Calamities lead us to repentance.
- Theodicy/Problem of Evil
- Evil does not necessarily happen as a consequence for specific sins
- God uses worldly tragedies to bring about repentance and eternal salvation
Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is so good and so powerful, why does evil and suffering exist? These questions are known as the problem of evil and theodicy. These are the types of questions which lead many people to doubt God’s goodness, especially when terrible tragedies strike those whom we love. Some people respond to these doubts by forsaking the Lord. Others make the assumption that the evil things are happening because the people receiving them have done some specific evil thing and are being punished.
For example, when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans people claimed this was the result of their specific sins committed on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. Or on 9/11 when the airplanes hit the towers, people claimed this was God punishing the greed of those on Wall Street. To be fair, this belief that God punishes a city or a people for their specific sins isn’t unheard of in the Bible. For example, God rained down fire and brimstone on Sodom because of their disgusting sins. Or God handed the Israelites over to the Asyrians and Babylonains for their faithlessness. As st. Paul writes in the Epistle: “With most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”
Or there are also countless examples of various consequences for particular sins. If you’re a liar, people don’t trust you. If you’re a thief, you get put in jail. If you kill another, you may be killed in return. A person may be forgiven his sins, but that doesn’t mean everything goes back to normal, because there are temporal consequences for sins.
But does all of this mean that every time we are suffering it is because we are being punished for specific sins? Jesus answers the question for us: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
While it is true that God has at times brought about specific punishments for specific sins on earth, this isn’t the case every single time an evil thing happens. In the tragedy that is presented to Jesus, it could be misconstrued to mean that the Galileans were worse sinners because the tragedy took place in the temple. This likely took place during a passover, when Galileans were in Jerusalem to slaughter their lambs, and on this occasion Pilate entered the inner courtyard of the temple, where Gentiles were not permitted, and slaughtered some men from Galilee and mingled their blood with the blood of the lambs. This would be an atrocity comparable to some criminals entering the sanctuary during communion distribution and killing us and mingling our blood with the blood of Christ.
Because this took place in the temple, it’s easy to misconstrue it to have religious overtones and to be the work of God. So Jesus raises another example, that of a tower in Siloam near Jerusalem, which fell and killed 18 people. This tragedy has no religious overtones, is not caused by the ill-will of people, and is basically a natural disaster. In other words, the tower crushing these people is a random and unexplainable tragedy.
Jesus explains simply that these tragedies didn’t happen because they were worse sinners than anyone else. Note that He didn’t say they weren’t sinners at all, but that they were sinners, and they were the same level of sinners as those who didn’t die. Thus Jesus helps us to conclude that “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” In other words, we’re just as sinful, and we are equally as deserving of such death as them. We are no better and we are no less sinful, therefore we must repent!
Because these tragedies are not necessarily the result of specific sins, these tragedies apply equally to us all. God uses these worldly tragedies in order to bring us all to repentance and to eternal salvation. All of us are sinners, and all of us deserve worldly punishments. We live in a country that celebrates Sodomy, a sin named after a city that was destroyed by God, and we deserve fire and brimstone. We live in a country that has fallen away from the Lord dramatically in the last few generations, and we deserve to be taken captive by a modern day Babylon and lose everything. Therefore, our response must be repentance!
I received the question numerous times in 2020 if everything that was going on was God punishing us. Perhaps that’s something you still wonder about. While I cannot definitively say that 2020 was the consequence of a specific sin or sins, I will say that our response to 2020 must be one of repentance. I’ll be frank with you, I am disappointed that as a church body and as Christians at large in America, we did not respond to the whole ordeal with repentance. We responded with fear and anger towards one another, but very little repentance towards God.
For that lack of repentance alone we ought to repent! Going forward, we must learn to see that God is active in this world, and He uses tragic events in order to bring us to our knees in repentance, to plead with Him for grace and mercy, to forgive us our sins. When there is flooding, like there was last year, we must respond with repentance. When there are wars, as there is now, we must respond with repentance. When a stabbing happens, like happened on Tuesday at Kwiktrip, we must repent. In all of these tragedies God is calling us to repentance.
This is what we learn in the parable Jesus teaches about the fig tree. God is calling His people to repentance through crosses and trials. In order to try and renovate the fig tree, they dig around it, cutting roots and throwing manure on it. Of course you can understand the science of what is going on to jumpstart the tree here, but I’m not here to give you a botanical lesson, instead I want you to think about it more simply. In order to jumpstart our faith and bring us to repentance, at times God sends us hardships; He cuts up our roots and hurts us, He throws poop at us and humbles us. This is a light-hearted way of talking about the terrible tragedies of life which are meant to bring us to the Lord.
We must recognize that God is not as short-sighted as we are. While we have a difficult time seeing beyond our immediate situation, God looks at our lives in a multigenerational way with a view towards eternity. The Lord’s will is that we would repent of our sins and have faith in Christ Jesus and so be saved and live eternally with Him in paradise. The Lord’s will isn’t just that we would be comfortable for a time on earth, but that we would be saved from the fires of hell and live with Him forever. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”
Thus, in this sin-filled world, God is who is almighty and perfectly good, uses earthly temporary tragedy and suffering for our eternal good. As such, why do bad things happen to good people? First off, there are no “good” people, all of us are sinners, and none of us deserve good. Secondly, God who is perfectly good and almighty is all-powerful, He is in control of all things, and therefore even the devil is subject to the Lord’s will, and God works through sinners and evil in order to bring about His ultimate will for our salvation.
Instead of focusing on the bad things happening, we ought to focus on God’s stupendous patience and long-suffering for sinful man. In the parable of the fig tree, the man was very patient with the tree before deciding to cut it down. Based upon levitical laws and the growth of fig trees, it would’ve grown for three years after being planted, then it was to bear fruit for three years without harvesting it, then in the 7th year the fruit was picked and offered to the Lord. So when the man has been waiting three years for fruit, he has been waiting for that 7th year of fruit for three years. Nine years have passed since planting the tree, it should’ve fruited 6 times already, and it’s still barren. But, the Lord is merciful and even though He has already waited so long, far longer than is really reasonable, He is going to wait even another year and give the tree another chance.
So it is with the Lord and us. He is not slow to fulfill His promises, as we might count slowness, but He is patient and merciful. He gives us abundant opportunities to repent. He even goes to the extra work of sending us some trials in order that we might bear fruits of repentance. While we may only see God being slow and allowing tragedies to happen, what we don’t see is God working through patience and tragedies in order to save some of His beloved people.
That the Lord uses a tree as an example of His mercy is most appropriate. Just as sin and death came to all man through a tree, so through the tree of the cross has life now come to all men. The merciful Lord Jesus Christ was mounted on that dead tree of death, and transformed it into a living fruitful tree decorated with the fruit of His own body, by which we are fed and nourished amidst the many changes and chances of life.
The Lord Jesus subjected Himself to the punishment which we deserve because of our sins. Instead of God’s wrath being poured out on us, it has been poured out on Jesus for us. The Lord has carried our iniquities, and He was wounded with the punishments that should have been our own. Dear Christians: when tragedy strikes you, the Lord is not punishing you, for the Lord has laid the iniquity of your sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God. Instead, through these crosses and trials of life, the Lord is drawing you to Himself, bidding you to repent of your sins, and to find comfort and hope in Him.