“But God, who is RICH in mercy... (Ephesians 2:4a, emphasis added)”
There is one question that will probably never cease from being asked by mankind, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, religion, or even socioeconomic status, but also one that has perplexed the most learned, and those most privy to the deep mysteries of this seemingly endless cosmos:
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
This is a query that is actually deep on a number of levels, and one that pierces the very essence of what has come to painfully define what we refer to as "the human condition." What we, as human beings go through on a daily basis, I attest, is nothing compared to what even the lightest of trials would be if Almighty God were to cease from sustaining our lives, even for a picosecond. One might say it's easy for me to say, drowning in all of the comforts at my beck and call here in the United States of America. I have no choice but to stipulate, based especially on only rudimentary comparisons between my "hardships" and those of an orphan's of the recently earthquake-ravaged nation of Haiti, or the oft-targeted, teen-aged girl rape victim of Sudan starving and fearful trying to flee to South Sudan. One thing is very clear: human suffering, almost more than anything defines the human condition.
This conundrum is truly mind-boggling. How is it that those who seemingly have not a peace-loving, honest, gentle bone in their entire body very often appear to be very well-off, prosperous, and successful? How can the hard-working family man of Englewood (Chicago) surrounded by drug-powered, illegal money-energized gang violence, working 12-14 hours a day just to get his family out of the neighborhood, never seem to get ahead and even his seven year-old daughter seems the favorite inadvertent target of young, ignorant criminals? Yes, the scales of cosmic justice appear ridiculously misaligned--fixed, even--to tilt toward evil's weight.
Diseases like cancer, influenza, AIDS, polio, and bubonic plague have decimated more human lives than all of the wars of all time combined, and despite our scientific and technological marvels, we have proven impotent to stop them from continuing their oppressive reign over civilization. Why do these monstrous plagues claim so often innocent children? Why do the weak, defenseless of society have to suffer because of the corruption of others?
These questions (and others) were posed to me in a discussion with a self-proclaimed agnostic. We were actually good friends and he wanted to know what my Christian faith had to say concerning these issues; among those was another burning question asked by many:
"Why does God choose to save some and allow others to suffer the hell of Christian theology?"
My response to the former questions was just a simple, but universe-shattering-in-power three letter word--sin. Man's sin, going back to earliest human history is the cause of our suffering. The Bible is just a book to agnostics, but history speaks almost as loudly, proclaiming that there's just something "out of kilter" about man. He always finds a way to destroy and tear down; he invariably finds ways to hurt, persecute, oppress, and kill his fellows. To get the upper hand, he'll tell any lie he needs to tell; to sate his black lusts he'll fornicate with or violate any one's wife or husband, or even child. And he's just proud enough to believe that his environment is the cause of his flaws and shortcomings.
Man was created in perfection, but he decided of his own free will to step outside of God's established limits. He died spiritually in the instant he made his decision independent of God. His act of rebellion brought the spiritual pestilence of sin into the world that has its all-too-visible effects on the physical realm. My friend didn't want to call what's wrong with man sin, but he couldn't argue with its effects. God had every right to either destroy man immediately or just allow him to destroy himself and to then start over. Every man, woman, and child from Adam has been born with a predisposition to sin, and this cannot be disputed. But through it all, God has showered the entire human race with what we sometimes call His common grace. His common grace is simply the outpouring of His generous, loving, merciful nature upon mankind despite our enmity toward Him. It's His nature to be long-suffering and patient. It's His nature to love and hold back anger, and it is in that working of common grace that He restrains the full expression of man's evil because we all can concur that man, with his modern weapons of war, could destroy himself and every other living thing on earth many times over.
Consider the things we've all done in the dark, away from prying human eyes. God could have removed us from His earth at that very moment, but He didn't, even though in His perfect, righteous judgment, He had every right to. It's His universe! Just as I arrange the words of this post in any way I see fit, adding and deleting so that my ideas are communicated the way I want them to be, God has the same right but on an infinitely larger scale. And were He to be fair, we would all have reaped a trillion-fold the seeds of sin we have sowed in our lives. If God were to be fair and not permit the rain to fall, or for there to be even the semblance of order in our communities, or for the diseases that lay waiting to consume us to do exactly that, no one would exist.
God's refusal to be fair rests solely on the finished work of Jesus Christ (Romans 5:6,8; 6:23). Christ took on the sins of all men, past, present, and future (I Corinthians 5:21). God hates sin-hates it-and He was perfectly fair with Jesus as He hung on that rugged, blood-soaked cross for the sin debt we had accrued. God held back what He owed man because He would Himself provide the payment for sin. He has chosen to allow man to benefit from Christ's sacrifice. All of our time on earth is borrowed. Therefore, God is not fair, and I praise Him that He isn't. He is rich in mercy but shall not let anyone who refuses Christ to their death go without the eternal punishment he/she deserves. Sin is the cause for our suffering and death in this life. God has provided the remedy: Christ. Unfortunately, sin is here to stay with us until the Lord remakes all things devoid of sin and evil (Revelation 21), but in the meantime, let us not think for one second that those who do evil and "get away with it" are truly escaping, for God has appointed a time when all evildoers shall answer for everything they have ever done in this world, and there will be no one to deliver out of the hand of a just God (Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:11-15). Let us then bask in His unfairness for placing His judgment of sin on His own dear Son! So when one complains about life not being fair, let that one thank God that He has prevented that situation from being one hundred times worse, and that there is a beautiful, sinless, pain-free, suffering-free world prepared for all those who receive Christ as Lord and Saviour (John 3:16-18; 6:38-40; 14:1-4; I Thessalonians 4:14-17).
