Why Do Bad Things Happen?
Why do apparently innocent people suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there evil in the world? Why do children die so young from cancer and other diseases? Why doesn’t God stop these things since He is omnipotent?
These questions are repeated over and over in various forms. Many horrible things happen to people we view as being good and innocent, and indeed many of them may be. Funerals include people asking how God could allow such terrible things to happen. Most say they have no answers, but there are answers. We may not definitively know the answer in each individual case, but the Bible explains why there is unfair suffering in the world, and the answers are different depending on the status of the individual.
We must start with two facts which shape the answers to these questions. First, God is perfect, and He has declared His desire that all people have salvation and blessings from Him. But a second and conflicting fact is that Satan rules the world, having stolen that rulership from Adam in the Garden of Eden when Satan lured the man and woman into sin. This second fact, that Satan rules the world, is the complicating issue regarding all of the questions about man’s suffering and why God does not intervene in every case regarding the suffering of people we view as innocent. As a general principle God cannot make Satan appear more acceptable to people by reducing the suffering of the human race. The outcome would be far worse, since more people would end up in the Lake of Fire for eternity if God helped Satan clean up the mess he has made. God set up a perfect world for perfect people, but they rejected it, and all people since have suffered for the decisions of our original parents. Satan is a bad ruler, and as a result many people suffer needlessly. However, for those who are God's believers on the earth God takes care of His own inside Satan’s world, even if that may not always be clear to the observers.
But who does God see as innocent?
God views the people of the world in several categories. The two main categories are believer vs. unbeliever. God only looks after those who have accepted salvation from Him through Jesus Christ, and therefore have become believers. These are God's children, and He treats them as His responsibility even though they live in Satan's world. The rest are unbelievers and are on their own, subject to the whims of chance and the unfair actions of others inside the mess which is Satan’s dominion. Unbelievers have chosen Satan's Cosmic System, either by choice or by lack of making a choice for God. Many of these individual unbelievers may be humanly innocent of wrongdoing from the human standpoint, but that is not the issue since God has no obligation to help them because they have rejected Him. Although God has set in place rules for Satan and his fallen angels as world rulers, God does not protect unbelievers from the evil and unfair suffering of Satan’s world, no matter how innocent they may seem to be otherwise. God is not in the business of cleaning up Satan’s mess, which would simply make Satan appear more appealing to mankind. God wants all mankind to come to Him for salvation through Jesus Christ, and the key for unbelievers in suffering is to turn to God and away from Satan's unfair Cosmic System. If God took responsibility to care for unbelievers then there would be little motivation for them to change their minds about turning to God. However, for the believers in His plan God will always take care of His own. So regarding the two overall categories of people on earth, God takes care of His believers, but does not take care of those who are aligned with Satan, meaning all unbelievers. And whether the alignment is active acceptance or merely passive does not matter. Rejecting God actively or passively results in the same outcome. God uses the unfair nature of Satan’s world to help convince unbelievers to look to Him for salvation and blessing. God is not responsible to help them if they refuse. Therefore, God does not directly prevent the suffering or death of unbelievers even if they appear to be the nicest, most sincere, and otherwise humanly blameless people. There can be an exception for those unbelievers who have shown some positive interest in salvation but have not yet been presented with the proper opportunity. But in general God does not protect unbelievers from suffering since they are under Satan's "care" which is no care at all.
Children who have not yet reached the age of accountability for a decision about salvation are another group. Any child who dies before the age of accountability, which can vary, is treated as saved and goes to heaven. But there are differences between the children of believers and unbelievers regarding protection from God. There is a principle of blessing by association, and therefore children of believers are under more care from God then those of unbelievers since this is blessing from God to the parents. But that blessing by association is lacking for the children of unbelievers. Although serious harm and "untimely" death can occur to children of believers, these acts are not random as with unbeliever families. These are among the toughest circumstances of why bad things happen to the children of believers, and no one has all the answers. It is not punishment for past sins of the parents, since God does not deal with the issue of individual sins in that way. But some parents can fall into deep guilt unless they understand this principle, and this must be avoided since guilt is not part of God's plan. There are some general principles about why children die young, but one must be careful not to jump to conclusions. However, in general terms only as examples, a young person could die early for some of the following reasons: 1) to spare a family by preventing a worse outcome, possibly a long, drawn out illness; 2) to take a child of a believer before they reach the age of accountability who would not have believed in Christ for salvation, 3) to evangelize other children who could not be reached in other ways, 4) to evangelize family members, maybe extended family, 5) to evangelize strangers by media coverage, 6) for many unknown reasons as part of God's individualized plan for the person and family.
Within the category of believers, God has yet another division which is somewhat less clear to us but also not insignificant. Believers fall into two categories of those pleasing God and those not pleasing God in their spiritual lives. God treats His believers as children who require discipline when they remain clearly out of line for significant periods of time. Those believers who disregard God and His plan for their lives often fall into greater suffering in order to bring them back into alignment with His plan. Believers who disregard God's plan and live as if they were not even believers will suffer as a result of it, not under judgment but under discipline, as within a family. And although there is a difference between judgment, which goes to unbelievers, and discipline, which is for believers, the net result may not seem much different to the one on the receiving end. Job 5:17 says: “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. 18 For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal."
Another category of suffering for believers is from testing for the sake of accelerating spiritual growth. Growing believers will face testing since it is necessary to help them achieve growth at a faster rate, and for achieving higher levels of spiritual maturity. This suffering can take many forms, but often appears simply as unfair suffering. The key here is that God requires us to trust Him under such conditions, and when we pass these tests, we grow at a faster rate. But discipline and testing and random “bad things” are not the same. God does not sponsor random for His own believers, even though we may not be able to separate them on our level. God takes care of and protects His own believers, and in the ways He chooses as fits the unique situation for each believer. And this is where it gets tougher, since we never have the full picture which God has.
Another category involves poor decision making by believers. Although God does not sponsor random harm for His own believers, the believer can act in such a way as to bring on bad outcomes, and God does not support violating good common sense. Believers must not play Russian roulette, take illicit drugs, walk in a bad neighborhood at night for no good reason, walk in heavy traffic, jump from a moving train, exceed the individual’s skill level when doing potentially hazardous things, use a phone while driving and many other examples of actions which violate good sense. God also does not sponsor ill-advised health decisions such as smoking, eating only high fat or high sugar foods, or lack of exercise. And these things are not a matter of sinning, just poor judgment. God does not sponsor poor judgment, so if a believer engages in random reckless behavior, or exercises very poor judgment, they may suffer random harm. This is why Jesus Christ did not jump from the temple tower when tempted by Satan. Satan said God would protect Him. Jesus said to Satan “It is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (Matthew 4:7) Making good decisions aligns with God's plan for our lives.
But we all know believers who have engaged in normal behavior and yet suffered an "early" death through no fault of their own. The ultimate answer is that God has a right time for each believer to die, and that means there is no such thing as "early death" for a believer. And especially for those believers who live out their spiritual lives under God's plan, God takes care of such believers no matter the appearance of the death. As for explaining why believers die in apparently random ways, they are not random to God. God may bring a number of believers to a location where they will be killed at the same time by accident or violence. That is God’s right time for each individual one of them to depart the earth. Accidents are not accidents in God's plan. The issue we must fall back upon is that God knows what He is doing, and He has a right time for each of us to die. It is not based on age or any other conditions. It is based on His plan, and His foreknowledge of what was required for each believer. Job 5:26 says: "You will come to the grave in full vigor, like sheaves gathered in season. 27 “We have examined this, and it is true. So hear it and apply it to yourself.”
If we lose a loved one who is a believer, God had a good reason for that, and we will likely not know the reason. As hard as it is to understand, often God does not want us to know why such things happen. This is because we must live by faith, not by sight, and must trust that God did what was right, and for the right reasons. Sometimes it was to evangelize an unbeliever at the funeral, sometimes it was to demonstrate a principle we cannot see otherwise, sometimes it was for us to look back on and understand, sometimes it was for us to never know the reason. But every death of a believer is individually managed by God Himself. The reason for each death is that God has a specific reason and time and place for each of His own to die. Ultimately we must understand that we live by faith, not by sight. Trying to figure out every action taken by or allowed by God is not faith.
God requires some believers to be sacrificed for the sake of evangelizing unbelievers we may not even know are impacted. This is a combination of God’s right timing for the individual believer and an apparent unfairness of the death which reveals the faith of those individuals and those around them to unbelievers. This is a high calling for some believers, and their eternal reward for such service is increased. We must understand that we are not alive simply to remain alive for a long time. We are alive as believers because God has a plan for each one of us. When that plan is over, it is our time to go be with Him. God sees the overarching plan, but we only see a mere speck of history. It is not for us to know why, or to say how the plan of God should play out.
The issue of innocent people suffering must first be viewed in light of Satan ruling this world, not God refusing to prevent human suffering and tragedy. Satan should be blamed for refusing to prevent the suffering of innocent people who are unbelievers and their children, since they are his responsibility. For believers serving faithfully inside God's plan, God takes care of His own, allowing certain limited suffering and testing as He deems necessary, therefore that does not mean bad things cannot happen at all. For believers who neglect God's plan for their lives, God will try to bring them back into His plan for their life, and that will include suffering which will likely be more intense than suffering used as testing. Those who are growing spiritually need testing to promote greater growth in God’s plan, and that will certainly happen. Some believers are called to sacrifice to evangelize unbelievers, including children of believers, and this likely happens more than we might realize. There are many unknowns since God requires all believers to live by faith. Often we will not know the exact answer. But we can know the true answer that God knows what He is doing, that He has an individualized plan for each believer, that He cares for every believer and their family, and that we must live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)