Why is God letting bad things happen?

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.

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.

But David did not only lament a scattered nation, but a shaking earth also; he looked around, and wherever he looked there was trouble; said he, “Thou hast made the earth to tremble, Thou hast broken it. . . it shaketh.” And that certainly describes the state of the nations today. David was bewildered. He had looked for peace and the kingdom of God on earth, and lo! war, and disaster upon disaster, and in his bewilderment he complained, “Thou hast made us drink the wine of astonishment.” In these days many are drinking from that same cup—they are asking, Why? It is a question in their hearts continually, if not on their lips. Is God responsible for the broken, shaking earth? Can its miseries and groanings be laid at His door? Nay, as the church cannot blame God for its scattering, neither can the world blame Him for its shaking. It is “man's inhumanity to man that makes countless thousands mourn.” Men reap what they sow; if they prefer the devil's way to God's they will get the devil's malice instead of God's mercy. Disobedience of God's law lies behind the world's wars. It has been so from the beginning. Genesis 3 records the first disobedience and defiance of the Divine will, and Genesis 4 describes the first destruction of human life, a man murdered by his own mother's son. The one follows the other as night follows day. It is cause and effect.

But David did not only lament a scattered nation, but a shaking earth also; he looked around, and wherever he looked there was trouble; said he, "Thou hast made the earth to tremble, Thou hast broken it… it shakes." And that certainly describes the state of the nations today. David was bewildered. He had looked for peace and the kingdom of God on earth, and lo! war, and disaster upon disaster, and in his bewilderment he complained, "Thou hast made us drink the wine of astonishment." In these days many are drinking from that same cup — they are asking, Why? It is a question in their hearts continually, if not on their lips. Is God responsible for the broken, shaking earth? Can its miseries and groanings be laid at His door? Nay, as the church cannot blame God for its scattering, neither can the world blame Him for its shaking. It is "man's inhumanity to man that makes countless thousands mourn." Men reap what they sow; if they prefer the devil's way to God's they will get the devil's malice instead of God's mercy. Disobedience of God's law lies behind the world's wars. It has been so from the beginning. Genesis 3 records the first disobedience and defiance of the Divine will, and Genesis 4 describes the first destruction of human life, a man murdered by his own mother's son. The one follows the other as night follows day. It is cause and effect.

Am I denying, then, that God does at present by his providence secretly and effectually control all things? God forbid. Even Satan himself is in that sense subject to him, accomplishing his purposes, and doing his will. But I speak of the open, public, manifest government of the world. Is that conducted on the principle of righteous retribution and reward, or is it not? There can be but one answer. No doubt, man's evil and Satan's malice are kept in check by the secret restraints of God's providence, as well as by the institution of human government and laws which he has appointed, and until now upheld. If it were not so, men would destroy each other till the earth would be depopulated. But still, where is the person who can imagine that there is at present, or has ever been since the fall, a distribution of temporal good and evil, according to men's character and conduct, so as to be an adequate witness to God's character of holiness, benevolence, and rectitude, as the righteous judge and Governor of the world? Why the fact is, that goodness has been allowed to be so oppressed and trodden under foot, and evil has been allowed to be so rampant and triumphant, that when the blessed One himself, the perfect, the sinless One was here, HE was put to death! We know why this was permitted. But I want you to consider the fact — it was permitted. Yes, God looked down from heaven and witnessed the murder, by man's wicked hands, of his only-begotten, well-beloved Son!

Do you ask, reader, Why then are we in such a world still? I will tell you. Scripture tells us, God in grace is still leading souls to profit by and enjoy this. It is a world of misery, and sorrow, and oppression. Did God interfere to change it, He must come in judgment and close the time of mercy; and that He does not do, while yet any have ears to hear. He allows, therefore, the evil which He will judge, to go on meanwhile. And we, though we may thus have to suffer awhile in the world, ought in this sense to rejoice that it is yet allowed; because it is still a time of mercy extended to others. The end will be everlasting joy in a much better world. Christ is gone to prepare a place for us, and He will come again and take us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. Thus Peter says, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

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).

But there was something still more perplexing, for there were times in the lives of the most honoured servants and saints, when they were suffering, and being made to pass through the deepest trials when the wicked were prospering, and at their ease. This was, to the righteous, most baffling. The patriarch Job, who was perhaps the greatest sufferer in the Old Testament — but there were many others (James 5:10-11) — had to say: "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. …" (See Job 21:7-13). So also with David "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree" (Psalm 37:35). Such things these men could not reconcile with the justice of God's moral government. In His revealed will, the order seemed to be joy and happiness for the good, but sorrow and suffering for the evil. The law had laid this down very fully and clearly, and it had been said, "He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it" (1 Peter 3:10-11; also Psalm 34:12). Yet those who sought to live according to this were kept in suffering. Think of a man like Job of whom Jehovah could say to Satan, "Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth," yet his suffering were prodigious. It is just at this point that we may learn the wonders of God's wisdom, and see the richest and choicest of His dealings with His children in the world. The wicked may prosper for a brief season, as we have seen, but in a moment their candle goes out, and then for them it is the blackness of darkness for eternity. The righteous may suffer in a world where sin and death are permitted, but, this, in the hand of a Father, is educative in view of forming the character, and making them morally Christ like in view of future glory.

The standard of God's holy government is fixed and sure, and can never be lowered. What a man sows, that shall he reap, and punishment for sin is judicially and divinely certain, but to limit God in His dealings with His children to that is to dishonour Him, and to miss the richest and choicest of His designs. In point of fact, it displaces Him, leading to the conception of Him as an arbitrary Being, as the book of Job shews, and, coming to men, it turns the moral order of society upside down, and is accountable for the cruellest sufferings inflicted by men upon their fellows. In Job we have a man whose sufferings might well melt the hardest heart: yet, his friends (and they were men of a very high standard of life), through missing this important link in the chain of God's dealings with His servant, were turned into the cruellest and bitterest of foes. Why? Because, by limiting God's dealings to the punishment of sin, and missing the educative and promotive character of the sufferings, they could only conclude that such a great sufferer must have been a great sinner. What a solemn position these good men were found in. Condemning Job, by attempting ignorantly to justify God, instead of sympathising with the needy, they fixed upon him the cruellest charges. The position became a kind of deadlock, and those who came to help were found to hurt. The basis of their argument was wrong, their premises were false, and making a wrong start, both as to God and to Job, instead of the good that the circumstances called for, the very worst that was in them came out. It was doubtless thoughts like these that led the poet to write that "Man was made to mourn," for indeed "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." Like the ecclesiastical tyranny of the dark ages of so-called "Church History," these men belied their messages, and were turned into despots of the inquisition. Thinking they were serving God by treating an unbroken sinner in faithfulness, they went all the length to recover him, and like many to-day, who conclude that THEY are the testimony, with hearts steeled against every human and tender feeling, persecute to the death those who may be like Job in the crucible of suffering, but, like him also, may be more in the thoughts and sympathies of heaven than themselves.

Yes, God in infinite and tender goodness can, and does, bring His children through sorrow and suffering. He did it with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others, and He is doing it to-day. He may chasten for sin, as corrective, or He may discipline the soul as seeing danger ahead, which surely is preventive, and, as in the case of Job, He may put us through a good deal of trial, that we may learn ourselves, and enter better into the knowledge of Him — which is surely promotive.

Down the ages, God has often allowed His own to be evilly entreated, and it is not always possible for us to understand why He should allow wicked men to persecute and slay His saints and His servants. We do know that God allows these things for the purifying of His people, and that all His actions towards His own are in the perfection of His love and wisdom; and even if wicked men seem to prosper, and the righteous are put to grief, yet the day is surely coming when, at the judgment seat of Christ, we shall understand as we cannot now, the ways of God, which are past finding out.