the mercy of Jesus' sacrificial payment.

So I'll be using those terms "moral" and "biblical" to differentiate a bit where I can as we talk about this.

That is a VERY simplified way of looking at "good" or "bad", so those last 40-ish seconds are not intended to be a stand-alone view of sin/redemption/good/bad.=

Last thing I want to look at here is the focus of each question

Why do bad things happen to good people looks at a persons character as the trigger for good or bad

And “why does a good God allow bad to happen” looks at God’s character as the trigger

That distinction is important to make sure we're actually answering the question being asked.

Next we'll look at the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

The Problem of Suffering - Part 2

Why do bad things happen to good people

Part 2 of the problem of suffering

this question looks at a persons character as the trigger for good or bad

Another way to say this is:

If I’m a generally good person, why do bad things happen to me?

And if there’s people that are generally bad, why do good things happen to them?

I think there's 2 sides to this answer. The first is easier in my mind.

Free Will

People make choices to do things. Sometimes the choices are on purpose and sometimes the choices are made as a reaction to something else. At times, their choices interfere with other people's lives. For example, when I played soccer in high school, if anyone on the team was late, we all had to run laps. So one person's choice impacted everyone else on the team. Regardless of the reason they were late, that person's actions caused problems for others.

This works on the positive side too. You're going through starbucks drive-thru and the person in front of you decides to pay for your order. Nothing made them do that, they made a choice to do that, and now you got a free drink. Their choice had a positive impact on you.

I KNOW that's a very simple explanation, but you can extrapolate it to a larger scale as well.

Drunk drivers, I don't think most of them WANT to get in accidents and hurt people, but their poor choices could lead to injury, death, and suffering of a lot of other people.

The other side of this answer is that sometimes stuff just happens

The universe has a law of cause and effect, every action has a reaction, whether intentional or not.

My dad was driving a rental truck a while back, during the winter here in NY, and he drove under a bridge. As he went under the bridge, a massive plow truck drover over the bridge, clearing the bridge of snow. That snow flew over the side of the bridge and landed on the windshield of the rental and shattered it. My dad had to drive the rest of the way with no windshield in freezing temperatures. The plow truck wasn't targeting my dad, and it wasn't even trying to cause damage, it's just the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sometimes this stuff is caused by negligence, like a car accident caused by someone not paying attention to the road, but sometimes it's just a thing that happens.

So to look at your "Moral" good or bad standing as the trigger for if good or bad things happens to you doesn't really help. No one else has the same "cosmic scorecard" that you do about whether you're good or bad, and most people likely aren't even TRYING to do "bad things" to "good people".

I think the question of "why do bad things happen to good people" is used as a way to look for someone to blame. Sure there are people out there who want to hurt people and mistreat people, but most of the things we ask this question about are likely not caused by them. They're caused as a consequence of someone else's actions, or because we live in a problematic world, which I'll talk more about in the next part.

The Problem of Suffering - Part 3

Why does a good God let bad things happen?

If you view God as that old man in the sky, looking to smite you whenever you mess up, or as a general, superfluous, non-personal deity, we're already at an impasse in discussing this topic.

But! if you agree that God is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, Savior of mankind, and that He loves His creation, but is grieved by all the things that we do that separate us from Him, then we can keep moving forward.

Could God stop all bad things. Yes. but let's walk through what that would look like if He did.

What should happen to the corrupt CEO's and politicians?

or the people who embezzle millions of dollars

Maybe those are too easy to answer,

what about the person who steals money from a friend to buy drugs or alcohol to fuel his addiction?

what about the kid who steals some candy from the little convenience store on the corner?

Let's look at a different case

what should happen to the leadership of countries that commit genocides?

how about remorseless murderers?

what about the person that hates their coworker and goes out of their way to make their life hell?

what about the neighbor who always gossips about what everyone else is doing and starts nasty rumors because they can't help it?

Where would it stop?

If you put a limit anywhere in those examples or any others, then you're saying certain things are truly "bad" and should be stopped while others aren't that big of a deal. And why would you get to decide that? What if my limit for what bad should be stopped is more or less restrictive then yours? Who would get to decide?

If you say God should decide what bad things get stopped, then you've already answered the question, because He gave us FULL Free will. People can choose to do things as good or bad as they want to, and consequences happen because of those choices.

Or maybe you say that all "bad" things should go away?

As said before, if you or I determine what "bad" is, we may have different views. But let's say we go with the Biblical "bad" definition, sin. Anything that separates us from God.

Well if God was to stop all of that, then we'd only be able to "choose" to do biblical good, which means it's not a choice. That would strip us of our free will.

to hyper-simplify this thought,

if I ask my wife, "where do you want to go for dinner?" - that's a fully open-ended question.

but if I add a limiter, "where do you want to go for dinner, I want to eat pizza", I've severely limited the options. Now I don't really mean "Where do you want to go for dinner?" but rather, "What pizza place shoudl we go to for dinner". 2 VERY different questions.

God created us with fully open-ended free will. That leads to good AND bad consequences of the choices that we make.

(Deut 30:19-20a)

So when bad things happen, God's not stamping his approval on what's happening, rather He's letting the free will that each of us have play out fully, otherwise we wouldn't have true free will.

Now perhaps you're asking about natural disasters

"those aren't caused by someone's free will". I'd say you're right, they're caused by millenia of humanity's free will as a whole.

The argument could be made that mistreatment of earth and it's resources has led to increase in natural disasters, but even if we chose to ignore that argument, entropy still exists.

Any system that is not maintained and sustained, suffers from entropy, even to as grand a scale as the earth and universe. From formed to free, from ordered to disordered.

When God created the universe, He was the sustainer.

Gen 1:31-2:2

Then we see instances of God's removing his sustaining hand

because of humanity's free will.

Adam and Eve being sent out of the garden in Eden and the earth being cursed (Gen 3:17b-19, 23)

the waters above and the waters below that were separated during creation (Gen 1:6-8) are recombined during the flood (Gen 7:11)

So if the ordering hand, the maintainer of all that exists is removed, entropy starts to set in.

(John 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Heb 1:2-3, Col 1:15-17)

Now you may point out exceptions, even the Bible has them, like when the sun didn't set for a day, or other things like that, but that doesn't change the overall trajectory of what i'm talking about.

So as entropy sets in, the creation starts to function less and less like it's original intent, creation being from humans all the way up to and including nature itself.

So "natural" disasters, whether caused directly by humanitys neglect of the earth, or due to the sin and us living in a broken world are related to free will.

Closing

Next time you find yourself thinking, “Why is God letting this happen” hopefully this helps you look at it a different way.

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