Do good things happen to bad people?
Do bad things happen to good people? Interesting question – common sense tells us that they do.
We see unarmed civilians killed in wars; we see law-abiding folk going about their daily affairs gunned down in mass shootings; suicide bombers detonate their killing rucksacks amid throngs of carefree tourists; ordinary home-owners lose everything in floods or earthquakes; hard-working folk are made redundant from their jobs without warning after many years of faithful service; terminal illness strikes the very young and the most philanthropic. The list goes on.
Do bad things happen to good people – our common sense cries out, “Yes, they do!”
Often when this question is asked, however, there is an unspoken one lying behind it - which is actually the real question - and this is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
This question is both interesting and tricky. It is tricky because there is invariably a motive behind this question – usually, the questioner is seeking reassurance that they are one of the ‘good people’, and thus they tacitly imply that nothing bad should happen to them.
A delicate manoeuvre can be required to show such a person that their own perceived ‘goodness’ is actually nothing more than futile self-righteousness, offering no protection from ‘bad’ things.
Here’s the situation. When God had completed the world, it was ‘very good’ (Genesis 2:31), i.e. it was flawless and entirely devoid of ‘bad’ things. When man (Adam) sinned, death entered the world, the ‘very good’ creation was spoiled – ruined, in fact – and ‘bad’ things began to happen.
Most significantly, physical death became inevitable, so everyone dies now, even the good people.
Soon afterwards we had the first murder when Cain killed Abel (remember, Abel had done nothing wrong, so was one of the ‘good people’), and nine generations later the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that ‘every imagination of the thoughts of (man’s) heart was only evil continually’ (Genesis 6:5).
In response, God flooded the earth. Although after the flood God started again with mankind through Noah’s family, the ‘brokenness’ of creation resulting from Adam’s sin remained, and remains today. Mankind is still fallen (people hurt themselves and one another – ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, as Burns wrote), as is creation (earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, etc).
Man’s body is also still ‘broken’, so cells malfunction bringing disease, or it simply eventually expires in old age. While people bring some bad things on themselves (smoking 25+ cigarettes a day makes you 25x more likely to get lung cancer than a non-smoker [NHS figures]), they don’t bring all bad things on themselves – many non-smokers also get lung cancer.
While teaching on earth, Jesus made the point that nobody is immune from ‘bad’ things happening to them (Luke 13:2-5), and it is for this reason that we all need to get right with God.
Even if we are blessed with a ripe old age, we will eventually die. That is a bad thing, as it was not part of the original creation. If we are not so blessed, death may strike without warning at any moment, as it will for thousands of people around the world today. That is a very bad thing.
To return to our question then, bad things happen to all kinds of people, good, bad and those in between. Thank God that in Christ there is the assurance that a good thing (everlasting life), which trumps any and all bad things, is available.