Why do bad things happen to good people?

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:3-9).

Why do bad things happen to good people? Many books have been written trying to answer this question. Today we will look at this question as well, but we will look at it from a uniquely Christian point of view. So we will rephrase the question slightly, and ask it this way: Why do hard times come to those who trust in God? This is the unspoken question that the Holy Spirit addresses through Saint Peter’s pen in the passage quoted above.

Peter’s first Epistle is a letter addressed to Christians who were experiencing persecution because of their belief in Jesus. He writes to encourage them, and so He begins his letter by speaking about hope. Peter says, "In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." According to the Bible, hope comes through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. As we think about this, it makes perfect sense. Scripture tells us repeatedly that every human being is born with the taint of selfishness. From conception, every one of us had only one priority—ourselves. We had to be taught to share. We had to be taught to wait our turn. It is our very nature to say "Me first", to want the biggest piece of cake, to whine when we don’t get our way.

God hates selfishness. God created us to love Him and to love each other, but selfishness undermines love and ruins it. To be selfish is to disobey the Lord, who said, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34). To live life under God’s anger is to live a life without hope, because it can only end badly. To disobey God is to die eternally.

But Jesus’ resurrection gives us hope. It gives us hope because it proves God’s forgiving love for us. Because God loves us, He sent His Son to live among us, teach us about God’s love, and die because of our sins. Jesus was never selfish; in fact, Jesus was so unselfish that He volunteered to suffer His father’s anger at all of our selfishness, an anger that resulted in Jesus’ death. But just three days later, Jesus rose from the dead. He rose from the dead to be our living Savior. He rose from the dead so that He can forgive us for our selfishness. When we regret being selfish and ask Jesus for another chance, He assures us "Don’t be afraid. I have already endured your punishment. Take my hand, and I will show you how to love unselfishly." It is only because Jesus lives now and forever that we can have hope.

Saint Peter calls our hope a living hope. This is not an idle hope that sits in the back of your mind. This is a hope that shapes your life. If you are hoping to buy a new car, that hope affects your life. You will cut back your spending on luxuries, and you will consider carefully how much money you will spend to keep your old car running until you trade it in. Your hope for the future affects your behavior today. It is the same with the hope that we have in Jesus’ resurrection. Because we know that we are inheriting unending life with those we love along with perfect health and freedom from all frustrations, we act differently. We want to end up in that heavenly place that Jesus has opened to us, so we avoid those things that could lead us to a different, hellish place. A person who saves up for a new car doesn’t spend his money foolishly—he saves wisely. A person who saves up for an inheritance in heaven doesn’t waste his time with earthly priorities—he invests his time wisely by preparing himself for life in heaven. Our hope in Jesus is living, because it plays out in our lives.

Peter tells us that those who live their lives in hope—those who live by faith in Jesus—are shielded by God’s power in this life. God shields us from those who would try and turn us away from our hope in Jesus. God shields us from three enemies. The first enemy is the leader of devils, Satan. Satan selfishly rebelled against God and knows that he is doomed to eternity in hell because of it. But misery loves company, and Satan wants to surround himself with miserable people, people who have no hope. Of course, no one would choose eternal despair and pain over eternal life and love--so Satan tells us lies to trick us into following his lead. Satan tries to make us doubt God’s love for us, doubt God’s authority over us, even doubt God’s very existence. Satan knows that if we doubt God, we will lose our hope in Him—and lose our heavenly inheritance.

Our second enemy is the world we live in. More specifically, it is the people of the world who do not believe in Jesus and are, by default, Satan’s unknowing pawns. These people follow Satan’s way, the way of selfishness and pride. These people live on a diet of flawed love, love that has been twisted and diluted by selfishness. These people are starved for love, because the imperfect love in their lives can never satisfy them. Selfishness always sours their relationships with others.

Such people need Jesus’ love, the love that He shows through the Bible and through the lives of those who hope in Him. But the people of the world are selfish and prideful; many of them resent being told that their lives need to change in order to improve. Their selfishness tells them that they know how best to live life. Out of selfishness, they tell us that we should change to live as they live, because they know what is best. Their selfishness moves them to exclude us from their group of friends if we refuse to fit in. Their selfishness may even move them to insult our beliefs or make fun of us or try to hurt us, because we insist on following Jesus’ ways alone. A selfish child who can’t have every toy he sees will often convince himself that the toys he doesn’t have aren’t worth having—he has all the best toys. Similarly, many of people of this world who don’t have hope in Jesus convince themselves that such hope is not worth having.

The third enemy is ourselves—more specifically, the selfish nature that is our birthright. Earlier I described our selfish tendencies in terms of a child’s behavior. The sad fact is that, even as adults, these same selfish urges still lurk within us. When we get mad, when we get drunk, when we don’t get our way, our childish selfishness comes bursting out, hurting anyone who happens to be in the way. In spite of everything that we’ve been taught about sharing and taking our turn, we still want to be first, we still want the biggest piece. Even though Jesus has taken us by the hand to lead us through life, when we see something that we want we start tugging on Jesus to go our way, and when He won’t change direction, we seriously consider snatching our hand away so that we can be free to go after that which is tempting us.

These three enemies—the devil, the people of this world, and our sinful human nature—are the enemies that God’s power shields us from. But this shielding is not total, because Peter says, "now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." What are these trials? They are the struggle that we go through every time that we resist temptation, using the power of God’s strength. When Satan whispers in our ear that God doesn’t really love people, we are subjected to a trial, a struggle. Will we start to doubt God’s love for us, or will we turn to the Scriptures and read of the tremendous sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf? Will we let Satan’s lies crush our hope, or will we pray to Jesus to strengthen our hope in Him?

It is the same with the ungodly people of the world. When the person you are dating wants to sleep with you, you are subjected to a trial. Will you agree with the world that sex outside of marriage is okay, or will you turn to the Scriptures and read about how sexual union is set apart by God as one of the blessings that makes marriage special? Will you make life-changing decisions based on fear of being rejected by others, or will you make them based on trust that Jesus knows what is best for you, both now and ever after?

It is no different when it comes to your own inner struggles. When you sit down after a long day of work, you are subjected to a trial: should you pick up the Bible and read a couple of chapters, or would you rather turn on the TV or check your email? Will you invest your time in preparing yourself for the life to come in heaven, or will you use your time to become more of an expert on the affairs of this world? Where are your priorities?

As we consider our past struggles with these three enemies, we must admit that we’ve lost more battles than we’ve won. It is precisely for this reason that Jesus died for us—so that He can forgive us for all these failures and allow us to begin again. But since we love our Lord Jesus, since we are grateful for the heavenly inheritance that He’s promised us, we don’t want to continue living this way. We want to be stronger, better able to resist the temptations of our enemies. And it is for this reason that God shields us exactly the way He does. God shields us to protect us from certain failure; Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:13, "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." But God does not shield us from the trials of temptation completely; He allows just enough into our lives to test the quality of our faith.

Think about the pilot of a ship or an airplane. If the pilot succeeds in getting home safely through a violent storm, his skills as a pilot have improved and his next trip will be the safer for it. It is the same with our faith. Every struggle that we succeed in overcoming with God’s help makes our faith stronger. Every fight we win against our three enemies makes us better fighters in Jesus’ army. As we wrestle with the devil, the world and our flesh, we become stronger, purer, closer to the kind of people God wants us to be. None of us will ever become anything approaching perfect—we will only be rid of the sin that infests us when we die and enter heaven. But as we grow in living life by Jesus’ standards, we will find more and more opportunities to thank God for freeing us from slavery to sin and equipping us to do important things in His service. Nevertheless, we must always remain humble, remembering that we can only resist temptation with the help of our Lord Jesus. It is only with hope in eternity that we can say no to the momentary temptations of today.

I have reminded you that we are not to be selfish. Even the strengthening of our faith has value for other people besides ourselves. As a person’s faith grows, he is able to withstand stronger assaults from our three enemies. There are some believers who become true heroes of the faith—people like Martin Luther, who faced significant opposition because of their adherence to their Christian beliefs. God uses the faith of these pillars of the church as a witness to the unbelievers of the world. Unbelievers look at the faith God has built in such people and wonder, "What does that person believe that gives him the strength to face such adversity with such peace?" God strengthens and purifies our faith not only for our own good, but to lead our friends and co-workers to ask us about the love of God that they can see in our lives. God builds our faith so that we can share it with others.

Why do hard times come to those who trust in God? Because we don’t want to be weak Christians, we want to be strong—strong in love, strong in commitment to the Risen One who has rescued us from the dead-end life of selfishness. God lets us be tested, according to our ability to bear it, so that our faith can become stronger. As our faith grows stronger, our love for God and each other becomes purer. As our faith grows stronger, we know peace with increasing frequency as our confidence in the promised blessings of heaven grows. May the Lord make your faith strong, that your love may be purified and that you may have peace, confident that heaven is yours.