"And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.'" -Mark 10:18
Often times people ask the questions, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "If God is real, why does he let bad things happen?" "Why me?" "Don't I deserve better than this?" These are questions that are always asked in the misunderstanding of what good is, and a discontentment with what is promised.
The question I would first like to address is, "If God is real, why does He let bad things happen?" This question bothers me for more than the obvious reasons. God, the creator of all things, created people, humans, to serve Him.He gave them simple instructions and a way to follow them. And when His creation became incompetent and continually broke those laws, God had compassion on them and send His only son to serve His creation, and then die a slow and cruel death. Now let me ask you this: If God sent His son to not only die a cruel death, but to live a life of hardship and to serve those who, had it not been for them, he wouldn't have had to be there, that any human deserves better? Does any human deserve better than Jesus? No. Not at all. Jesus was and is perfect, and if He wasn't blessed in an earthly way, then why should anyone else be? Now God does bless us, and often in more ways than Jesus was blessed, but this is something to think about. I'm not saying that we should turn aside all blessings, but that we should look at it in a different way.
Instead of seeing things in the way that God is letting bad things happen, but that He is letting you grow. He is allowing you to better see why He set these laws in place. Also, if you follow God and if you are baptized and stay faithful, you will receive the crown of life (Mark 16:16 and John 3:15). How is this a bad thing? Yes unfortunate things happen, but in the end, if you remain faithful, you will not only have gotten into heaven, but you will have let your light shine (Matthew 5:16) your entire Christian life, and what's bad about that?
"Why do bad things happen to good people?" First of all, what qualifies a person as, "good"? In Mark 10:18, Jesus, Himself says, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone?" However, for the sake of answering the question, I will change "good people" to "Christians", because really, all men are equal to God (Romans 2:11). Now, like I said in the previous paragraph, living a life towards God is not a bad life no matter how tough the times get. In fact I wrote an article about it not too long ago (you can read it if you click here). It doesn't matter how hard times get, if you are a true Christian, then you will live in heaven for eternity and it doesn't matter how hard your life was on earth because it's not even a fraction of the time that we will spend in heaven.
Today I would like to encourage you all to think about these things and study them for yourselves. I'd like to encourage you all to look at things, instead of man's perspective, but God's perspective. It can be difficult at times but it makes everything so much easier to understand. And one day, you'll be in paradise and look back, and you'll thank yourself.
