Interestingly enough, two of the biggest reasons why people don’t believe in God and the Gospel are because they believe almost everyone is good in nature and because they don’t understand how God could let bad things happen. Both of these reasons actually contradict each other, but let’s address them separately. I’ve already blogged about the top three reasons why you don’t want all good people to go to heaven (you can find the first of these blogs here). In this blog, let’s dive deep into why God lets bad things happen.
Defining Bad
Before we plunge into this swamp of depression, let’s define what it is and make sure we are all in the same swamp. There’s a large number of things we might call bad, but there are a few categories that sum them up. By categorizing these groups I can address them much more accurately.
Some things we might call bad can be grouped together as unfulfilled dreams. This category includes disappointing and troubling things like a hard break-up, a job loss, a car breaking down, or a rejection letter for a college program. In all of these situations, our hopes or expectations went unfulfilled.
Another category can be summed up as calamities. These are things that just happen. Maybe a tree falls on your car, a storm floods your house, you lose your job, or a loved one dies of a heart attack or cancer. Natural phenomena like volcano eruptions, hurricanes, floods, or tornados slide into this category as well too. These are very unexpected, and you have absolutely no control over them. You can’t blame anyone for them, they just happen and it hurts.
The typical category that people mean when they ask why God lets bad things happen, is the evil category. This centers on people doing evil things like murder, rape, theft, unjust treatment, hateful acts, and the halocaust. However, this same category also includes what many would call “lesser evils”, these include lying, gossip, envy, bitterness, greed, and much more. All of these arise out of the evil of our own hearts.
The last category can be grouped together as unmet needs. These are needs that we have, and when they aren’t satisfied, very bad things happen. Starvation, dehydration, lack of shelter, freezing to death, or even loneliness are all good examples of this group.
I’ll use these categories to more accurately address this topic as a whole.
The Parenting Dilemma
The easiest way to understand this concept of God letting bad things happen is to look at parents.
Say a seven-year-old kid wants a vape pen because a few of his friends have them. He goes to his parents and says “Their parents let them vape, why can’t I?” As a parent, you know how bad vaping is, especially at such a young age.
Because you love your kid so much, you say no.
In a typical seven-year-old fashion, your kid storms around the house yelling at you. He says you hate him and calls you stupid. You know that when he gets to school he’s going to repeat all these things to his friends.
Then he takes things a bit further, he starts rebelling against you. He doesn’t do his chores, he ignores you when you call him, and he continues to pout.
So, what do you do as a parent? You punish him, ground him, and say he can’t hang out with those friends anymore. You tell him he can’t go to his other friend’s birthday party unless he does his chores.
This makes him even angrier. He claims even more so that you hate him.
Why would you as a parent not just let these bad things happen, but cause them? Your life could be so much easier if you just gave him what he wanted in the first place. However, his life wouldn’t be better. He’d be spoiled and slowly become a monster if you never said no. If you loved him, how could you do this to him?
We Are God’s Children
Now, this example doesn’t answer every question about why God lets bad things happen, but it does answer quite a few and here’s how. A parent will discipline their boy in this way for three reasons, they are just and need to punish him for doing bad things, they care about him and want him to be happy and healthy, and they desire for him to have a good future.
These truths apply to us and how God works with us. In regards to the category of unfulfilled dreams, it may seem bad from our perspective, but God knows our hearts and the future. God knows what we truly desire and he also knows best how to direct us through life.
He wants us to be happy and healthy, but beyond this he cares about our souls, holiness, and our relationship with him. He’s willing to sacrifice some of our happiness and potentially our health for the sake of making our souls more healthy.
Is Mankind Responsible?
Another important point is that though God could stop everything bad from happening, it’s actually our fault. The Bible says creation was perfect without any pain or death.
God gave us a choice, to either remain with him in this perfect creation or disobey him. When mankind sinned and rebelled against God by eating the fruit and breaking the one rule God gave, we brought sin into this world. As a result, so came pain, death, and all these categories of bad things I mentioned earlier.
There’d be no calamities if creation were perfect. There’d be no unmet needs as God would be sustaining us. And, our hearts wouldn’t be evil if we never sinned in the first place. We wouldn’t even have unfulfilled dreams, as we’d never be disappointed.
Is God actually doing these bad things, or is he just letting the system we broke continue to run its course?
Can a girl blame her parent for not buying her a new bike when she disobeyed and left her bike outside until it rusted and no longer moves as well? Yet isn’t that exactly what we do in claiming God is doing all these bad things?
A Reminder Of What’s Important
Continuing with this bike analogy, say the parent promises to buy her a new bike, but—before they buy it—she must first admit that she disobeyed. She must ask for forgiveness and promise to never leave her bike out in the rain again. Doesn’t this sound reasonable? After all, why would a parent buy their kid a new bike unless they promised not to ruin it like the last one?
Well, this is exactly what God asks. He is offering to bring us back into this perfect creation called heaven with him again. However, before he can, he must deal with the problem. If we enter heaven with sin, we will break heaven just like we broke this world. So—to go to heaven—we must confess our sins, ask Jesus to save us, and let God transform us and free us from sin through what Christ did on the cross.
Now, say the girl is unwilling to ask for forgiveness, so she continues to ride the bike even though it goes slow and is hard to turn. She complains and asks her parents over and over to grease or oil the bike. But, as a parent, you might not listen because you’d rather buy her a new bike and you are glad her bike is broken because it continually reminds her that she needs to ask for forgiveness.
The same is true about God. I believe this is just one reason why God lets all these bad things happen to remind us that this world is broken.
Why God Lets Bad Things Happen
If you’ve ever driven on a highway out in the country, you’ve probably experienced the terrible noise and jostling caused by rumble strips. I hate rumble strips, but I’m so glad they exist. More than once a rumble strip has saved me from driving off a road.
Rumble strips exist to alert a driver that they are heading toward danger. If there were no rumble strip then we’d smoothly sail right off the road and potentially to our deaths.
The same is true with God and these bad things. If he removed all bad things, we wouldn’t see any problems with this world and we’d blissfully slide off into the eternal realm (hell) set aside for all things corrupted by sin. Would you rather enjoy a smooth and easy ride to your death, or experience the shaking and discomfort of bad things reminding you that something is wrong?
Which is more kind of God? Allowing the world we broke to continue being broken so we’d turn to him and be saved, or fixing all the problems we caused so we can enjoy these short temporary lives without a problem and then be thrown into hell without warning?
The real question is, does he really need to let this many bad things happen? And unfortunately, I think he does.
Our Stubbornness
Here’s the deal, as good as God is, we are stubborn and prideful. We blame God for the bad things, then pat ourselves on the back for the good things. If all of life were good and easy, we’d never turn to God because we wouldn’t think we need him.
So, if God is real and the Bible is true (which I firmly believe to be the case), then what do you think God should do? He can’t only give us good things because we’d take it all for granted. At least in letting the bad things happen, we start looking for different solutions. And hopefully, ultimately, we’d turn to him.
Even so, God does give us so many good things. The mere fact that you are reading this proves that he’s provided for all your needs to keep you alive since nine months before you were born. He’s given you the understanding to read and comprehend. He’s even given you the blessing of technology for you to read something I write on my dinner table. That’s a whole lot of blessings right there, and I’m guessing there are thousands of other things you could thank him for.
Perhaps instead of wondering why God lets bad things happen, we should really ask why he still lets so many good things happen despite our ingratitude and sin?
So, let’s be thankful, let’s not yell at God when trials or calamity strike. Instead, let’s trust him in the bad and trust him to lead us. Let’s Live Wilder!
What do you think? Did this accurately answer the question? Are there other important questions I didn’t address?
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If you need encouragement that God is doing good things, check out my blog 7 Hidden Ways God Is Working In Your Life.
