SERMON excerpt:
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Why
do bad thing happen to good people? This is one of those questions that
people of faith have pondered it seems forever. Why do seemingly good
or innocent people suffer? Why do children die in natural disasters? Why
are infants born with debilitating diseases and why do babies get
cancer?
Job is the book in the Bible that deals with this issue head on.
He
loses all his possessions and his family in one day. Then he loses his
health and suffers from a horrible disease. Yet in all of this, Job does
not sin against God.
But
the question of why bad things happen to good people is much closer to
home than some guy who lived thousands of years ago in a far away land….
For
me it's in my own family. But the question of why bad thing happen to
good people is much closer to home than some guy who lived thousands of
years ago in a far away land. For me it's in my own family. Why did God
allow my wife to have a stroke and have to give up a musical career that
she loved? Why did God allow my niece to be stricken with a
neuro-muscular disorder at the age of 23 and cause her to live as
helpless as an infant until she died at the age of 50. My mother was
hyper diligent about her health, yet one morning I got a phone call from
one of my brothers who told me that she had been diagnosed with cancer
and it was so widespread in her body that she only had six weeks to
live. Why did these things happen t them? They were surely innocent,
yet God allowed this to happen to them.
People
of faith have wrestled with this issue for thousands of years. Well
what about Job? Could he have been truly blameless? . Like many of us,
maybe he never actually stole anything or killed anyone. But Jesus
raised the bar of righteousness to show us God's standard. Jesus says if
we covet we have stolen and if we hate we have killed.
.
But what about suffering endured by children and infants? It doesn't
explain people born with debilitating and painful ailments?
The
second answer is that bad things happen to good people because God
chooses not to interfere. God started the machine going and people have
messed the universe up. As a result bad things happen to good people
because we have messed up the way the universe is supposed to work.
Our sin has thrown a monkey wrench into the internal workings of the cosmos and gummed up the machine.
But
that is not a Christian belief. God is involved in His universe. God
does intervene in its workings to cause oceans to part and rain to fall
or not fall and to heal diseases and save people.
Another answer is that bad thing happen to good people because God allows us to have free will.
God in His eternal love has allowed us to do what we want. We can
choose to do evil because we have been given free will as a gift.
But
it still doesn't explain things like natural disasters. Oh, maybe
global warming can be blamed for some of it. But it doesn't explain all
the earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes and tornadoes that inflict
suffering on so many innocent people.
Job
demands that God give him an explanation for why these things have
happened to him. In chapters 38 - 41 of Job we have God's answer. But
God doesn't give an explanation. Instead God asks Job a series of
questions: Were you there when I put the stars in the places? Can you
tell the sea where to go? Do you understand the ways of the creatures of
the deep? Can you control them?
Basically God's answer is: "I am God, I know what I am doing and you don't."
That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask questions and seek understanding and even question God.
Perhaps the more important question is not "why" bad things happen but how we respond "when" they happen!
When
bad things happen to good people what do we do? How do we respond when
the innocent suffer? What do we think when natural disasters injure and
kill? How respond ultimately determines who we are in Christ.
Today,
we celebrate Holy Communion with Jesus our Savior. In our celebration,
we are reminded that Jesus endured great suffering on the cross so that
we might be forgiven of sin and have the promise of eternal life at his
return. Till then, even in our suffering, we wait with eager hope for
that day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children…
So, let’s celebrate that hope together, and may God bless you all. Amen.
