“I’ve seen plenty of bad that has happened without any glory to God.
There’s a lot of suffering in this world. I find God cruel for not stopping it…
or at best, insensitive to our pain.”
“The apostle wanted them to know this love that surpassed their knowledge
and understanding, that they might filled as only God could fill them.”
Reverend Lawrence gave a little laugh. “Sounds good doesn’t it? But I’ll bet
that Seth and Becky Farley didn’t feel that kind of love when Becky was
diagnosed with cancer. And what about you, Mayor, when your grandson nearly
died from a tractor accident. It sure didn’t feel like God’s loved when the
doctors told you he might not make it, did it?” “No sir, it did not.”
“I don’t understand why he died. I don’t know. It makes me think that
the world is a terrible place when things like that can happen. I mean, how
could God let Nick die? How could God let those baby birds die?”
Why
grow a rebellious girl like Dinah into a wonderful woman of God," Tyler
offered, "then let disaster rip through and take her and her unborn
child?"
Where is God when bad things
happen? It’s the question of the ages isn’t it? All the way back to Job, a book
of the Bible that many say happened in early Genesis, people have been asking
this question. Many theologians and preachers have attempted to answer this
question through the years. God has given some answers straight up in the
Bible. He says things like, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you”.
But we don’t feel that way when in
the midst of tragedy.
Christian fiction is supposed to
be stories that help point people towards the Bible and the God of the Bible.
So it’s not surprising that many Christian fiction authors tackle this huge
question. It’s interesting to see what sort of answers they give.
I decided to write a post on this
topic after recently reading 3 books that addressed this question. Two pointed
readers towards truth, one took a very different approach.
Here’s the first book: Along Came Jones
by Linda Windsor, Multonomah Publishers, 2003
Deanna is a fool. She fell for a
classic move. A good looking employer paid the compliments, dropped the hints
and got her to do his bidding. How was she to know he was getting her involved
in a scam? Now the police suspect her and so she’s on the run. When she
crashes, Shep finds her on his property and takes her in till her car can get
fixed. Her stupid, foreign, expensive car that will take weeks to get the right
parts for. It’s a romance story so of course Shep and Deanna start falling in
love, the bad guys and the law both come chasing Deanna and lots of excitement
occurs. But in the midst of that Deanna starts finding faith and asking the
questions. Here’s the answers given in this book:
“When bad things happen to good innocent people, when we are pushed to
the very limit of our endurance, I don’t care how strong your faith is, doubt
can shake it, and you will become involved in a spiritual battle between good
and evil that will take no prisoners. One or the other will win.. My question
to you is: Which one will triumph over you?”
“God how can I separate this hurt from the ruins of my hope when I can’t
even think straight? Emotion collided with reason, feelings with knowledge.
Yet, above the confused clamor, there was one voice that, like Shep’s plea,
would not be lost in the fray. ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.”Deanna
seized at it like a lifeline. ‘Then hold me, Lord. Help me to see what is
right. Give me strength and courage to do what You’d have me do. You alone are
the Rock that will not shift beneath my feet. You are all I have left.’ ‘God is
enough.’ Shep’s reassuring words came back to her, words of truth. ‘Amen’.”
Linda Windsor’s answer to the
question is that bad things WILL happen, but the TRUTH must be remembered and clung to in those
emotional moments: God will NEVER leave us and is willing to give us strength
to endure any trial we face.
Two teenage girls become sisters
when their divorced parents remarry. The sisters couldn’t be more different.
Stephanie is a kind sweet girl who is a major people pleaser. Dina could care
less what anyone thinks of her and is quick to let her emotions control her
speech. Stephanie assumes God is real and kind of tries to intentionally live a
moral life. Dina sees suffering in the world and assumes God is not there.
Here’s the answers she is given.
”Why do bad things like this happen? This
is why I don’t believe in God,” I said.
“We don’t know why this whale beached itself,” Mom said. “But I know
what you mean. Last night when we were in the hospital talking with Grammy, I
was thinking about how much pain Grammy was in and how hard it was to see
that.”
“‘And I don’t believe in God. And one reason I don’t is because there is
so much evil,’ Diana added. There was a silent moment, and I held my breath.
What would Daddy and Lynn say?
Finally Daddy said, ‘One of the wonderful things about poems is that we
read them year after year, and as we get older and wiser, we still get profound
meaning from them. You will memorize this poem, and it has a meaning to you
now. Ten years from now, you will still remember the poem, but what it means to
you by then may be completely different. That’s the amazing thing about great
literature.’ And that was all anyone said. For whatever reasons, the moment
passed by peacefully. Diana looked at Daddy and nodded.”
Lisa Kline does not give any real
answers. She makes no attempts to communicate truth, only to portray a picture
that teen girls question faith.
A Sensible Arrangement (Lone Star Brides) (Volume 1) by Tracie Peterson, Bethany House Publishers, 2014
I’ve always categorized Tracie
Peterson’s books as “Ok, not great, not my favorite, but I’ll read them.” But
this series really stands out to me. The main characters have definite
incorrect beliefs about God or the world and they aren’t allowed to stay there.
Those with the truth challenge and encourage. And in one book, it’s not even the
side characters, but a realization herself that starts changing them. In this
book, Marty has lost her husband to an accident years ago and while she’s
recovered from the hurt and is now remarried and has a life full of blessings,
she’s still mad at God. Her maid has a strong faith despite very recent
tragedies that continue to very negatively impact her, including a horrid scar
on her face from the attack that left her as a poor orphan. She says
“As the pastor said at church just a few Sundays back, God isn’t in the
business of doing things without them having a purpose that will lead to His
glory.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Marty generally kept her religious
thoughts to herself, but with Alice she felt she could be honest. “I’ve seen
plenty of bad that has happened without any glory to God. There’s a lot of
suffering in this world. I find God cruel for not stopping it… or at best,
insensitive to our pain.”
“I beg to differ,” Alice said, surprising Marty with her bold stand.
“There will always be cruel and insensitive people, but those are not qualities
that can be assigned to God. The Bible says that God is love. Love is never
insensitive or cruel, so therefore I cannot believe God capable of such… human
attributes.
“So you believe God had you attacked and injured for His glory, and it
wasn’t an act of cruelty?”
“I don’t think God had me attacked at all. I think the men who attacked
me didn’t much care what God wanted.”
“But God could have prevented the entire situation.”
“He could have,” Alice agreed. “He could have done any number of things.
And while I believe God did allow this to happen to me, I don’t think it was
His desire. I don’t think He took any delight in the occurrence.”
“Then why didn’t He intervene to stop it? The Bible talks about how
Jesus and the Spirit both intercede for us. Why not intercede to prevent an
evil man from harming an innocent one?”
“Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive evil?” Alice
countered.
“Isn’t that Job?”
Alice nodded. “It is Job. Second chapter, tenth verse. Job is suffering
and his wife wants him to curse God and die. That’s how he answers her. To my
way of thinking, evil will always be with us because of the sin of Adam. The
world is not a perfect place.”
“So your injury was just one of those things that happened because the
world isn’t perfect? Doesn’t that alleviate God’s responsibility in the
matter?”
“And what would God’s responsibility have been?” Alice asked.
“To keep you from harm. To save you.”
“But He did save me, Mrs. Wythe. I nearly died from loss of blood and
then an infection.”
Marty shook her head.
Alice gave a brief nod before her face lip up in a smile. “I suppose you
could say that it was my fault or my father’s fault for putting me in a
position of danger. god didn’t force us to go out that dark ingith. In fact, my
father had commented that it wasn’t a wise idea. However, he wanted to take
care of business that evening. I decided to accompany him, even though he had
suggested it would be better for me to remain at home. So who is at fault?”
“But my point is that if God truly is love, He would intervene and keep
such bad things from happening to the innocent.”
“Why?”
Marty turned and looked up at Alice. “Why? You ask why God should keep
the innocent from harm?”
“Yes. He didn’t keep Jesus from harm, and Jesus was completely innocent.
He was beaten and spat upon and crucified. Does that mean God didn’t love
Him? Jesus is a part of God – how could
He not love himself?”
Marty frowned as she considered the young woman’s words. “You don’t
think that God… well… that He should keep the innocent from harm?”
Alice shrugged. “If you are suggesting that God somehow owes it to us,
then no. I think God has given us a great many blessings beyond what we deserve
and yet has withheld a great deal of the punishment we DO deserve.”
Theology. It’s a beautiful thing.
Alice answers Marty with great wisdom. The reality is that Scripture makes it
quite clear that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans
3:23) and deserve nothing less than His wrath and condemnation (Romans 6:23).
Yet, God, in His mercy, grace and love offers us salvation – eternal life. We
still suffer on this earth because sin is present and God does not make us
robots. He gives humans a choice. Some reject Him and do horrid things to
innocent people. And the earth itself was cursed after the fall of man. Every
horrid awful thing that God prevents is way beyond what we deserve. Instead of
blaming God for the bad things that happen the blame needs to lie with the evil
one and the horrid destruction he has done to God’s beautiful creation. Some
day God will wipe out all the evil and create a new Heaven and a new Earth.
Till then, there WILL be suffering and pain and death. But God’s promise is to
help us through all of it and for those that choose Him, to grant us a perfect
life free of all suffering, pain and death, when this life is over.
Years ago some authors connected
with Focus On The Family got together and wrote a series based off of the
Christian Teen Magazine, Brio. In this final book, one of the characters has
lost her trust in God. A tragedy has happened to one of their closest friends
and Jacie has realized that God’s first priority isn’t making us happy. How can
she believe in a God who isn’t concerned with her happiness?
Do you believe God is good
all the time?
Tyler took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I don’t know, Jacie.
It doesn’t seem like it.”
Tears began again. “Then how are we supposed to believe?”
“Believe what, Jacie? The God we’ve made up in our own imaginations, or
the God who really is?” Tyler moved to sit next to her. “We squish God into a
tiny box, and when He pops out, we’re shocked and horrified. W e tell God what
He looks like instead of letting God define Himself for us... The way I see it” he continued “I have a few
options in this world: Do things my way – trusting myself, a screwed-up human
being. Do things the way someone else wants me to – trusting another screwed-up
human being. Do things the way the enemy of God would have me do – trusting
what I can see. nd you know, sometimes that option looks pretty good for a
while. My last option, the way I see it, is to do things the way God wants me
to – attempting to trust a Being we don’t always understand. One who does not
always make sense in what He asks or tell me to do.
He picked up Jacie’s hand and began to rub her fingers one at a time. “I
already know I make a complete mess of things when I’m in charge. I don’t trust
what others think is right. Year, I can create my own god or spirituality the
way they do, but really, who am I fooling? I’d still be ultimately following
myself. And if I follow some human leader who thinks he has all the answers,
I’m just following an arrogant egotists who is more interested in himself than
me.
Jacie tried to listen.
“Like I said, I’ve seen what the enemy of God does, and it’s guaranteed
to ultimately lead to some sort of life-sucking horrors. So what does that
leave me? A God who is unpredictable, who claims He ultimately does things for
our good. But what if that good often comes in a package that looks pretty
lousy?”
Jacie thought of Tyler’s dad. He claimed to be a Christian but he used
his ‘faith’ as a weapon to crush his family. “What if it isn’t really good and
God is just trying to fool us?”
“I’ve thought of that. What if God is not ALL good? What then?” Tyler turned to look at her. “Jacie, it
ultimately comes back to my options. No matter how you look at it, there’s only
one who stands out as the least bad of all choices.”
Jacie nodded but hated the answer.
“It always comes down to a choice of faith, doesn’t it? Either we
believe that God is perfectly good and we trust Him in spite of all the evidence
to the contrary. Or we don’t believe God is perfectly good, but He’s the best
option we’ve got and so we trust that some of what He does will be good.”
Jacie frowned. The options she had didn’t seem very good. But Tyler had
a point. Either way, God was the best choice, either way she had to have faith
enough to give Him her obedience. Or s he’d have to trust herself or someone
else equally fallible.
Not very pretty is it? But these
teens boil it down to one simple factor: faith. Either you believe that the
Bible is true when it claims God is good or you look at the tragedies of life
and choose to believe He is not. God will not force anyone to believe in Him.
It’s a choice.
In conclusion, we have 4 very different books. Two youth
fiction, one historical fiction and one modern/realistic/romantic fiction. Yet
all 3 claim to be Christian and offer thoughts on why bad things happen to good
people. The question is, do any of these fictional stories help you understand
the issue better? Do they shed light on the question that causes so many to
stumble? If so, please read the book, then write and thank the author for
offering encouragement!
But the story isn’t really about them. It’s about
their parents. Sort of. Dan isn’t really Cody’s dad. He’s Cody’s dad’s best
friend and partner in fighting fires. He grew up as a playmate to Cody’s dad
and mom. In fact, Dan noticed Cody’s mom had suddenly turned into a young woman
first. So twelve years ago, when Cody’s dad died, Dan stepped in and took over
the role of father. Dan is exactly as Cody was described above: he’s the fire
chief, grew up in this small town, admired by and kind to all, a strong
Christian and very attractive. Geneieve however is exactly as her daughter was
described. The abandonment of Raine’s father was the final straw for her. No
more trusting anyone or making any attempt to lay down roots. She’s just
passing through – like always. 