“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People”*
A Sermon by the Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie
Several weeks ago we began soliciting sermons ideas from our parishioners, because we want to address the issues that affect your daily lives. One parishioner asked that we preach a sermon about why bad things happen to good people. This question has been on our minds since parishioner Dave Schreffler tragically died in a car wreck nine days ago.
In the days that followed Dave’s death I heard people ask, “Why Dave? Why did this happen to someone so good? Why could it not happen to someone bad?” Each day 300,000 people travel on the Schuylkill Expressway, and on Friday, January 23, two people did not return home. One went to the hospital and is going to survive, and the other, Dave Schreffler, a fun, hard-working great guy, who was devoted to his family, church and community, died. We will greatly miss him
Why do bad things happen to good people is one of life’s most fundamental questions. Each of us must answer it for ourselves. We know from studying history, reading the newspaper and watching television that life is full of pain and suffering. We read about war, terrorism, violence, disease and natural disasters, but when tragedy strikes close to home everything changes.
Unexplained suffering is the number one reason people stop believing in God and stop coming to church. The German theologian Hans Kung calls suffering the “rock of atheism.” In his book After Auschwitz Richard Rubenstein says that after Hitler’s concentration camps the continued belief in a God of love who acts for the good of his people is utterly nonsensical.
We want life to be fair. We envision and desire having a God who is like a great referee looking down from heaven and punishing the bad and rewarding the good. We are rudely jolted when we strive to play by the rules and lead good lives only to witness tragedy affect our loved ones or ourselves.
The word religion comes from the Latin word “religio,” which means “to bind together.” True religion is meant to bind life’s varied experiences together in a way that makes sense. As parents and grandparents one of our chief jobs is to help our children and grandchildren develop a religious world view that will guide them through life and help them understand life’s varied experiences in a coherent, meaningful way. To those of you who are students and young people
I encourage you to develop your own theology. If you settle for a childish concept of God, you will limit your ability to cope with death, pain and loss in the years to come. I urge you to develop a true and mature concept of God.
This morning I wish to note that there is no simple answer to why bad things happen to good people. There is no statement that we can utter in a hospital room or in the home of someone grieving that will take away their pain and suffering.
Rather, we can develop a framework that will guide us and help us to guide others as we encounter and cope with pain, loss and death. The sermon that I offer today is from the heart. It is based on philosophy, theology and the Bible, and especially from serving as pastor for over twenty years to countless families walking
the mourners’ path.
In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis, notes that God is supposed to
be all knowing, all powerful and all good. But if this is true how can we explain evil? Lewis writes, ‘If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or
power, or both.’ This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.
I agree with Lewis, and I must confess that long ago I stopped believing that God is all powerful. I continue to believe that God is all knowing and all good, and that with God all things are possible. The Bible promises this. I believe in miracles, and I have witnessed people who were riddled with cancer, who later underwent tests and were found to be cancer free. No doctor could explain it. I have seen miraculous interventions where the unimaginable occurred.
But my experience tells me that this does not always occur. We cannot force the hand of God, and much remains a mystery. So I have come to believe that God has created a universe where sin, disease, death and disaster exist. We must deal with these.
There are times when we are culpable for our own suffering. If we chain smoke cigarettes and develop cancer, is it fair to blame God for our illness? But if we never smoked and took great care of our body, then we have reason to wonder if we are afflicted by cancer. The universe remains full of mysteries. Scientists probe the world to understand why some of us are afflicted with leukemia and others are not, or why a tornado destroys one town and spares another.
Christians have wrestled with issues of pain and suffering for centuries. There is no ultimate answer that will satisfy us. When a tragedy occurs, we are filled with many questions. We ask, “Why was my loved one hurt? Where was God when this occurred? Can there be a God, if this kind of things is allowed to happen? Why does evil exist?”
Though we may utter such questions, we are not seeking an analytical explanation. What we want is not an answer, but a direction in which to move forward as we seek to cope and rebuild our lives. We need hugs, tears and moments of laughter, friends and family to listen, bring food and flowers, sit in silence and offer comfort. We need time, lots and lots of time to comprehend the scope of our loss and reinvent our life as we move through stages of shock, disbelief, denial,
anger, bargaining and acceptance.
Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” When tragedy hits, we feel completely disconnected from abundant life. We are also faced with choices. We can turn to God and say, “Fix it,” and we are likely to be disappointed, or we can turn to God and say, “God, I am deeply in pain and need your help to heal. Please help me to transform my suffering into something productive and make something good to come from this tragedy.” I assure you that God will always respond to these prayers.
But if we choose to blame God, we are likely to become mired down in anger, hatred, confusion and pain, and we will cut ourselves off from our ultimate source of comfort, strength and wisdom when we most need it. Right from the beginning the Bible makes it clear that there is evil in the world. The Book of Genesis begins with a story of temptation, and we learn that evil is part of our existence. There are boundaries that we must respect. If not, we or others will pay a heavy
price. God does not want to hurt us, but humans are free to make choices and suffer the consequences.
The Bible does not solve the question of suffering. It does not present a single, unified response to pain and suffering. Some portions of the Bible suggest that God punishes those who sin. The Hebrew Scriptures especially speaks about rewards and punishments based on our actions. The Book of Proverbs notes, “Be assured, an evil man will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will be delivered.” (Proverbs 11:21)
Other parts of the Bible dispute this. The Book of Job,
for example, tells the story of a man who had everything. He had lots of land, wealth, servants, children and respect. Then Satan, God’s emissary, asks if he can test Job. God agrees, and Job is stripped of everything. His children are killed. His animals are destroyed.His home is leveled, and his body is covered with sores. His friends maintain that God is punishing him for a secret sin. Job’s wife urges him to renounce God, but he refuses. Job cries out, but he does not deny God.
What makes Job so amazing is that he is the first biblical figure to challenge, doubt and wail against God. He is one of the classic figures of all times when it comes to understanding suffering. Job maintains his innocence to the end and notes only that if he is being punished for any sin the punishment is way out of proportion to anything that he has done to deserve it. Finally, Job breaks down and cries out, “O that I might have my request, and that God would grant my desire: that is would please God to crush me, that he would let his hand cut me off.” (Job 6:8-9).
As the story ends God answers Job out of the whirlwind and says, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely, you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars sang together…. where were you?” God reminds Job that suffering is a mystery. Humans are finite. God alone is infinite, and there is much that we cannot comprehend.
The Bible does not simplify the problem of evil and pain. Rather it tells stories about people who have suffered, struggled and been healed. God does not spare them from suffering, but God transforms them in the midst of their pain and sorrow. We have only to look at the story of Jesus to realize that God did not spare His own Son from suffering and death, but God took the worst thing that humanity could do to his Son and used love to transform this tragedy of tragedies into
something life-giving and filled with hope.
There once was a boy, who made a gift for his parents in his art class at school. He created a small bird with wings, a head and a tail. He glazed it blue and baked it in a kiln. He could hardly wait to show it to his parents. The next day, when they arrived to pick him up and take him to an event, he clutched his clay bird and ran to their car. In his excitement he fell, and the small bird flew in the air, hit the pavement and broke into tiny pieces. The boy burst into tears.
His father picked him up, began to dust off his son and said, “Come on. We’re late. Don’t worry about this. You can always make another.” But his mother got down on her knees, and she held her sobbing son for the longest time. Then she took off her scarf and gathered the broken pieces one by one and carefully laid them in her scarf and collected them. Then she turned to her son and said, “Let’s go home and see what we can make of this.”
That’s how God reacts when our lives are shattered by tragedy. God does not inflict pain or impose our sorrow. When we are hurt, God is always the first to shed a tear. God’s heart is the first heart to break. God, the great alchemist from above, enters our lives and helps us to pick up the broken pieces to see what we can make of them.
If we are willing to partner with God, God can transform our tragedies and our wounds into signs of hope and insure that something good and something hopeful comes from them.
*http://www.stthomaswhitemarsh.org/sermons/Why%20Do%20Bad%20Things%20Happen%20to%20Good%20People.pdf
Photo: latechurch.com
