Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?

Virginia Tech…32 dead: why? The question that always comes up after something like this is: how can there be a good God if there is so much evil in the world? How come he doesn’t stop it right now?

Why stop at the 32? How about the 5 girls at the Amish shooting? Or the 13 at Columbine? Or the 168 at Oklahoma City? Or the 2093 on 9/11? How about the 200,000 in Bosnia, the 300,000 in Nanking, the 800,000 in Rwanda, the 2 million in Cambodia, the 6-7 million in the Holocaust and the 1.6 – 60 million in Russia?

Oh maybe someone can say “It’s that the Devil and God are at war: the Devil wins some but God wins in the long term.” And maybe others offer a defense that “God doesn’t know that the evil is going to happen so He can’t stop it!” But honestly, would He be God if He didn’t know what was going to happen and would He really be God if Him and the Devil were on equal footing? As if this was some cosmic chess game where God plays really well but sometimes, the Devil takes a few pawns…

“It’s because there is no god.” Someone else squeaks out, finding comfort that the Pedophile, the Murderer, the Nazi, the Hitlers, the Stalins aren’t evidence of screwed up humans, just an expression of survival of the fittest.

And I’ll give them that final point because the same thinking and moral component that is in the Stalins and Hitlers and Gunmen is also in the Suburban Mom and the Teenage Son and the Working Father. Both of these groups are reasoning humans: they just came to a different conclusion in their reasoning. The fact that one group had the power to implement their reasoning is just an example of what happens when a group gets power.

So yes, it is an expression of survival of the fittest—humans emulating animals in an expression of freedom-worship: humanity gone wild.

You really want to see when humanity went wild? God sent His Son, the Creator Jesus Christ, knowing that people were going to reject Him and stood back as people took Him and crucified Him. Man, the Thinking Beast, in its effrontery stood up on its hindlegs, 6 feet of flesh and raised its puny paws against the Creator of all by killing Jesus Christ.

The question shouldn’t be “How can there be evil in the world?” because we’re in the world, we should know the answer already. And the question shouldn’t be “Why doesn’t he put a stop to it right now?” because in all honesty, we should look back to the crucifixion of His Son and wonder “why is he waiting so long?”

Peter and Paul both come to the rescue: “God isn’t taking his promises for granted—like people are known to do—but He is patient with us, not willing that any get wiped out but that all should repent.” And “What if God, who was extremely willing to show his just anger, patiently endured the actions of those who deserved his just anger?”

So ask the final question: “If he’s properly angry; is he waiting on me to repent?”