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Why did [God let] this happen?

by James Barringer  
10/01/2010 / Christian Living

One of the neat things about living in an orderly world is that we have the ability to look at virtually anything, ask "Why is it this way," and reasonably expect a good answer. Indeed, most of us look curiously at the world sometime around age three or four, and so begin the process of annoying the tar out of our parents, a process which we will spend the next fifteen or so years perfecting. But I digress.

There are sensible answers to questions about the world we live in: "Why is the sky blue" and "If the earth is spinning, why don't I go flying off into space," for instance. There are also sensible answers about our interactions with people: "Why does daddy say I can't have five cookies before dinner" and "Why does mommy make me clean my room" being just two examples. Note that we usually only ask those questions about our parents when we want them to justify something we don't like. We are generally not too concerned with the reason or justification if we want whatever it is they're giving us.

Given this track record, it's quite understandable that whenever God gives us something we don't like, we would come at it from the understanding that there is probably a very good answer, and we start asking God, "Why are you letting this happen?" But that doesn't always work, does it? I've been reading the book of Job lately - that perennial textbook for the question of God's relationship to human suffering. Yet I think that the book of Job offers far fewer answers than we might think.

For example, Job asks himself, "Why is God letting this happen to me?" The really crazy thing is that he is completely wrong with every single suggestion he gives. First of all, he seems to think that God is personally attacking him. In 5:20, he asks God, "Why have you made me your target," and in 16:7, accuses God, "You have devastated my entire household." Yet God didn't do those things, did he? He wasn't the one who caused catastrophe to come to Job; Satan did that. He didn't make Job his target. Every time Job tried to figure out why bad things were happening to him, he whiffed - and if he, being an extremely righteous and extremely wise man, was so far off base, how wrong must you and I be when we try to figure out God's ways?

The second thing I noticed about the book of Job is that God never does explain himself. Satan opens the book by saying that he was looking for someone to destroy. God suggests Job...for no other reason than that Job is really righteous. He never says he's doing it as a test; he never says he's doing it to bring some greater good out of it; he never says any of those other silly little Sunday-School platitudes that people throw at you when they're trying and failing to comfort you. The whole issue is simply a giant question mark. We don't know why he singled out Job. "Why did God let this happen" to Job is a dead-end question. If God didn't bother to give an answer to Job - you know, the time that he was actually writing a textbook about suffering for the rest of humanity to read for thousands of years - what makes any one of us think he's going to give an answer to us?

I want to revisit a point I made earlier. I said that we tend to only demand a reason when we want someone to defend a choice or action we don't like. We tend not to pester God for explanations when he's showering us with blessings. But the moment something goes sour, you'd better believe we're right there, demanding to know why and how he's behind it. I am not pointing fingers at anybody else. I am probably the loudest voice in his ear at moments like those. But it is pretty hypocritical, is it not?

And basically, you know and I know exactly what we're doing during those times. We are - we might not admit it, but we are - suggesting to God that his plan is faulty. "You'd better have a really good reason for doing that, and I want to know what the reason is, or else you shouldn't have done it." In fact, this is the attitude that causes God to rip Job a new one. "Will you even put me in the wrong?" God demands in Job 40:8. "Will you condemn me so that you may be in the right?" And, as he always does, God has a pretty good point. He is God; we are not. He sees the big picture; we see a tiny sliver. What arrogance makes us think we can require an explanation from God? How dare we demand that he justify himself to us?

But of course, we don't want to hear any of that if we're suffering, as you've probably found out if you're reading this article to find out why God has allowed your problems to happen to you. When we're suffering, we're hurt and scared, and like many hurt and scared people do, we become aggressive, only our aggression is turned toward God. If you're truly honest, you have to admit that there are no noble motives behind asking God "why." It's not merely that we want to know how God works, because we don't ask "why" when good things happen to us, only bad. It's not merely that we want information; if God were to answer that there was in fact no reason for what was happening to us, we probably would not be happy with that answer, showing that we want something more than to know why. No, our motives are selfish; we want God to justify himself to us. He has no obligation to do so. That's why he usually doesn't answer the question.

Jesus is no help in this area either. "In this life, you will have troubles," he shrugs in John 16:33. "But take heart! I have overcome the world." He never addresses the question of why bad things happen to us; he just takes it for granted that they will. The only thing he promises is that we can overcome them if we rely on him. I don't have time to do a proper theodicy now (that is a defense of why God allows suffering), but let me point out that in context, Jesus is explaining that bad things will happen to his disciples because lost people will hate them. I'd guess that 90% of the truly bad things that happen in your life are the result of moral choices made by human beings with the freedom to make moral choices. "Why did God let" a woman be raped, a politician you don't like win the election, your daughter get pregnant? Let me reverse the question and ask why you think God is somehow responsible for the moral choices made by humans with free will. You can't really suggest that God should have interfered with a person's free will because if God did that all the time then free will wouldn't exist.

If you came to this essay looking for an answer to why God allows bad things to happen to people, you will probably go away unsatisfied, which is fine because if you read the Bible looking for that answer, you'll come away unsatisfied from that as well. The Bible never really does explain why evil comes upon us (except, of course, to chalk it up to sin and the consequences of moral choices made by fallen people). Instead it merely offers us an alternative: a good and sovereign King who is in charge during the good times and the bad, who promises that any bad things that do happen to us will eventually be turned for good (Romans 8:28) and, of course, offers us a tantalizing vision of an eternity in the New Jerusalem during which pain, fear, sin, and disaster will all be distant memories (Revelation 21-22). God does not offer us the answers we seek. He merely offers his arm to put around our shoulders, his ear to listen to us when we call on him, and his hope when we have no other hope. No bad thing that could happen to us is stronger than all of that.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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