“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” James 1:2
Bad things happen to good people. It is one of the truths of life that causes the God deniers to mock Him and blame Him for being evil. They taunt believers by alleging that if God is the God of love that we claim, how could He allows awful events to happen to those they claim are innocent people. (Note, this is the unbeliever’s first error. They assume that there arepeople who are absolutely innocent and they assume the deserve a pain free, injury free life. That’s a devotion for another time.) So the God mockers make their judgment – God does not exist or, if He does, He is not worthy of their worship for He is as flawed as they are (in their minds, worse.).
Why do bad things happen to people who, at least from man’s perspective, seem innocent?
First, bad things happen because when man sinned, a curse was brought upon the earth. God’s creation which was perfect became marred with sin. So in our fallen world we see nature act outside of God’s original design. We see floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, rabid animals, trees that die and fall. We see forest fires, droughts and diseases. God allows the world to continue in its fallen state (for a time) and the consequences of the nature God created for good, have gone astray and impact people negatively who live in this fallen world.
There is a second consequence of man’s sin – his rebellion to God as his creator. When man engages in sin, loves sin, embraces sin, it has consequences. This is why God goes to such great lengths to warn mankind to avoid e sin that will bring disastrous consequences into our lives. There are varying degrees of “deep dives” into sin. Sin does not have full reign on earth because the Holy Spirit of God restrains sin and many of its consequences (God gets no credit for that by the way). Some people (as the world becomes reprobate the number is rapidly increasing) “sell themselves to sin” and the characteristics of full blown sin (II Timothy 3:1-8) are evident in them. The acts these reprobates create have disastrous consequences which impact others. We see murders, thefts, wars, rapes, mistreatment of the weak and poor, slavery, and a host of other crimes against humanity. The God deniers say if God is love he would protect people from those evil behaviors. What they are really saying is God should give me free will to behave as I please but protect me from the free will of others if I don’t like it. In reality they then become God deciding what is good and bad in their own eyes.
Finally there is a third reason why bad things happen to good people. In this case it is a direct action of God. We read of this kind of behavior often in the stories of the Old Testament. It is the discipline of a loving father of his own children. Often we read how the children of God rebel against their creator. To mold us into His children God disciplines us – in other words, He allows bad things to happen to His children to produce good results.
What can we learn? As usual the world has the question wrong. The world blames God for their eyes are on their circumstances. The believers’ eyes are on God and therefore we can say, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” Romans 5:3-5