Why God allows bad things to happen to us

While God does not intervene publicly and make wars to cease in the earth, He still acts providentially, and brings good out of evil for the blessing of men and for His own glory, He sees every wicked atrocity and says, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” He beholds all the sorrow in the earth, and calls the distressed and broken-hearted to find in Him everlasting consolation, and a peace and hope that the world cannot afford.

While God does not intervene publicly and make wars to cease in the earth, He still acts providentially, and brings good out of evil for the blessing of men and for His own glory, He sees every wicked atrocity and says, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." He beholds all the sorrow in the earth, and calls the distressed and broken-hearted to find in Him everlasting consolation, and a peace and hope that the world cannot afford.

Suffering comes to us from different quarters and for various reasons, but that which is testing the greatest number now, and causing the most suffering at this time is the war, and many are asking why it should be? Why, if God is good, should there be any war at all? That is a question that calls for an answer. God is good, ten thousand times ten thousand voices bear witness to His goodness, but the world as such has rejected God, and despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back upon God and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:13) and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away. “There is no peace, says the Lord, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). The world has been Satan’s world since that day and “suffering and sweat and tears and blood” are the result, they are part of sin’s foul brood.

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

In 1983 a famous Rabbi in the US, Harold Kushner, published a book about the problem of suffering. In it he suggested that we should not blame God for sufferings (which is right); then he goes on to say that God is good, but that He cannot help it when evil befalls His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis). Perhaps we may remind ourselves at this point of Romans 8:28, where we see the very opposite of Kushner's claim. God not only allows adverse circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school' (Rom. 5:3-5; Jam. 1:3). His ways ultimately, and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also, to make us realize that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will? (cf. 1 Peter 2:15).

There is only one answer to be given. God is not the author of evil, but He has allowed sin for His own glory. He did not create creatures who were incapable of choosing between good and evil, else He would have created mere machines—infinitely more wonderful than motor cars and aeroplanes, but yet on the same level.

Men would throw the blame of all the evil that is in the world upon God for His not having made things otherwise, and as they would like; but they forget that God chose to make them responsible beings, as having perfect right and power to do so, and that no blame can be shifted to His sovereign act from their shoulders whose responsibility was created by that very act. It is said, God is Almighty as well as Omniscient, and could therefore have made men perfectly safe from the reach of evil, had He chosen to do so; but He has chosen to do otherwise, and so the existing state of the world is His doing, for "who has resisted his will?" But this really begs the whole question, for it assumes either that, as is expressed, the present state* of things is according to His will, or that there was no course open to Him but the two contemplated in such an assumption, namely, that He must either keep men from evil by direct power, or be concerned in their evil Himself; whereas the scriptures show decisively that neither of these is the truth. Apt indeed is the inspired reply to such objectors — "Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?" (Rom. 9:20.)

If there be sin, how can all have been according to God's will? And, on the other hand, if all has been according to God's will, where is there room for sin? It is plain that the two thoughts are mutually destructive. The idea that He has willed that man should frustrate His will is too flagrant an absurdity to need comment, and thus it is that man knows only too well when he listens to its voice that the Bible speaks the truth, when it says plainly to him that he is a sinner. He rarely in these days charges fate with the cause of all things as they are, because this palpably means, as it is not God, some power or principle to which even God must bow. With the revelation of God in the world, the darkness of such a thought (which, however, the wisdom of man had reached before the Lord came into the world) is dispelled, and so man, the poor dupe of one far more subtle than he, now tries to believe that God is responsible for everything as it now exists, heedless of the utter folly of the idea. It is true that He could sweep the whole creation into destruction by one word; and it is also true, most surely and solemnly true, for every unsaved soul, that ere long He will sweep all that is evil in the world into woe that is unutterable but yet is the only fitting resting-place for foul corruption. But the responsibility of the presence of the evil here, for God so ordered it at the beginning (as we have seen in the account of the establishment of responsibility), rests with him who introduced it into the scene of God's power in goodness; and meanwhile He who has power in judgment to remove all by destruction upon all yet waits, in grace bearing with the presence of the evil which He hates, in order that He may provide the means and the opportunity for man, the sinner, to be freed from the consequences of his sins.

The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man — the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils — the fruit of sin — should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences — sin excepted — of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.

In fallen humanity man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Besides the afflictions of man in body, mind, and estate, there are also the oppressions they suffer one from another. In some parts of the earth slavery still exists and in more enlightened parts the rich oppress the poor. James 2:6. Man is very ready to attribute all such things to the Creator, forgetting that God made man upright and God declared that everything that He had made, including man, was very good. It is sin that has brought in the misery, and man, by becoming the willing servant of Satan, has put himself into the hands of his enemy. Besides the afflictions incident on fallen humanity, there are afflictions that fall specially upon the Christian. There are those he may have to suffer for righteousness' sake as well as for Christ's sake. Another class of afflictions which the Christian has to bear is inflicted directly from the hand of God for his good. See CHASTENING.