Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People
And other Questions People Get Mad When I Answer
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
In the course of teaching “The Epic of Eden,” I am asked this question all the time. And by it, people usually mean why do babies die, why are young parents struck with cancer, why are good citizens killed by drunk drivers? Sometimes the people asking this question are thinking more globally: Why do tyrannous governments thrive? Why does terrorism reproduce itself? Why are tens of thousands of children on this planet orphans?
So let me say up front that when I am asked this question, my heart breaks right along with the person asking it. Even the most casual perusal of my inbox on any given day reports more horrific realities than this heart can hold. But I am also intrigued by this question. The reason I’m intrigued is because the very voicing of this question demonstrates to me that humanity remembers where it came from. Our DNA seems to know that it is wrong for babies to die, for disease to pillage our bodies, for governments to abuse those they are called to protect. We seem to know intuitively that these things are wrong … even though this is the only existence we have ever known.
Every great movie you’ve ever watched, every fabulous novel you’ve ever read, every hero who has ever stepped off the pages of a comic book, movie script, or epic saga is that person who is able to defeat the tyrant, rescue the abused, and cheat death against impossible odds. Heck, the earliest literature we possess speaks of humanity’s quest for immortality (I’m thinking of the Gilgamesh Epic). So it would seem that somehow the children of Eve know that poverty, disease and death are wrong. Even though in all of our collective experience and memory humanity has always experienced poverty, disease and death. If expectation is built upon memory as the cognitive specialists insist, then why do we expect something other than what thousands of years of human existence has taught us to be true?
And let’s not dismiss this “sixth sense” that there is something better out there as an intuition born of faith. No, all of humanity somehow knows that our current existence is not what it is supposed to be. It takes very little effort to convince my seatmate on an airplane that there is something profoundly wrong with our world. Even the most committed atheist will readily state the same. So how is it we know something is wrong when we have never seen anything else? I am convinced that this “sixth sense” is evidence of the residual presence of the image of God in humankind. And that image remembers. It recognizes the “wrongness” of this world and cries out for the world as it should be: the blueprint of God’s original intent that was Eden.
So how do I go about answering this question when it is asked? Typically in two parts. The first part often doesn’t sit well with my audience: “There are no good people.” You can feel the silence in the room as people shift in their seats. But even though most folk are a bit shocked (and a little offended) at that response, reality is that in comparison to what humanity was designed to be, we are a broken, twisted, evil race. A quick perusal of today’s headlines or the most recent docu-drama will convince you of the same.
The prophet Isaiah (and the apostle Paul) put it this way: our finest actions and most selfless deeds are like “filthy rags” before the Father (Isa 64:6; cf. Rom 3:9-18). So although I might think of myself as a fairly “good” person, in comparison to what I was designed to be … not so much. In reality I am wholly corrupted—both morally and physically. Like the female wraith in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce who foolishly preened and primped her decaying body to charm the saints in heaven, my degree of degeneracy escapes me, but is wholly obvious to the one who created me. So am I a “good” person? Not if the definition of “good” is the “good” of Genesis 1.
The second part of my answer has to do with the fallen-ness of our world. No longer ordered according God’s perfect seven-day structure, no longer subjected to his ideal authority, this world is at war with itself. Our gene pool is flooded with death and disease, our relationships are consumed by self, our resources are limited, our planet is poisoned. Death is everywhere, anxiety abounds, and sin reproduces itself in every context. In essence, God has done exactly what we’ve asked—he has yielded this world to the authority of his stewards. The Creator’s guiding grace has been withdrawn. The reason bad things happen is not because God lets them happen in our generally good world, but because the nature of Adam’s world is evil—bad is now the norm.
I will never forget a paradigm-shifting lecture I heard in seminary. There I was in Lecture Hall 1 at Gordon-Conwell Theological listening to my professor, Meredith Kline, lecture on Old Testament hermeneutics. Dr. Kline was a man of deep conviction. But he was also a raging introvert. So when he had something profound to say, something he wanted to “shout from the housetops,” it seemed to violate his standard sense of self. So instead of shouting, he would start making this “hurumphing” sound (and know that all of my past classmates are now chuckling). And this was one of those moments. Laser-focused, his voice breaking, Dr. Kline flipped my world view on its head with a single statement:
“We should not be surprised that in this fallen world babies die and marriages fail; we should be surprised that some babies live and some marriages thrive.”
Up until that moment, like most of us, I had assumed that the world was mostly good and bad stuff was the anomaly. I was wrong. This is Adam’s world, it is mostly broken, and good stuff is the anomaly.
We tend to think of the fall as somehow localized—either in region or impact. But truth be told (love that song), the entire system is broken. Think of a machine that is still running, but its gears are fractured. With every movement it is shearing and shattering its own parts, belching acrid smoke, chugging toward catastrophic failure. If that image doesn’t connect, try a garment with a large stain right there on the front, or a well that has been poisoned. You can’t just “pull that back” with some sort of localized repair. The entire system, garment, water system is ruined. So although our tendency is to ask why God doesn’t step in and stop one particular instance of abuse, one murder or one corrupt official, in truth, the only way to fix this cycle of sin and death is to tear it down and build it again: “For creation was subjected to futility …” (Rom 8:20).
So truth be told, sometimes God does step in and interrupt human history by rescuing that one victim of abuse, taking out that one corrupt official, reversing the impact of that one natural disaster. In fact, every one of the redeeming acts of God reported in your Bible is just such a moment. When God spares Adam and Eve the annihilation they had chosen; reveals himself to Abraham, delivers Israel from the crushing hand of Egypt, gives Israel a leader that has some chance of success (David), and offers us a mediator who can deliver our race from certain death (Jesus). But know as well that the evil of our world will not be fixed until this broken world is born again—until death is swallowed up in victory and a “new creation” results (1 Cor 15:54; 2 Cor 5:17; Rom 8:19-21; 2 Pet 3:7). That moment will finally and irreversibly deal with the predator and the pedophile, the thief and the tyrant. It is in that moment that those crushed under the hand of the oppressor will finally walk free. This is God’s final intent.
So my answer to the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is, one, there are in reality no “good” people; and, two, we as a race must reconcile ourselves to the fact that every child starving in the famines of the Sudan, every young Arab woman slaughtered in an “honor killing,” every body laid to rest because of 9/11 is not the result of a “bad thing” that happened to “good people”—these are each the victims of Adam’s choice.
The updated edition of the Bible Study, The Epic of Eden: Understanding the Old Testament as Your Story Bible Study releases on September 15th. This Bible Study provides you and your group a clear, practical framework to transform the way you read your Bible. Step past modern cultural assumptions and discover the very real people of the ancient text, helping you organize the scattered pieces of biblical history into a clear, unified story of redemption. Would you rather read the book, The Epic of Eden? The 2nd edition releases on November 17th!
This is a remarkably well-articulated and thoroughly biblical paradigm. I couldn't have laid it out with this kind of precision, but it's the framework I've quietly held for years and it has been indispensable in the hospice work I do.
When you sit with the dying and their families long enough, the question "why do bad things happen to good people" eventually reveals itself as the wrong question. What I've found instead, again and again, is a world at war with itself, just as you describe: disease, fractured relationships, scarcity, grief that doesn't announce itself politely. Your framing doesn't ask me to explain away suffering; it lets me stand inside it without flinching, and still go looking for the fingerprints of God in the room.
That's the gift of this paradigm for someone doing this kind of work: it doesn't require certainty, only honesty about the world Adam handed us, and enough humility to keep watching for grace anyway.
I usually present this topic flipped: "Why do good things happen to bad people?" Not in a "we're all bad" kind of way, but in a "Elon Musk is a trillionaire" kind of way. Another way to put it: justice is not endemic to this present evil age, but where it occurs it signifies the age to come.