[This post is in a weekly devotional series called Everything New. Sign up here if you’re interested.]
Why do bad things happen to innocent people? Is there any purpose in it all?
Here is where the issue stings. If I have to suffer, is it all for nothing? Must I pay such a high price for no apparent benefit? How can God expect me to lose-just lose?
The Bible teaches that there is indeed a higher purpose above and beyond suffering. But the way we get there is not by calling a bad thing good. We don’t have to do the mental gymnastics that somehow calls a car crash that decapitates a teenager a good thing; or cancer cells, which violate all the rules of how healthy cells are supposed to behave; or soldiers who wipe out the women and children of a village. If we don’t keep the moral and spiritual acuity that sees evil for evil and good for good, then we’ve entered a confusing fog.God is almighty, and good is what it is, just as evil is what it is. But here is the hope: God works through the bad, bringing us inexorably to a better place. How could it be any other way? He is a God of construction and repair, of putting pieces together and putting pieces back together.
We should never blithely tell someone who is in the middle of the agony of their suffering that “it is all for the good.” But when the time is right, we can say with sensitivity that the God who is always good is never absent or indifferent. He holds all the pieces of our lives together into a whole that can never be calculated as a negative, but always a positive.
I have lived fifty-one of my fifty-six years years so far without a father. I can count dozens of times when I thought it would have been so good to have a father-to watch a football game I was in, to show me how to shave, to meet my fiancée, to introduce me to his friends at the shop, to ride with me as I learned how to drive. I had thought that grieving the loss of my father would have occurred in the first few years after his death, when in fact every new phase of life brings an awareness of the missing element in the equation, the falling short, the empty space. Yet the loss somehow does not tally out as a negative.
In reality there are no set equations in life; God works a different kind of algebra. If one seemingly essential part of life is torn out, life does not collapse.
My father’s death meant that I grew up in Wisconsin instead of Illinois, and with an extended family who came around me like a safety net. I saw life from the perspective of a town of two hundred instead of a city of five million, enjoying regular exploratory trips to the town dump and twice-a-day swims in Lake Michigan. Later we moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and lived two miles from the stadium during the days of coach Vince Lombardi, when professional football players were the town’s heroes and friends you saw at the department store. I figured out how to shave, and how to have a styptic pencil close at hand. The empty space was never very empty-only empty of one specific person.
It is that promise we hold onto: “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). Not that all things are good (they’re not). Not that all things add up to a positive sum (life is not about accounting). Not that all things become good things (that’s just not true). Rather, God is at work amid “all things,” which means all days and every chapter of life, even the dark ones. He is at work. He doesn’t sleep, and he doesn’t leave. Any work that God does is good, because he is God.
That is why “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8:26), why we can believe “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (8:18), why we can live knowing that “if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (8:31-32).
Why do bad things happen to innocent people? There really are no innocent people. We’re all good creations twisted, and we live in a spectacular world that also twists and turns and breaks into pieces every day. We use our freedom for good, and we choose to use our freedom in ways that spin us out of control. When there is order, when we are receptive and obedient, then we see great things happen. When there is chaos people get hurt.
But through it all, God remains the creator of Good Things, and Lord and Master over all humanity, even when we so often choose the Bad Things.
Excerpt from Putting the Pieces Back Together: How Real Life and Real Faith Connect. Free DVD available now.
This is really thought-provoking.
We really have to suffer for Jesus Christ because he suffered a lot for us.
remember Hebrew 13 verse 12 where he suffered also at the city gate to make people holly with his blood.
Our benefits from that are acceptance to the Holy Spirit; forgiveness of sin; unlimited blessings; interceptor for us sinners to the God The father, meaning access to God and victory of satan.
Amen!
In my own view, God allows suffering in us for His glory. When bad things happens to us today we may not understand right now why it happened but when right time comes we will realize that it happened coz God has a better plan.
10 years ago I came here in United Arab Emirates to look for a job leaving my family back home. After 2 months of searching I got one but before I have my working visa my father died so I have to go back home immediately but the company promised to process my visa while I am in my home country. After the burial of my father my visa was ready when I was about to fly back to UAE I noticed that the visa has different nationality, so my company have to re process it in UAE immigration which it will take another month or so. I was so depressed as I need the work badly but while waiting for my visa to be ready my husband got ill and was hospitalized. That time I realized that what if I am already there in UAE working and suddenly my husband got ill, I have no choice but to go home again and maybe I will not pass my probitionary period at work.
God’s timing is really perfect, my visa arrived when my husband was completely ok and I was able also to assist my son in his final exam while waiting for my visa. Really all things work together for good for those who love God. I really cannot forget this story and I keep on repeating this to all my friends too. God is good all the time! Glory to God!
I am sorry that you had no father to show you how to: shave, go to football games with, or to enjoy the birth of your children, (as I recall you have children) or to do the things that fathers do. Of course I have no idea what you would have been like if you had been raised in Illinois. I don’t have the insight as to what might have been. But I can I enjoy your ministry now. The point is I don’t know that God had to use the suffering that you have experienced to bring you where you are now, but I can see that He does have a plan for you. I make this deduction based on how God has used you.
I agree with the things that you say, my life, since childhood had been extreme pain. I went from growing up in an alcoholic environment, getting beat as well as watching my Mother get beaten, to getting married at 17 to (my Father) and after 34 years of marriage he has divorced me. For the past 3 years I have tried to look for “the good” in this and have come to the conclusion that there is none. How gracious our Lord is, that he has lifted me up in spite of the bad decisions I have recently made. He has taken my broken heart, and held it close to his. will any of this ever make sense to me? No of course not, but it no longer NEEDS to make sense. He has promised to be ALL that I need, and for the first time in my 25 years of walking with Christ, have I truly understood his grace being sufficient. In all this I have come to learn that God loves me, not because of who I am, but in spite of what I am. Thank you for your ministry, it has blessed me and I will continue to read it. I pray God will continue to bless you.
gs
hinbelieve ALL tj
I believe ALL things happen for a purpose. They be to test us such as Job, to chasten us as happened in my on life, or some other reason we DO NOT know but GOD does know. Nothing
happens to us but what GOD permits and let it happen.
What do I think? I think this is a wonderful reminder to look for the good and wait for the good, very well stated and illustrated. Thank you.
To be someone who has suffered illnesses and disease, I know and have known for a few years that it is God who stays with us. We are the ones who turn away from God when we suffer the bad, hard things that happen in this world. This I learned during the 1st major illness that hit me. At first, I believed that God could not love me anymore. In some way, I thought that I must have (and believe me, I had) let Him down. It took a while but God made sure that my heart and mind began to look for Him during this illness. From then on, my journey with God (and several new illnesses and diseases) proved to grow stronger and my faith in Him grew more intimate. Oh, how he loves us all.
Your message speaks to my heart for I know and believe our God never leaves us or forsakes us
growing up wasn’t easy with my Mom being not well but she was a light to me in her suffering. My faith grew because of her and through all ups and downs I have grown closer to our Lord and and Savior. Thank you for this wonderful message of hope praying God will continue to use you
in spreading the Gospel. Blessings !
God is at “work”. So is man and so is the devil.
Lee Strobel told a story ..Investigating Faith, email..Its a story about Jack. Jack is a child in an adult’s body. Lee, wondered if Jack ever really absorbed and retained anything from the sermons he listened to at church..Then one Sunday morning Jack came to church with a broken arm..Lee asked Jack : “Did that hurt?” Jack replied “I come here..I hear…Jesus pain for me…This was nothing.” I thanked God and Lee for that story,because it reminded me that Jesus IS love and as His children , He wants us to listen and obey…. Come to Him as our choice…
It was a drunk driver that took my father’s life (I was six mos. old) , not God..
It was a step father that took my innocence away..it was me who chose to run away from God…
I forgive and am trying to forget..I have asked God to forgive the men in my life and send His love to them for His glory.I have to remember that God loves them too.
I am learning to love God and trust and obey Him and this is my choice I choose God..I want to serve Him and Him alone.. I want to tell others so that they will know God and then terror and tragedy will fail and God’s love for all of us will prevail!!
I can move forward in God now ..I have a new church family and I bring my grandson to school, he love it..I ask for prayer for the salvation of my family daily..I have new dreams and new hurts but its all good because God is in control!!
and thats His choice and I an so ready and willing!! Philippians 4:12…amen
God is truly amazing. Just yesterday morning I started reading through a book by Vince Lombardi Jr., and he is a very enlightening and inspiring person, I’ve come to see. Last night I went to the hospital because my 30 year old son that I’ve called the police on numerous times for threats( and they never helped or charged him), decided to kick my teeth out. Talk about pain! and they didn’t put him in jail either. Tell me they don’t work for Satan?! I gave up on calling them and kept praying to God for it to somehow come to an end without death being involved. And this is what happened. It wasn’t put in the newspaper either. I still love God and trust His ways. I hope I can get new teeth real soon. I still love my son. My mother thought that he would be a minister one day, but I believe drugs made him mentally ill. It’s been a nightmare since I let him come home last December. But maybe now he’ll have to get help or he’ll go to jail. But I can’t help him anymore and that is going to hurt both of us. I’m in so much pain right now mentally and physically all I can do is pray. Thank you for being so in tune to my situation. You are truly sent from God to me today. Amen
I do not believe God intends for us to suffer. Having said that we must also know and remember that God has given us the ability to choose for ourselfs. And, in making choices, we can and do make the wrong choices that are not in His plan for us and often go against His Word given us. So, suffering is a strong part of that equation…it may be called consequences. However, I choose to think that God allows us to make our choices-right or wrong-good or bad-and when the results brings us suffering I believe it is in His plan for us to draw closer to Him. He is always there, strong and comforting. Suffering is not His want, nor in His Plan for us, but I believe it to be the “good” that results from the “bad”.
A very helpful article. As an evangelist (though not a very good one) I hear people say “it doesn’t add up, how can God allow the innocent to suffer?”
I am aware that though the question is the same, folks are not always coming from the same place, that causes difficulties too when I seek to answer the questioner. Your article has given me another view of the problem, and how to answer the question.
Thank you.
Thank you Dr. Lawrenz,I have grown so much closer to God..I have been made aware of my demonds and have told them to leave me alone in the name Of Jesus Christ my Lord and Master…I would not have become so aquainted with myself, who God created, if not in part ,for your weekly lessons..I have been on a journey to discover who God made in me so that I may know His will for me..I lookforward to your emails and will continue to do so..I think all of them are great..We are not all made the same and we will all glean something different..I am being blessed each week through God’s incredable use of your gifts!!
My journey will continue,, I have more to discover,,God is Not finished with me yet..
Please pray for the salvation of my family…
I say you have given us a complete and thorough understanding of this message Mel. I so appreciate your insight and wisdom, the way you encourage all of us to keep the faith. It’s true that God will never leave us nor forsake us in our hour of need or ever, even if we don’t necessarily “feel” His presence or hear His voice. Being steadfast to stand on the truth in His Word is that elusive thing we have to strive for sometimes because we have to live in a dark and fallen world and our flesh has to war with our spirit constantly and we get weary in well-doing, we make bad choices, we get sick and have to suffer the consequences. That doesn’t negate who God is or that He isn’t weeping over our bad decisions. He continues to love us and help us because that’s who He is. Thank you Lord.
I believe Job’s suffering shows us an example of a man who was told to “curse God and die”, rather than trust God and not loose faith. He chose the later. Paul in Romans 1:17 tells us God makes us right in his sight from start to finish by faith. Paul further states in Romans 8:17 that if we are to share his glory we must also share his (Jesus)suffering. Peter in 1Peter 1:7 said the fiery trials-pertaining to suffering-are only to test your faith which will bring you much praise and glory. Perhaps suffering is a blessing in disguise. An opportunity to have kinship with Christ…