I’ve heard the question many times and have rarely heard anyone reply with something other than “well, its the Lord’s plan” or “God works in mysterious ways”. So in other words they are saying “I don’t know, but this sounds good enough”.

It makes me wonder if they’ve read the creation story at all or at least anything written by Paul. That question is answered over and over again throughout the bible. It may be hard to answer because the question itself is flawed and the only person that it really applies to is Jesus.

It is flawed because there are no good people. This isn’t a new concept, there has never in the history of mankind aside from the son of God that has been good. David writes about it in Psalms 14 and Paul reiterates it in Romans 3:10-12.

I hate to be the one to tell ya, but the Pope deserves to go to hell. Mother Teresa deserved to go to hell. Paul, John, Jacob, Isaiah, and Adam all deserved to go to hell. I’m sorry, but you and I both deserve to go to hell. But it was their faith (and ours) in Christ’s salvation (either future faith that it will come or present faith) that brought them back to God.

Jesus says to “be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48, a command that no one has lived up to but him. Are you good? Compared to who? Compared to God? God sets the standard of good. Have you lived up to that? Has anyone lived up to that? I’d guess no. So therefore yes, bad things happen to good people, but we killed the one good person, so what does that mean we deserve?

In Genesis 3 we find the story of the fall of mankind and coincidentally the first Messianic prophecy (Christianeese term meaning Old Testament fore tellings of Jesus). It was from the very beginning of sin that God knew there had to be an atonement. Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Notice the change. “He” meaning her offspring. Not “they”, but “he”. And he will crush YOUR head, not “their” heads. This isn’t a general statement that says the offspring of Eve will crush snakes heads. This is a specific event God is telling. He will crush the serpents head, the serpent that tempted them in the garden.

And that he did. Since the beginning they knew of one who would come to crush the serpent that deceived them in the garden and restore things to the way they once were. So why then do you ask are some of the curses still true?

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this but there is still a large majority of the planet that haven’t accepted Christ’s salvation. We are all given a small bit of godliness (which is backed up by David first in Psalms 82 and again by Jesus himself in John 10:34). Not just the Christians but everyone has this small form of godliness that they can affect someone else’s fate to a small degree. If a man chooses to beat up a man on the street, he has exercised his godliness to affect the man on the streets fate. It may not have been because of anything that the man did to deserve to have this fate, but this other man had the God given ability to affect his fate.

This is a major responsibility and it is sad that many people abuse this gift from God. Because it works both ways. We can chose to change peoples fate for the better, however, as long as people choose to abuse this gift, there will be suffering on this planet for everyone.

So in just the first 3 chapters of the entire bible we have answered what thousands of philosophers will tell you is an unanswerable question. What is the meaning of life? Why do bad things happen to good people? What came first the chicken or the egg (I know this is in high debate in the Socrates crowd)?

The bible offers nothing more than answers and truth. We do not have to spend our lives like Buddhists who try to figure out god on their own through their own “wisdom”, the answers are given to us and have been around since the beginning of time. So smile at God today and be thankful that He has given us the answers, all we had to do was look.

In short, bad things happen because bad people make them happen. There are no good people and the one that does live we killed. Our accumulation of sin passed down from generation to generation manifests itself in many horrific forms. This was not by God’s design, but by mankind’s decision to thwart God’s design. However, God is merciful and sacrificed himself so that we could be forgiven and one day live in a place where no bad things happen; in the presence of God.

Tags: creation story, enmity, genesis 3, god god, god jesus, god works in mysterious ways, history of mankind, john jacob, messianic prophecy, old testament, son of god, tellings