God Is Not On Trial

why do good things happen to bad people?

This is my fall semester term paper for Humanities. We were given two prompts to choose from (connected to our readings this year) and 50 minutes to complete the assignment. To be clear, this isn’t a comprehensive answer to the question. This is just my response from a philosophical angle.

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What would you say to a person who asks you, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?”

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This question assumes the existence of God. Thus, the rest of my response will assume the same.

There are several things that need to be clarified before this is answered. First, “bad” and “good” must be defined. Where does the questioner get his/her standard with which they’re measuring people to determine whether or not they are good or bad? And why is it, for example, bad to let harm befall good people? These are legitimate questions. The Christian has an answer for them—we assert that God is the transcendent, eternal moral standard for all good and evil. What is conformed to the image and character of God is good, and what is not conformed to God is not good. The questioner, if not a Christian, would be hard pressed to give any kind of adequate answer. This is because they’re using the exact same moral standard as the Christian: God. They can’t see it, but it’s hardwired deep into their thoughts and actions.

But if God’s actions are the literal definition of good (not only because He is the moral standard for the universe, but also because He is perfect in everything He does) then the question is illegitimate from the very beginning. Nothing God does can be bad, so we have to assume that either “bad things happening to good people” is a good thing (since God does it), or that the question fails on one or more invalid premises and needs an adjustment before it is logically sound. Either of these are justified inferences.

Thus, my immediate answer is that the question is all wrong to begin with, as I demonstrated above. But this doesn’t negate the fact that many people are still extremely troubled over “bad things happening to good people”. With that in mind, we can explore the other possible answers.

At the beginning, we defined “bad” and “good” as that which is not in conformity to the character and image of God, and that which is, respectively. So let’s use this definition to check the terms in the question. First off, the questioner is almost certainly referring to a mix of moral and natural evil by “bad things”, such as a hurricane, car crash, school shooter, sicknesses, death, or any number of other harmful and undesirable things that befall people on this planet. We can see from the Bible that moral and natural evil is not in conformity to the moral will of God, and not in conformity to His character or image. Thus, this term is sound.

The second term is more interesting, though. It claims that good people exist on this planet. Only….we know from the Bible that everyone is depraved and unable to conform themselves completely to God. Everyone has sin. The question is merely how much you’ve given in to your sin.

If this is true, it means that there are no “good” people as defined. The questioner just has a crucial misunderstanding of how the universe works. Because of that, the question becomes “why do bad things happen to bad people?”, which is an entirely different question and negates the problem entirely. Bad people justly deserve bad things. No one would disagree on that, except perhaps the most insane moral relativist, who ought not to even be listened to.

So we have found the issue with the terms. There are no good people, and that makes the question invalid. Thus, my second answer is that bad things happen because the world is filled with bad people who deserve those bad things happening.

But if we accept what I just stated, then there’s a glaring issue. Three glaring issues, actually. Not everyone who ever lived on Earth was tainted with sin. Adam & Eve were perfect for a time. Jesus was perfect for his entire thirty-three years on the planet. Evil befell Adam & Eve—they were deceived by Satan into dooming the entire human race to depravity. And Jesus experienced all kinds of moral and natural evil while He walked among us, culminating in his horrific death on a Roman cross.

The Arminian’s theological answer is that God didn’t want to violate the free will of Adam & Eve to choose the fruit, or Satan to deceive them, or the soldiers to nail Jesus to the cross. This is completely and totally incompatible with the character of God in the Bible. He consciously intervenes many times and “violates” the supposed free will of many people. (I would suggest the Arminian also has an issue of terms: they would do well to define “free will”).

This is where Calvinism becomes an absolutely necessary position to take. The Calvinist replies that God is still in complete, sovereign control of the universe. Evil still occurs because it is God’s will to allow the world to play out as it is until every one of His elect is saved. Once this happens, Jesus will return and put an end to all evil. Until then, the natural disorder and chaos of a sinful world will make evil things happen to everyone, including people who the questioner might see as “good”, even despite their sin.

We see an excellent picture of this in Job. Job has an almost unbearable amount of both moral and natural evil come upon him in all sorts of tragedies. His children die, he loses all his wealth, his servants all die, and he is stricken with horrific physical maladies. The whole book is an answer to “why did this happen?”. Job and his friends never get an answer to the question; but the reader is allowed a glimpse behind the curtain. And it’s extremely interesting that while Job’s friends, in their discussion of the issue, question many things, they never question God’s sovereignty. They consistently question why it happened, and what Job might have done to make it happen, but the underlying assumption is ALWAYS that God caused it and is still in complete control. Not once is that assumption questioned. Perhaps it would do our modern questioner good to follow the example of Job and his friends in making that assumption.

So my final answer is simply that “bad things happen to good people”......because the Almighty wills it. That should be enough for everyone. The correct response is to accept that hard-to-swallow fact and humbly submit yourself to the Lord.