May 11
29
If God Is Love, Why Do Bad Things Happen?
Why do bad things happen? If God is love, why doesn’t he do something about all the suffering? These are questions people have asked throughout the ages. Only God’s Word — the Bible — gives us satisfactory answers.
The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve in His own “image” (Genesis 1:26,27). This was not a reference to what God looked like, since He is a spirit. Rather, this meant that they were holy and righteous – morally perfect. They knew God’s will and were able to carry it out. All their thoughts and actions were in complete agreement with God (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24).
Adam and Eve lost this divine image when they willfully and purposely disobeyed God. This selfish act by which they wanted to be their own “god” brought God’s curse upon them and all their descendants (Genesis 2:17). Because of that event, called the fall into sin, every single human being, with the exception of Jesus Christ, is conceived as a sinner (Psalms 51:5), and inclined to do evil all the time (Genesis 8:21).
In addition, God cursed the very creation he had made for mankind. The whole universe now suffers from the effects of sin (Romans 8:22). The sad things that happen around us and to us (e.g., the death of a loved one, tsunamis and tornadoes that leave many dead or homeless, crime, etc.) are reminders that sin has consequences and that the world needs a Savior.
Because all people are sinners by nature (Ephesians 2:1), it is totally impossible for them to come to God by their own decision, or to make up for their sins by their own works.
The fact is, people are not basically good by nature. And, these natural tendencies towards evil are not mere weaknesses. Instead, the Bible teaches the total spiritual and moral depravity of each and every human individual, and their complete inability to do anything to please God in any way, without His intervention (Romans 3:9-18).
Fortunately, God did intervene. He sent Jesus Christ to be the savior of the world. Next week we will see how Christ’s work of saving mankind makes Christianity different than every other world religion.
Those who reject the Bible as God’s Word must explain how the world came into existence without God.
The widely-taught naturalistic view of evolution assumes that disease, struggle, and death are merely a natural part of our world. The late famous evolutionist Carl Sagan declared that “the secrets of evolution are time and death.”
There is reasonable evidence that the earth is not billions of years old and that life is not the result of random, undirected mutations. Evolution implies that things are getting better, when scientific laws (2nd law of thermodynamics – entropy) prove that the world is actually degenerating and losing order and organization instead of gaining it.
The bottom line is that if evolution were true, you are not special. You are nothing more than a complex accident of nature, destined to suffering and death as a natural part of life — and no hope for the future. This is the empty promise of evolutionary thought.
God’s Word says differently. You are special. You are precious. That’s why he did something about your greatest need – the need for a Savior from sin. Therefore Jesus gives us hope – the blessed hope of an eternity where all the “bad things” of this life are restored to the original perfection of His magnificent Creation, and when every tear will be wiped away.
