Why do bad things happen?

“Let both grow together until the harvest...” Matthew 13:30.

Why does a good God allow bad things to happen? 

Why is it that, along with all the love, beauty and kindness in our world, there is also the evil, the darkness, the sheer wickedness? “Come on, God!” we feel like saying. “Do something!” But... he simply doesn’t, or so it seems.

For centuries great minds, both Christian and otherwise, have wrestled with “the problem of evil”, what theologians and philosophers call “theodicy”. 

Well, I certainly can’t claim to have much wisdom to offer on this tricky question, certainly nothing original. But the Bible suggests in a number of places that it fundamentally comes down to the question of God’s patience; if I can put it this way, in his dealings with his creation, God is playing a long game.

Jesus’ story of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) bears this out... A man sows good seed in his field. An enemy comes and sows weeds. To their dismay, the man’s servants see the good and bad growing together. They go to their master and ask what they should do: “Do you want us to go and pull the weeds up?” They seem keen to get on with the job! 

But their master says no: “Let them both grow together until the harvest” - and then there will be a great separation, the wheat into barns, the weeds into the furnace.

Jesus provides his own explanation for the story in verses 36-43: the field is the world; the sower is God, more specifically “the Son of Man”; the good seed is the children of God’s kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one; the enemy is the devil; the harvest is the final judgment; the harvesters are the angels.

And the point is this: painful though it might be, good and bad in our world must live together until the time of God’s choosing. 

Various truths emerge from this.

First, God is a good God, and while he permits evil, he doesn’t want it or condone it. He has, it seems, seen fit to limit his own omnipotence, at least for a time. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden illustrates this.

Second, there is an “enemy”. The Bible calls him by various names: the devil, Satan, the evil one. Over the centuries the church has understood the reality of the evil one in various ways, but all that really matters is that he exists, he is malevolent, and he is powerful. We ignore him at our peril.

Third, a day of reckoning will come. One day all wrongs will be righted and all evil will be destroyed. This is where the image of fire comes in - it is essentially a metaphor for destruction, and so Gehenna, or hell, is in effect a cosmic incinerator. 

We need to take seriously the idea of the day of judgment, and Jesus’ warnings about “weeping and gnashing of teeth” for those who have left it too late. Yes, God may permit evil for a time, but ultimately he would simply not be God, and certainly not an all-good and all-powerful God, if he did not finally act in judgment.

Where the pain is most acute, of course, is when we think of the people who suffer most while God is exercising his patience. I am writing this in a pleasant house, in a study surrounded by books, with the liberty to come and go as I please, and with a full stomach and good health. It is, so to speak, all very well for me. 

But what about those who suffer persecution, cruelty, injustice, poverty, ill-health, broken relationships? 

Well, only God himself can answer that question - and if ever we feel inclined to take him to task over it I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong in that. God’s shoulders are big enough to take it, as Job and many of the psalms suggest. God prefers an indignant, even an angry, disciple to an indifferent one. Don’t be afraid to get it off your chest.

But one other thing strikes me. We tend to speak of good and evil as things, and there is of course truth in that.

But that isn’t how Jesus sees it here. The weeds are not bad “things”, but “the children of the evil one”. People. And the wheat, likewise, is not the good and beautiful “things”, but “the children of God’s kingdom”. Again, people.

In other words, Jesus makes it personal. The reality of good and evil is about - you - and me. Whose side am I on? Where do I stand? 

Yes, lots of questions cause us to wrack our brains. But these are questions to which each of us needs to provide a clear, unambiguous answer. 

Lord God, help me to be only, ever, a force for love, truth and goodness in this troubled world. Amen.