Why Bad Things Happen To Good People?

The inspiration for this title came from a blog post last Sunday (entitled Live To Tell Your Story) written by Shantae Charles (her blog is http://legsclosedmindopen.blogspot.com/).  This is a question many people ask (and it’s a question used as a justification to blame God or turn away from Him), and I’ve thought of this many times when it seems like the wrongdoers are rewarded (so it seems). A rapper named R-Swift did a thought-provoking song entitled American Soil, where the gist of the song is saying that we’re blaming the youth for the things that are wrong, but in reality, they got it from past generations. Another focus of the song is that we want to live how we want to live (apart from God), much like the children of Israel, until somebody spills blood on our country.

I have to agree, if we were to spiritually look at this, it starts all the way back to Cain & Abel. Abel was a righteous man, but Cain killed him. But if you really get down to it, there’s no good in us. Sure, we may do good things, but not all the time. The reason is simply because the heart is deceitful and prone to wander away from doing what’s right. I’ll use myself. I don’t good things all the time, and I’ve even done things to harm those who never did me any harm.

Now, let’s remove the spiritual aspect for a moment. Some people may ask why the school shootings? Why the bombings? Why the wars? And why (out of all things) does God allow this to happen? I believe He’s trying to get our attention, but we’re constantly telling Him to back off, leave us alone. This has been going on for generations (much like the children of Israel). We want to pray when a tragedy happens and then want revenge. But no one wants to take a look at the wrongs we’ve done to innocent people.

This is not intended to bash anyone, but it’s something for us to think about. Look at Christ (and He is the perfect example of someone who didn’t do bad things to people – though some might try to think differently). God allow Him to die because He would be glorified in the end. So in summary, why do bad things happen to good people? Because we live in an imperfect world (all the more reason to look to God for His mercy & grace).