This one is from Matt M.
“I’m teaching a Bible study about tragedy, and I’m going to deal with the classic question, why does God allow bad things to happen?”
Yep. Pretty classic question. You can’t escape this thought and truly seek after God. It has tested and tried the faith of every true saint … a refining that leaves pure gold.
The following answer (I broke it up into several parts to make each post a little shorter!) will also address related questions: How can a God of love allow bad things to happen? Why does God allow bad things to happen to Good people? And so forth.
The biblical answer is not always popular, but that’s never stopped me before …
I won’t talk about free will here, because in the context of the question, it is irrelevant. Okay, so God might give us free will, but does that suspend His omnipotence and sovereignty? Not in the least. So, on some level, He allows tragedy or even causes it.
Going back to the Garden where everything started, we can see some important concepts. You know the story. Consequences of the curse that resulted from Adam’s sin include (which had not existed before), working hard to produce food, and pain in childbirth.
The interesting thing about God is that He begins to use the curse to teach and ultimately give life. Life is obedience, which requires repentance from a disobedient state. His every act of love is to lead us to repentance.
The first natural disaster recorded in Genesis was an intentional act of judgment by God. We’ll start there.
Punishing the Wicked
The wages of sin is . Therefore, in His love, God desires to teach us not to sin, to live in obedience to Him. So sometimes He brings natural/supernatural disasters upon people or nations to teach the truth that sin leads to destruction.
God is so loving, He actually gives people warnings even before He does it. The people in Noah’s day were so wicked in the eyes of God that He could only find one family willing to live right, this only a few generations removed from Adam. Peter calls Noah a “preacher of righteousness,” which assumes that either through his testimony or actual words, the people were warned.
Time and time again in the Old and New Testaments, God judges and kills sinners, especially people who should know better.
The New Testament, too? Oh, yeah. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? How about King Herod after he exalts himself in Acts? Sounds pretty painful to me.
In God’s mercy, He judges and kills sinners. In doing so, He fulfills the choice the sinners have already made and deserve (death), gives the opportunity for those still living time to repent, and gives an example to later generations of the destructiveness of sin (again, hoping they will repent).
In our pride, we quickly say, “it’s not fair,” and we judge God, claiming the of “innocents” and other injustices.
But if the wages of sin is and all have sinned, then any opportunity of life and time to repent is a great mercy. Remember the Revelation of Jesus Christ will be great and violent judgment upon those who refuse to repent and even, in their pride, accuse God (which is an act of the devil).
All this means that either God is not a God of love or we don’t really understand what love is. Humility demands the latter is true.
If God did not kill and judge sinners, then He would not love us. My discipline of my son is out of love to protect him and teach him what is right. Absolute freedom to rebel and choose for himself would be . God does not .
But disasters and tragedies are not always intentional judment of sin. Part 2 tomorrow.
Peace.