Why Does God allow bad things to happen?

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Why do we resonate so much with this poem? Because there is something inside of us that looks around at the sheer amount of injustice, disease and death and we cry out “This should not be.”

And some people, especially in parts of the world where Christianity has been the dominant faith, see all that and believe that God doesn’t exist.

They believe that the presence of evil in the world means that either God is impotent to stop it, unwilling to stop it, or simply doesn’t exist and therefore, he is not worthy for us to worship him.

Series Intro and sermon title - Why does God allow Bad things to happen

Last week, we looked at the question of whether you HAVE to forgive someone to be forgiven by God and I said that for some people, the question is either an intellectual curiosity or an emotional reality. The same is true of this question.

Some people ask this question so they can wrap their brains around the interplay of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will or between God’s goodness and his omnipotence. Others ask this question because their heart is broken from experiencing some evil in the world personally.

If you are in the latter group, then first, I want to say that I am empathetically so sorry that you are going through what you are going through. And if your heart is crying out for an answer to the question “Why” then I fear my teaching today may not satisfy you. Rarely is a rational answer a balm to a broken heart.

And as a word to those who know people whose hearts are broken and they are asking this question - do not try to give a rational answer to an emotional question. Learn to simply sit with them, validate their cries and if they insult God and charge Him with wrongdoing, do not try to defend God. He doesn’t need you to defend him and all it does is pit you against your friend when they need you to be for them.

But the question of why God allows evil and suffering to happen DOES have an answer. So, if you are someone wondering about this question from a place of intellectual curiosity, or, as a follower of Jesus, you want to be able to gently and lovingly answer the question when it is asked of you, then hopefully, today will be helpful.

So what we are going to do is break down the problem and establish some common definitions and foundational truths so that we are all working from the same place.

Breaking down the question of How God can allow suffering and evil, we find four propositional truths: 1) God exists, 2) God is all-good, 3) God is all-powerful, 4) Evil exists.

Now, I believe that Scripture affirms all four propositions:

Genesis 1:1 (NLT)

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Psalm 145:9 (NLT)

9 The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all his creation.

Revelation 19:6 (NLT)

6 Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder: “Praise the Lord! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Romans 12:21 (NLT)

21 Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.

But for most people who struggle with our question look at these four propositions and say that if you affirm any three, then, logically, you must deny the fourth. // Explain

(God exists, God is all-good, God is all-powerful, Evil exists)

But within the Christian faith, we don’t actually see a logical contradiction between the four propositions. We affirm them all as true and that when we remove the ambiguity of what we are talking about, the solution becomes apparent. So let’s look at those propositions

God Exists

Since the argument is that since evil exists either God does not or he is not either good or omnipotent the first thing we need to agree on is who is God.

Let’s do two things to establish some common ground. First, since one cannot either scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God, let us assume that God exists.

Second, let us define God, not as our own fanciful imaginations of a supreme being, but as the one revealed in the Christian Bible, so that we can have a common understanding of who we are talking about.

The first proposition is that God exists. Let’s move on now to the second proposition:

God is Good

One of the propositional truths that we hold is that God is good. But what do we mean by “good?”

Goodness, in the Scriptural sense of the term, includes benevolence, love, mercy, and grace. - Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology.

God’s goodness is His benevolent kindness displayed to us. Not only does scripture describe God as loving, it also shows us how loving he is. He doesn’t just love us with words, but with actions.

There are infinite ways that God has shown us and continues to show us his love, but the greatest of these was when he became human, lived sinlessly and yet died for my sins and your sins upon the cross, and through his resurrection he defeated death and gave us the gift of eternal life in the kingdom of God for those who would believe in Jesus.

But because of the cultural domination that Christianity has been in the West, people have taken the base understanding of God and then made up their own definitions of God’s love means.

So, let’s take a moment and look at a couple things God’s love does NOT mean:

God’s love does not mean he accepts everything we do. God still takes sin seriously and although through our faith in Jesus we have been forgiven of all our sin, God is using circumstances in our world to transform our character to become more like Jesus. He loves us and because of his love, he wants us to grow.

God’s love does not mean that we are get to have a pain-free life - Jesus said the opposite actually.

John 16:33 (NLT)

33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Suffering is simply a part of the world that we experience. And even though one day God will change it all and there will be no more suffering and pain, we have to live in the here and now where evil often flourishes and suffering affects all of us.

Sometimes, when we experience pain and suffering, God’s love becomes obscured to us. But just because we can’t see it in that season, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. And in that place is where faith kicks in.

1 John 4:16 (NLT)

16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

The first proposition is God exists and the second is that God is good (and by extension loving).

The third proposition that we need to look at is…

God is All-Powerful

In case you haven’t come across it, the word for all powerful is omnipotent and we use it to describe God.

Psalm 147:5 (NLT)

5 How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension!

So, if God is all-powerful, like our scriptures declare, then why didn’t he create a a world without sin and evil? The answer is he did. As Peter Kreeft writes, “Evil’s source is not God’s power but man’s freedom. Then why didn’t God create a world without human freedom? Because that would have been a world without humans, a world without hate but also without love. Love too proceeds only from free will.”

What we mean when we talk about God’s omnipotence is that he has the power to do anything that is not in contradiction to his character or to the laws by which he operates.

What does that mean? While God can and does do nature-bending miracles like parting the Red Sea, walking on water, raising the dead and healing the sick, there are some things God can’t do.

God is incapable of hating you because he is love. God cannot ignore sin, because he is perfectly just. God cannot do evil because he is, inherently, perfectly good. God cannot override your free will because he already defined humans as free agents. So, although God is omnipotent, there are some things that he cannot do.

God exists, God is perfectly good (and loving), and God is omnipotent. Now we come to our final proposition…

Evil Exists

Augustine was a theologian and philosopher who lived from 354 AD to 430 AD. When he was wrestling with this same question we are, he realized that it was the definition of evil that was at the core of the problem. He articulated that evil isn’t a thing that God creates. He said, “Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil.” (Augustine, City of God). What he means is that evil is the absence of good - it’s what’s left when good is removed. Therefore, God is not the author of evil or the source of suffering.

1 John 1:5 (NLT)

5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.

But when people go outside of God’s good will, evil occurs. That’s the story of Genesis - God made everything perfectly good but when we rebelled against God’s command, we introduced two types of evil into our world.

Moral Evil - this is the sin we do that directly affects us and others.

People driving drunk or high and causing accidents that kill others / people robbing and stealing for their own benefit / people having affairs / people starting and perpetuating wars / people enslaving and oppressing other people / people choosing profits over the environment and contaminating our planet / people wearing Crocs [SHOW PICTURE].

As a people, although we were created good and although the world was perfectly good at some point, we are now the cause of the majority of the evil in the world.

In addition to the moral evil we experience as exercised by our collective human free will, we also experience…

Natural Evil - when Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, it fundamentally changed the planet and the way we experience the natural world. Childbirth became painful, patriarchy appeared, and the earth grew thorns and thistles instead of food to eat, making work difficult and painful. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes

Romans 8:20–21 (NLT)

20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.

The natural disasters we experience today are not a result of our current sin, but are a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve that corrupted nature and introduced natural evil into our world.

Again I say, this is not the fault of God. He does not create natural disasters to hurt people. They are a result of humanity letting evil into the world and corrupting the planet.

So, let’s put this all together.

Some people really struggle to hold all four of these propositional truths together. They can’t believe that if God is good and loving AND all-powerful that evil could exist and that people could suffer.

But these statements are not mutually exclusive. They are all true. God exists and he is perfectly good and all-powerful. And evil exists.

But God is not the author of evil. He is the one who is breaks the power of sin and death! He is the one wipes away every tear of sorrow and suffering.

God has already set in motion his plan to end suffering and pain. It started with him taking all the sin of the world upon himself and dying for us on a cross and it will end when he comes back to set the world right again.

We struggle because we are in the “in-between” time now where God does allow suffering to exist even though the promise of the future without it is before us.

So, why does God allow suffering and evil? He is waiting

2 Peter 3:9 (NLT)

9 The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.

What is God doing while we suffer?

1. He is sanctifying us.

Romans 8:28–29 (NLT)

28 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. 29 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.

Abby was upset when the babies had to get their shots.

2. He is weeping with us.

John 11:35 (NLT)

35 Then Jesus wept.

Jesus knows the pain we experience. He suffered.

3. He is redeeming the pain

2 Corinthians 1:4 (NLT)

4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

Conclusion

If God exists and he is both perfectly good and omnipotent, then why does evil exist? It exists because we sin and disobey God and cause the suffering of others.

Why does he allow it to happen? Why doesn’t he stop it? One day, he will. One day, God will cry out “ENOUGH” and will end suffering on earth, triggering the final judgment of man and the manifestation of the kingdom of God in it’s full, redeemed glory, where there is no sin, no pain, no suffering and no grieving.

Until then, God is waiting, allowing us to experience the consequences of our sin, giving us time to repent and turn in faith to him because he doesn’t want anyone to be destroyed, but for all to come to a saving faith in Jesus.

Pray.