Bad things & Good People

Why do bad things happen to good people? It seems to be a universal question... along with "if there's a loving God, why did He allow [insert tragedy of the day]?" Its discouraging, isn't it? This endless stream of bad things happening all over the world... God must be so unfair, we say. God must not care.

But let's talk about fairness and justice for a minute. The wages of sin is death right? Physical death. Eternal death. We work REALLY hard at sinning sometimes... just look at what we've made of our world. Its no wonder we're reaping a whole lot of the death and misery our sin has sown.

Natural consequences. Its not punitive... its a simple if/then scenario. People who get terrible diseases and die aren't usually evil people getting their just deserts; they're simply people reaping the consequences of generations of humanity's disregard of God's laws. Life in a fallen world isn't peaches and cream or sugar and light.

God is a just God. And God laid out guidelines... simple ones really:
Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

For Adam and Eve: don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge. How simple is that?? You've got a million trees in a beautiful Garden, and among that million there's just one you can't touch. How hard is that?

Hah! There isn't a single one of us who wouldn't have done the same thing Adam and Eve did. Not a one.

So tell me, how could it be justice if God said, "well, OK, since you're going to sin anyway, you all get a free pass, no one has to pay for it, go about your business. My rules don't matter afterall."? That's like letting a known murderer go free. What's truly ironic is that sometimes our society does just that. WE are not just, so how can we possibly hope to pass judgment on God?

We forget that sin, ALL sin, HURTS people. It hurts our friends, our families - it hurts people we will never know or meet. It hurts ourselves. It HURTS GOD. There is no victimless sin.

Justice says SOMEONE needs to pay for all that hurt we heap upon ourselves. Justice says that even though God made the rules, and it hurts Him to enforce them, He won't bend them or break them. Justice is hard. Justice is unforgiving. True Justice has no loopholes.

But God isn't only Just. God is Gracious. He said, "I gave mankind a simple task and you failed Me, but I've made a covenant with My people, and I will pay the price for your failures." Someone has to. So the one Being who had never tasted the forbidden fruit stood in the place of all of us who have.

The ONLY Being who doesn't deserve death for ANYTHING, died for EVERYONE.

So stop and think for a moment before you complain about God's injustice, ok? Be grateful that every particle of air you breathe, every molecule of your arm you use to take that forbidden fruit is held together by the God you are sinning against.

"For He made Him who knew no sin be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." 2 Corinthians 5:21