I’ve been thinking about the tornado that hit Oklahoma a week ago, and I have read plenty of people’s comments who were trying to make sense of how a good God can allow innocent people, like those school children, to die.\u00a0 I know people who have struggled with or left the faith because they couldn’t really understand that.\u00a0 And I think that’s because there have been a lot of bad answers to this kind of problem.\u00a0 Here are a few of the common bad answers that I hear:<\/p>\n
1. God is in control, and no disasters happen unless God specifically makes them happen.\u00a0 So there must be a really good reason for the disaster.\u00a0 We’re just too ignorant\/stupid to understand the wisdom in causing disasters that kill lots of people.<\/p>\n
2. Everybody is a sinner (little kids included) so they all deserve to suffer and die anyway.<\/p>\n
3. If there are any innocent people (like little kids), they’re in Heaven now.\u00a0 So it’s ok that they died in a disaster.<\/p>\n
4. God wanted those people in Heaven.\u00a0 So he used a disaster to kill them off and get them there.<\/p>\n
I think people who try to explain things with reasoning like that don’t know who God is.\u00a0 God delights in kindness and mercy and grace.\u00a0 It’s true that God does punish sin, and he can and will use fierce judgments to punish evildoers.\u00a0 But his heart is one of changing people for the better whenever possible.\u00a0 And he wants everybody to know that.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah 9:24 says …”those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.”<\/p>\n
You can know God.\u00a0 He wants you to know him.\u00a0 So when people say we can never know why God does things because his thoughts are higher than ours, it’s a total cop-out.\u00a0 Of course God knows more than us, and always will, but we can know his character and why he does the kinds of things he does.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of evil people in this world who do deserve death and punishment, but there are also people who live their lives for God who have been restored and renewed by God’s grace\u00a0 And there are truly innocent people like babies and little kids who don’t even know what morality is.\u00a0 Yes, if a little baby dies, it will go to Heaven, but God doesn’t cause abortions just to get babies in Heaven.\u00a0 And God doesn’t make disasters to do that either.\u00a0 If God really wants somebody in Heaven right now, he just picks them up and puts them there.\u00a0 He doesn’t put them through a tragic and painful death.<\/p>\n
If you want a good reason for why disasters happen, it all comes down to sin.\u00a0 Without sin, there would be no death and no suffering in this world.\u00a0 If a person dies of old age or sickness we call it a natural death.\u00a0 But the truth is, death is not natural.\u00a0 Disasters are not natural.\u00a0 They were never meant to be a part of God’s creation.<\/p>\n
When people started sinning, they introduced death and suffering into the world.\u00a0 Romans 5 talks about that.\u00a0 People have continued to sin since Adam and Eve, and so people keep on dying.\u00a0 And it even affects people who have never even had a chance to sin–i.e. babies that are aborted.<\/p>\n
Breaking God’s law does nothing but hurt people.\u00a0 Murder, theft, lying, sexual immorality, gossip, all that kind of stuff not only destroys the soul of the sinner, but does collateral damage to the people around them.\u00a0 If it wasn’t for sin, we’d all live never ending lives without suffering and death.\u00a0 But as it is, death has infected our very makeup.\u00a0 We suffer genetic disorders and cancer and crippling disease because people all over the place have chosen to sin and perpetuated the degradation of what God created for good.<\/p>\n
It’s like if you ignore the warning label and try to make toast while you’re taking a bath.\u00a0 You’re not supposed to use a toaster in the bathtub because it will electrocute you.\u00a0 In the same way, God designed us to live good lives.\u00a0 When we ignore God’s warning label in our hearts and fill our lives with evil choices, it kills us.\u00a0 And it hurts those around us too–like when a drunk driver hits and kills a sober driver.\u00a0 Sin brings death and destruction every time people do it.<\/p>\n
Scientists have said that our DNA is designed to replicate forever, and they don’t know why we grow old and die. \u00a0 But the plain truth is that we get old and lose our health and eventually die because all of creation has been infected with death.\u00a0 Even things like earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes can be traced back to sin.\u00a0 It was because the world was steeped in sin that God struck the earth and flooded the whole planet in Noah’s day, and the entire face of the earth was torn apart and rearranged.\u00a0 And still today we can feel the remnants of seismic and atmospheric instability that never would have existed, had it not been for sin.<\/p>\n
So when bad things happen to good people, you shouldn’t blame God.\u00a0 You should blame bad people.\u00a0 Because if it weren’t for bad people, good people wouldn’t ever feel the effects of what bad people have done.\u00a0 And when the innocent do suffer, God is even more brokenhearted than you or me.\u00a0 That’s why we always tend to hear about little miracles in the midst of big disasters, because God is always at work to save people, to restore and heal, to build character and self-discipline, to shape us into good people. So all those small stories of good things that happen in the midst of tragedy…that’s God.<\/p>\n
God is always at work to bring about good.\u00a0 He might allow destructive forces to run their course, and it ought to be a lesson to all of us to repent and live good lives, because death in this world is just the beginning of blessings for the righteous and punishment for the wicked.<\/p>\n
Of course God has used everything from fire to flood to invading army to render judgment on wicked people.\u00a0 So he can use a disaster to punish the wicked and dissuade evil if he wants to.\u00a0 But more often, he is finding ways to bring good out of tragic events and disasters and to transform lives in spite of the evil that people do.<\/p>\n
So the next time you are wondering how a good God can allow death and suffering, you should instead think about how there would be absolutely no good in this world if it weren’t for God’s intervention and influence in the world, and there would be no death and suffering in this world if it weren’t for the influence of people making sinful choices.<\/p>\n
My heart breaks for the people who lost their homes and loved ones.\u00a0 But God’s heart breaks more.\u00a0 2nd Peter 3:9 says God does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.\u00a0 Every single life is valuable to God.\u00a0 He created them all, and he wants to see them all lived good and filled with his blessings.\u00a0 But even more important than the short life we live on this earth is our eternity.\u00a0 I certainly pray for all the people who were affected by that terrible tornado.\u00a0 And I hope they will be even more affected by the love of a God who wants to save them from even worse disaster caused by sin and rejection of God.<\/p>\n
Jesus died on the cross to make it possible for us to find forgiveness if we walk away from sin and walk with him instead.\u00a0 And the tragedy of his gruesome death on a cross is meant to be the biggest warning label of all time: End your involvement with sin, because it is an indiscriminate killer, and every time you sin just brings more death and suffering into the world.<\/p>\n
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I’ve been thinking about the tornado that hit Oklahoma a week ago, and I have read plenty of people’s comments who were trying to make sense of how a good God can allow innocent people, like those school children, to die.\u00a0 I know people who have struggled with or left the faith because they couldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[32,86,157,147,55,233,90,292,59],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-day-in-the-life","tag-arguments","tag-beliefs","tag-death","tag-faith","tag-life","tag-life-and-death","tag-opinion-vs-reality","tag-storms","tag-suffering"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2034,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions\/2034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}