Why Do Bad Things Happen to People?

I intended to spend this post sharing three more perspectives on how to receive an afterlife of reward, but a situation came up this past week which I decided to write about instead because of its relevance in all of our lives.

One of our friends has a friend whose son recently passed away. What's up with that? Why would God allow something like this to happen? Why would God allow a little boy to pass away? Furthermore, why would God allow so many things to happen in this world which are happening every day? Why would God allow a premature baby to be born at 24 weeks and be tied to a breathing machine for the first two years of his life? Why would God allow a young couple who desperately wants to have children to not have children? Why would God allow children in South Africa to live in a landfill, scrounging around for rotten scraps of food just to stay alive?

When we experience extremely painful situations like this, sometimes our initial reaction is to be angry with God. Many of us have been told our whole lives that God is all-powerful and in control of everything. If God really is all-powerful and in control of everything, then naturally we reason that he could’ve chosen to do something differently, but apparently he chose not to. That doesn’t settle well with most of us. In response, some people have chosen to believe that God really isn’t in control of everything, and therefore, really couldn’t do anything about it. Some people have chosen to stay mad at God for their entire lives because he didn’t do anything to relieve them of their painful situations. Others, on the other hand, have taken a completely different approach which has given them hope in the midst of the pain they experience.

The biblical story of a guy named Job is a great example of a person who experienced the loss of everything except his wife and his life. In the beginning of the story, Job is portrayed as a very wealthy man who was blameless, upright, and worshiped God. But then Job began to systematically lose everything including his ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and his health. To put it in modern-day terms, Job’s multi-million dollar house burned to the ground, his children were killed in the fire, everything he owned, including his Lamborghini, was burned in the fire, he lost his job, and he became extremely ill, all in the matter of a few days. Yet, Job’s response was unfathomable:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed by the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. – Job 1:21-22

Job grasped something about God that’s extremely critical to understand. God doesn’t do what God does for our glory; God does what he does for his glory and his glory alone. As he spoke through the prophet Isaiah:

I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. – Isaiah 43:6-7 (emphasis mine)

The Bible tells us that God didn’t create humans so that he would have someone to love and be loved by in return; God created humans for his glory. The reason God does everything he does, including rescuing some people from eternal destruction, is for his glory (Romans 9:20-23). According to the writer of Psalms:

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. – Psalm 115:3

How is the realization that “God does all that he does for his glory” supposed to make us feel better about the bad situations that happen in our lives? Sometimes it seems like this knowledge just makes things worse because somehow God seems to be benefiting at the expense of others. I remember asking this question in high school about a story I read in John 9 where Jesus said that the man had been born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9:3). I couldn’t understand why God would allow someone to suffer blindness for many years in order for him to demonstrate his power. It seemed completely wrong. Yet, over and over again, the Bible is crystal clear about the fact that God does everything he does for his glory.

I finally decided that the reason it must’ve seemed wrong was because I was thinking about it the wrong way. I was too busy dwelling on the pain people were experiencing in the midst of the situations rather than the ultimate good which was coming out of these situations. This is what led me to discover a deeper level of truth in scripture which still sticks with me today, even when I’m going through an extremely painful situation. Look at what the writer of Romans said:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28

The Bible tells us that God works all things for good for his people, even in the midst of the painful stuff. When we’re told that God works all things for “good,” that doesn’t mean that God makes all his people healthy, wealthy, and prosperous. Instead, what it means is that God has promised to transform his people into the image of Jesus and unite them to him for all of eternity (see Romans 8:29-30). The hope found in the midst of this is that no matter what pain we experience in this life, God is working in and through it to mold us into the image of Jesus. In other words, God is looking out for our best interests, even if we don’t realize that those things are best for us. We can trust God to always be working in and through everything that takes place in our lives for good, even in situations when we experience deep levels of pain.

This is how Job was able to respond to the catastrophic circumstances in his life by saying, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed by the name of the LORD.” He had hope that God was working in and through everything that was taking place for good. Rather than blaming God for ruining his life, he demonstrated his trust in God. Job came out of this fiery trial looking more like Jesus than he did went he went into it. And the same thing is happening to us today: We come out of every fiery trial looking more and more like Jesus.

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How do you respond when faced with a painful situation? How have you experienced God working things for good in the midst of the pain you’ve experienced?