I have known about God for a pretty long time. Over years and years of being raised and educated by people that feared Him, I invested a lot of time wrestling over aspects of His character and trying to glimpse just a bit more of His divine mystery. For the most part, I felt that I had a decent handle on being able to articulate what I thought about Him (at least as well as anyone else my age could). But there was always one question that made me wilt like a young seedling in the desert sun. I was never quite able to come up with anything substantial to answer the age old question: "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" Every time I was approached with it, I retreated with my tail between my legs. Here I was choosing to give my life to this God, who I claimed "so loved the world" and I couldn't provide an account for natural disasters, disease, death, and the like. I felt like a fool.
But the recent months of my life have slowly but surely begun to forge a response to this question. This question is an important one and the inner struggle it creates causes many to turn from Christianity because they don't want anything to do with such a God. We believers need not shy away from the issue, but attack it head on and validate that our God does, indeed, love us and that He is worth submitting our lives to. So out of relevant life circumstance, here are a few thoughts...
To answer this question, there are a few unspoken assumptions we have to uncover.
Assumption #1: There is such thing as a "good" person, and such people are undeserving of pain, suffering, and/or heartache.
Problem with Assumption #1: The term "good person" is about as ambiguous as it gets. As far as I'm aware, there is no standard or cut-off to clearly delineate the bad apples from the good ones. Anyone resting under that title would never claim to be perfect, but they would use the term as a form of self-righteousness to make themselves feel better than the guy who is on death row in Florida for 1st degree murder, robbery, and kicking a few puppies. The Bible is pretty clear that we all fall short (Romans 3:23). It doesn't matter if you miss the mark by an inch or a mile... we all fall short. We seemed to have something wired in our DNA for us to think that because we're "good," we should be exempt from the "bad." Matthew 5:45 says, "For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." That's just life.
Assumption #2: When God says that He loves us, that means that He desires for us to be fat, happy, healthy, and wealthy.
Problem with Assumption #2: Even if we can humble ourselves off of our high horses and accept the fact we're not as awesome as we once thought, a conflict still remains over what God really means when He says that He loves us. To answer this, we have to dig deep down into the roots of our cultural brainwashing. Every commercial, every ad, and everything marketed to us in our society screams that our comfort and pleasure are the top priorities. Unfortunately, we unknowingly try to fit our notion of God into that box. At the mention of the word "love," our minds tend to jump to the happy, fluffy stuff that reminds us of Valentine's Day. There is no kind of Scriptural basis to support that definition of love, yet it is the one that we often superimpose on God.
To put this issue to rest, we have to pull our perspective back to the big picture. It is not a matter of our momentary pleasure, but rather, it is one of redemption on the grand timeline of eternity. Here is what it ultimately comes down to: God's deepest desire is not our comfort; His primary concern is that our character be developed so that we will come to a greater understanding of the salvation He has made possible for us through His one and only son, Jesus Christ. I don't claim to know a God who is up in heaven trying to keep a bunch of people happy who have sinned against Him in every which way possible. I claim a God who sent Jesus to die for us "while we were yet sinners" (Romans 5:8). Though He owes us absolutely nothing, He has given everything and will hold nothing back, including trials, so that we will have our eyes opened to how badly we need Him. He is interested in the big picture. He is finishing what He started through the good and the bad.
This is not to say that suffering doesn't sting. It doesn't mean that, in our humanity, that we will never draw into question God's plan. And it doesn't mean that we won't lose sight of the big picture in the midst of horrendous hurt and showers of tears. I would be lying myself if I said that this battle with cancer hasn't been the most draining, most trying experience of my entire life. But what joy it brings my heart to be able to say that I know my God better... because I have cancer. I have a deeper and truer understanding of His love for me... because I have cancer. Other people people are getting a glimpse of the big picture... because I have cancer.
Oh, how I wish this would have happened a lot sooner. Not really, but you catch my drift.
Resting in the big picture,
MH
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