Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

HOOK

Her name was Ashly. When I first met her, she was a middle schooler in the youth ministry. Her life had not been easy up to this point. Parents had been incarcerated, so she lived with her grandparents. She was the oldest of 5 kids, so she was required to take on caregiving duties so some of her younger siblings. She was extremely bright, outgoing, and had a huge personality.

For years, we would have really great conversations as she tried to grasp what it meant to believe in God in the midst of the difficulty and mess of her life situation. She graduated high school right near the top of her class, and entered Hood College on a full academic scholarship. The future seemed bright.

She started to feel ill, lethargic, and just not right in many ways, so she went to the doctor. After doing some tests, she received the news: leukemia. I couldn’t believe it when she told me. Here was this bright, young woman with amazing possibilities in front of her now fighting for her life against cancer.

When stuff like that happens, it messes with us, right? When a child is diagnosed with cancer, a faithful believer is blindsided by loss, or an innocent bystander is forced to flee violence, we begin to question.

“IF God is good… and God is powerful… why does this happen?”

We might phrase the question differently wondering why bad things happen to good people, or why evil exists in the world, but the heart of the question remains.

And we’re not the first to ask this question. It has been asked anew by every generation of people throughout history. Even Scripture doesn’t avoid the question, but it gives the question voice. From Job to Jesus, the lament of hurt and pain is not necessarily a lack of faith, but often becomes the place where real faith begins.

So this morning we are going to engage with the question of why bad things happen to seemingly good people.

Prayer

HEAD

Let’s start with the main point or concept in mind. We are going to unpack this idea, but here’s the primary thing I am going to try to communicate:

The Bible doesn’t give us a neat formula, but it gives us a deeper story - a God who doesn’t explain suffering away, but enters it, bears it, and redeems it.

So let’s jump into a few ideas from Scripture that help speak to this question.

We Live in a Broken World

First, when we look at the story of Scripture, we find that, contrary to many sacred texts of other religions, the Bible gives voice to and an understand of the presence of evil, pain, and suffering in the world. In Genesis 1 & 2, God creates the heavens and the earth and everything in them. While doing this, God declares everything “good,” and for some undetermined period of time there was no evil, no hurt, no pain.

But then, we turn the page to Genesis 3, and we are given a story of Adam and Eve disobeying God’s command that they could eat from ANY tree they wanted to except for one, which of course meant that all they really wanted was the fruit from that tree. Eventually, they eat of the fruit, disobey God, and hide from their disobedience. From that the pandora’s box of all evil, hurt, and pain entered the world. As stated in Genesis 3:17:

Genesis 3:17 NLT

And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.

In other words, due to this curse, creation is not as God originally intended or created it to be. This idea is picked up in the New Testament in Romans 8: 22-23, which says,

Romans 8:22–23 NLT

For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

The point is that not all suffering is personal punishment. Sometimes, in fact I would say most of the time, the suffering, hurt, and pain we experience are the aches of a disordered and fallen world.

As the late pastor and theologian Tim Keller states,

“The fallenness of the world explains most suffering - not the badness of the individual” (Tim Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering)

Scripture helps make sense of the suffering and pain of our world and our ache for things to be different by telling us that due to sin, the world is not as God originally created or intended it to be.

God Welcomes the Cries of the Sufferer

Not only does Scripture make sense of it, but, as we talked about last week, Scripture shows that God welcomes the cries of the sufferer. We spent quite a bit of time last week talking about this, so I won’t go too in depth on this, but the point is that God welcomes our laments and cries. In fact, the Bible invites us to bring our grief and rage to God - not to suppress it.

As the theologian N.T. Wright states,

“Lament is not a failure of faith - it’s a form of faith.”

God Suffers With Us and For Us

But that isn’t where God stops in his engagement with suffering in the world. You see, the story of Scripture is not just the story of a God who listens to our cries of hurt and pain, but it is the story of a God who suffers with us and for us - a God who enters into our suffering and pain in order to redeem and restore it.

The prophet declared about the coming Savior:

Isaiah 53:3 NLT

He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

Then, when Jesus arrived, he continued to suffer along with us. The Gospel of John tells the story of one of his friends, Lazarus, who had passed away. Jesus came to the tomb and ended up bringing him back from the dead. But before he did that, we are told that…

John 11:35 NLT

Then Jesus wept.

Hebrews 4:15 NLT

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

In Christ, God has entered our world, and not only that, but he entered into our suffering, our pain, and our hurt. As the theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote following the loss of his son,

“That is the only consolation I can have: that God too has suffered… God knows suffering. He does not merely see it. He has lived it. Christianity is the only religion that dares to say that God suffered.” (Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son)

God not only redeems and restores our suffering, but he enters into it. He meets us in the midst of it. He understands intimately what we are going through. In short, he cares.

Suffering Doesn’t Have the Final Word

And, as I had already hinted a throughout the message already, the story of Scripture shows that suffering doesn’t have the final word.

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 NLT

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Revelation 21:4 NLT

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

Not only does God acknowledge the presence of suffering in the world…

Not only does God welcome our cries of hurt and pain…

Not only has God entered into our pain to suffering with us and for us…

But the story of Scripture is the story of a God who ultimately has defeated evil and will one day eliminate all hurt, pain, suffering, disease, and sorrow.

God doesn’t promise a pain-free life now - but he does promise a redeemed one, and he begins that redemption in us today.

God is in the business of taking crucifixions and turning them into resurrections. (Fleming Rutledge)

HEART

Let’s be real this morning: pain leaves scars. Some of us this morning are carrying unhealed wounds - places of grief, betrayal, unanswered prayers.

Some of us feel like Job, where everything seems to have been taken from us and we just don’t get it.

Some of us need to be reminded of the Christ that weeps alongside us in the midst of our suffering.

Some of us are wondering why me, why now.

I don’t have all the answers to those questions, but what I do know is that Jesus didn’t avoid suffering. Instead, he took suffering into himself. And because of that, your pain is not wasted. Your tears are not lost. Your story is not over.

HANDS

So what do we do in light of all of this.

1. Lament Honestly

If you are in a place where you are experiencing pain, suffering, or hurt, share that honestly and openly with God. Write your own Psalm of Lament this week. Share how you feel, the questions you have, and the hurt that you are dealing with. Let your heart speak to God without filters.

2. Stay with the Suffering

Something happens when we take time to serve others who are in the midst of hurt and pain. In those places, we get to be the physical representation of God’s presence in the midst of someone’s suffering. If you know someone who is in pain around you, go to them. Reach out. Sit with them. You don’t need answers - you just need to be present.

3. Cling to the Cross and Resurrection

So often the hurts and pains we experience seem so big because we forget to see the bigger story. I’m not saying that what you are going through isn’t a big deal. It is. But when we keep the cross and resurrection in the picture, it helps us to find hope in the midst of the darkness of life. When pain tries to define your story, return to the cross - and let the resurrection reshape your hope.

CLOSING

After her cancer diagnosis, Ashly entered into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. She would spend a week or more in the hospital as they administered chemo, and then she would get time to head home before returning to do it again. This continued for months, and it was hard on everyone.

For awhile things seemed to be improving. She was responding well to treatments, and her numbers were moving in the right direction.

It was August 10, 2019, and I was sitting in a meeting of pastors in Glen Burnie when I received the call that Ashly had just passed away at George Washington University Hospital in DC. I jumped in the car to go meet with the family, and the entire way down the BW Parkway I asked God every “why” question you can think of.

If God is good… and God is powerful… then why did that happen to a smart, young, talented woman like her?

I can’t say that God obviously answered my questions that day. I still struggle when I think about Ashly and her short life. I don’t have all the answers, but I choose to hold onto hope.

Hope that one day every tear will be wiped away.

Hope that one day there will be no more sickness or pain.

Hope that one day redemption will come and all things will be made new.

Hope that all this is possible in the mighty name of Jesus

Prayer