Why Do the Righteous Suffer? — Sermons from Presbyterian Pastors

The following three sermons are used here with the gracious permission of the writers. Each in a unique and personal way deals with the question that often arises from the anger following a tragedy, disaster or seemingly merciless event—"How can a loving God allow this to happen?"

Why do bad things happen to good people?*

Reverend William Weisenbach
First Presbyterian Church of Katonah (New York)

Scriptural reference: Luke 13:1-9

Why do bad things happen to good people? I promise not to bring up our son Mathew's death, some six weeks ago now, in every sermon, but today's text cry's out for, at least, some reflection on this critical question. You see, Matthew was a good person and Cynthia and Emily are good people and most of the time I am a good person, yet Matthew died in one of those freak incidents that affect fewer than 200 people a year out of the millions with seizure disorders. And it wasn't just Matthew. Not quite two years ago my brother David lost his 24-year-old daughter in an almost identical way and he continues to ask the same question. Where were you, God? Why, God? Why me? Why do bad things happen to good people?

These are the same questions that Jesus is asked today. Why, Jesus? Why were those particular Galileans murdered by Pilate in an act of terrorism? Were they bad people? Were their sins greater than other people's sins? Why, Jesus? And why were those eighteen innocent people killed when the Tower at Siloam toppled onto an unsuspecting crowd? Had those folks done something particularly awful that led God to punish them? Each one of us here today could probably add our own examples. Why, God? Why does my father—or my brother—or my husband—as good a man as you are going to find—why does he have terminal, terrible, tyrannical cancer? Why, God? Why did my grandchild die before she was even six months old? Was it my fault? Was I being punished? Why, God? Why did my job get eliminated? Why did I end up in such a dysfunctional family? Why did my child get mixed up with the wrong crowd? Why, God? Why did all those bombs go off in Madrid killing nearly 200 innocent souls? Were those people picked through some sort of divine lottery to endure tragedy and injury and death? Jesus, come on. Tell me, tell us, why?

When Jesus answers these questions this morning we hear both good news and bad news. The good news is simple, you don't suffer and the people you love don't suffer because of your or their sin. God doesn't cause bad things to happen to good people. God is not the Great Disciplinarian in the sky, punishing us for our mistakes, judging us for our ignorance, blaming us for our imperfections, reminding us of our misjudgments. But, having delivered this good news, Jesus counter punches with what sounds like bad news, or at least very troubling news. God doesn't punish us or make us suffer arbitrarily. BUT, Jesus says, if you do not repent, you, too will perish, like the unfortunate victims of Pilate, like the unlucky corpses buried under the ruins of Siloam. Now, what, I wonder, did Jesus mean by these words?

In his best selling book of years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner, tries to figure out why bad things happen to good people. Specifically he tries to figure out why he and his wife, fierce and faithful Jews, lost their thirteen year old son to progeria, that devastating disease that ages a body over night and leads to painful and premature death. Kushner's answer to this basic question about suffering is interesting. He decides that God cannot be both all-powerful and all loving. His argument goes something like this. If God really is all-powerful, then God really is responsible for all the suffering and agony in the world. Such a God, for Rabbi Kushner, is unimaginable. His answer, then, is that God is not all-powerful. This all loving, always compassionate God is unable to prevent suffering and pain. Instead, God chooses always to be with us in the midst of the agony, sharing the pain of what a powerless God has been unable to prevent. Kushner's answer is intriguing. But from a Christian perspective, he doesn't go quite far enough.

If you think about it, Jesus was the personification of Kushner's question. Why did the worst thing of all happen to this very best person? Yet, both in his words this morning, and surely in his example on the cross, Jesus refuses to honor or answer the question why? You see, for him, the why is not important. In the mind and experience of Jesus, bad things just happen. In a world shaped by God's creativity, freedom is central to the energy of that creativity. And freedom means that God gives up some control and power, not because God is impotent, but because God is loving. In other words, an all-powerful God allows evil and suffering in order to preserve the freedom of creation. Bad things happen in the creative energy, the randomness, the freedom of natural law. Bad things happen in the perverse human freedom of moral law. And being true to the promise of freedom, God does not intervene. But that doesn't mean that God doesn't care. Or that God is absent. Far from it. In fact, fear and intrigue and jealousy and ambition end up nailing God to a cross. And what does God do? God embraces the suffering. God endures the suffering. God confronts the suffering. Then God transforms the suffering into the creativity of new life. The question is not "why do bad things happen to good people?" The question is, "how?" How do we live and how do we endure in a world where bad things simply happen?

This is why Jesus says, "Repent, or you will perish like they did." Repent means to turn. Turn away from the "why" question and turn toward the "how" question. Turn away from blaming, blaming those in authority, or blaming God, or blaming the victims. Instead, turn. Stay close. Stay close to God. Stay grounded and connected to God's grace. Because then when bad things happen, as it surely will for all of us, God can and will sustain you. God will hang from the cross of your tragedy, your doubt and your despair. God will weep with you. And God will never, never, abandon you. You will suffer. You will die. But you will not perish unloved and alone, when and if, you turn and stay close to God.

Jesus finishes this morning by telling the parable of the fig tree. He tells this story in order remind us just what kind of God we have. God is not like a landowner who rips us out and throws us away when we don't produce good fruit. No! Instead, God is like a wise and patient gardener who gives us a second and a third and a fourth chance to root ourselves in holy ways. This gardener God prunes, digs and fertilizes us. Then God waits, waits for the divine creativity in us to finally blossom into fruitful life for the world. Yes, far from a God who topples towers and murders innocent Galileans, our God is a gardener who has all the time in the world for us to grow into spiritual maturity and ripeness. And, who knows? In God's wisdom, the "bad things" that happen, the seemingly unfair pain and suffering and distress in the world, these "bad things," may just be the very things that give nourishment to our souls, that call us to accomplish things we never dreamed of doing.

To illustrate this point Kushner tells the story of Martin Gray, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. Following the war, he married, raised a family, and became successful in business. But then, once again, tragedy struck in his life. One day his wife and children were all killed in a forest fire that swept through their home in south France. He was distraught after this senseless loss, and friends encouraged him to launch an investigation into how and why this horror had happened. Instead, Martin Gray began a passionate movement to protect nature from future fires. He explained to his friends that an investigation would focus only on the past, on issues of pain and sorrow and blame, on accusing other people of being responsible for his misery. He wasn't interested in asking "why?" He was only interested in asking "now what?" How can I live into the future, in life affirming, and not life denying ways? How can I live for something and not just against something?"

Today Jesus presents us with the central dilemma of Lent. Are we stuck in the past, or do we believe in the future? Are we living against something, or are we living for something? Do we want answers, or do we want God?

This day, Jesus is offering to lift us from our sea of sorrow, from our confusion, from our pain. Offering to lift us and turn us toward the mercy and grace of God. This is the Good News of the gospel.

May it be so, for you and for me this day and in the days and weeks to come.
Amen.

*Dr. Weisenbach credits Rev. Susan Andrews, Moderator of the 215th General Assembly for providing a portion of the basis for this sermon.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Reverend Beth Yarborough
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church (Tennessee)

Scriptural reference: Job 1:1, 2:1-10, 23:1-17

Every Sunday, in our morning worship, we reaffirm our faith using all or part of one of our confessions—usually the Apostles' Creed or, on Communion Sundays, the Nicene Creed. The first part of the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is the Book of Confessions, which contains 11 formal statements of faith structured as creeds, confessions and catechisms. Elders throughout the denomination, training for leadership, study each of the confessions, its historical origins, and its theological emphases. Our candidates for ministry must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the confessions on ordination exams and before their presbyteries.

In one of the confessions that we as Presbyterians hold dear is the Heidelberg Catechism. This confession was written centuries ago and in reading it, you might find some things that sound a little outdated in our contemporary times, but the fundamentals of the Heidelberg Catechism continue to influence our beliefs.

The opening line of A Brief Statement of Faith adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1991 says, “In life and in death we belong to God.” This affirmation echoes the first question and the first answer of the Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
A. That I belong body and soul, in life and in death B not to myself but to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ.

We can certainly take some comfort in the knowledge that God is the God Almighty the Lord of all but the question remains. If our God is, in fact, the God Almighty and the Lord of all, surely, God is in a position to prevent bad things that happen to us. Yet, bad things do happen. Why? Why does God allow bad things to happen to us or as Harold Kushner put so well in his book of the same title, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Job was a good person. We read that there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Not only are the words that describe Job clear about his character, in the ancient language of Hebrew, the way the words are paired together and put together emphasized, even more, his good character. Both God and Job's wife refer to him as one who persists in his integrity.

Job was top-notch, a class-act, yet Job was quickly stripped of everything—and even sitting in the ashes scratching his itchy, scaly skin with a piece of broken pottery, even when his wife asked him why he continued to live this life of integrity, Job said, "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the Bad? Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?"

The Heidelberg Catechism again:

Q. (27) What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. God's providence is God's almighty and ever present power, whereby as with God's hand, God still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, the fruitful and the unfruitful years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by God's loving hand.

Not by chance, but by God's hand—everything comes to us—the fruitful and the unfruitful years, our sickness and our health our riches and our poverty. All things come from God's hand.

Is that not what Job is affirming here? How can we receive the good that God gives and refuse the not-so-good that God gives?

When I was a little girl, I was plagued with frequent stomach aches. The remedy that my mother gave me was an old drug called paregoric, and I bet many of you have had paregoric in your life—it was really nasty. So she would mix it with a little bit of sugar to help it go down better, and to be honest, the sugar didn't help much. It reminds me of a song that was made popular by Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in my all-time favorite Disney movie, Mary Poppins:

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way.

Well, perhaps, some medicines go down easier with a spoonful of sugar, but in the case of paregoric, a whole cup of sugar did not help.

If we were to juxtapose Job's question, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” with “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” does it mean that we are given good from God that then we are allowed suffering and pain and them somehow the good and the bad are supposed to be mixed together so that the pain is not quite so bad? Or, are we expected to muster up some kind of super-human strength and not feel the affect of the pain or the sorrow, because somehow in our thinking, the good mixes with the bad and everything becomes watered down to the point that our joy lacks luster and we trivialize our sorrow?

This is hard stuff to understand. Yes, good things do happen, and yes, bad things happen. But do we give equal attention to the good and bad realizing that somehow, somehow in the providence of a loving, sovereign God—somehow God allows all of this stuff to come our way so that God's purposes are realized?

I don't understand it, but we do try to figure it out, or trivialize it—or worse, turn against God completely like Job's wife advised him to do. Here he sat in his ultimate misery and his wife said, “Why don't you curse God and die?” Do we ever sound like Job's wife?

Have you ever said to someone in the midst of their suffering, “Don't worry, all things work out for good.”? Or has someone ever said to you "God has a purpose for this horrible thing."? Sometimes the way we respond to each other's suffering is abominable. Talk about adding insult to injury. After all of the catastrophes that fell Job's way, his own friends, his own wife, asked him what horrible thing he'd done that he was being punished so. That was not punishment. God does not work that way.

A husband and a wife that I knew in South Carolina had one child, a daughter. On Thanksgiving Day she was driving home to spend the day with her parents. She was hit by a drunk driver and killed. My friend, Jeannie died at age 42 with cancer that struck with a vengeance and took her life in no time. Jeannie's only sibling, a sister, was killed 20 years prior in a traffic accident.

Do you think either of these mothers or fathers wanted to hear from somebody, “all things work for good,” or “God had a purpose” or worse, “God needed an angel in Heaven?” No way! What they wanted to hear was for somebody to say, "I do not understand how this can happen to you and I do not understand how you stand the pain, but what I do understand is that I want to help you in your pain. I want to be with you when you hurt and I want to cry with you when you cry. I want to be with you when you finally realize that God carried you through carried you through the bad times as well as the good times."

Years ago many of my friends were having children. Several had miscarriages. One friend confided in me, “If another person says to me, 'Don't worry. You can get pregnant again and have another baby', I believe I'll scream.” She did not want another baby—she wanted that baby and she needed for people to allow her to grieve for that baby.

What is it that makes it so hard for us to allow each other and ourselves to truly hurt? What it is that hinders us from going beneath the surface of what feels good—and feel the searing pain of loss? What is it that makes it so hard for us to be in pain for ourselves and with each other? Why do we feel like we have to trivialize our pain? Why are we so pressed to mix a spoonful of sugar with every mouthful of awful-tasting medicine?

There is a concern in our society in our inability to deal with death and suffering. Bill Moyers' series on Grief and Dying on Public TV several years ago is testimony to this very thing. Why is it so hard for us? Why do we so willingly reach out our hands and receive all the good things, but when the bad things come, we don't know what to do? And like Job's wife, we say, well, why don't you just turn against God? Or we trivialize the horror of the situation with trite, empty sayings like, “Something good will come out of it.”

The very idea of Job's wife saying, “Why don't you curse God and die?” The nerve of his friends asking what terrible sin he committed? Why could they not just be there with Job in his pain?

Three years ago, my dad was in Hospice care for six months. Nurses and aides came in every day. We did not know how much longer he would be with us, but we could not talk about death there. I believe that my dad knew how sick he was. He did not think my mother knew so he was trying to protect her. My mother was aware of the gravity of his condition and thought he did not know and she was trying to protect him. So they were at this stand-off dancing around all the important issues. You of course, know the rest of the story—my dad won a reprieve against the liver disease and in between trips to the hospital to get his heart regulated—still goes to his law office every day.

But during that time in our house, like almost every house in our country, we couldn't deal well with death and dying. We did not know how to receive the good and receive the bad from the hand of God.

Q. What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by His providence?
A. We can be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and with a view to the future we can have a firm confidence in our faithful God that no creature, no thing on this earth, shall separate us from the love of God.

It is what we as Presbyterians have believed for centuries. It is what we continue to stake our faith on.

If only I had the answer to why bad things happen to good people. But I don't have the answer. I do believe, however, without the shadow of a doubt that nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God, the love of God that upholds us in the good times and in the bad times.

A spoonful of sugar, not even a whole bag of sugar, will help some of the medicine go down that we have to take. It can hurt and it can hurt badly. But do you think—could we—could you and I—could we together learn to put our arms around each other and cry together and finally come to the place where we will be able to look back and say, “Yes, God was there in the bad times, just as God was there in the good times?” Could you do that with me?

You Asked for It: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Reverend Louise Westfall
Fairmount Presbyterian Church (Ohio)

Scriptural reference: Romans 8

The question is as old as the advent of human beings on this planet. Perhaps some version of it was asked when a severe thunderstorm washed out all the crops, or when lightning struck a member of the community and killed him. Perhaps the cry went up when a seemingly healthy baby died in her sleep. We know that the covenant people of Israel lamented misfortune, particularly when it seemed in contrast to the experience of their heathen neighbors. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the righteous suffer?

The question is distinctly theological. In fact, it is easily dismissed if one does not believe the world to be ruled by a powerful, benevolent God. Apart from divine purpose, why shouldn't bad things happen to good people, just as they do to bad people? Life is a random mix of good and bad; the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust. The question is irrelevant outside an understanding of a good and gracious God. But when one affirms that, the question reveals a deep yearning for human experience to reflect God's character, and profound puzzlement when it doesn't.

Various explanations of the discrepancy between those two realities, and various attempts to harmonize them, have been postulated through the ages. This defense of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil is called “theodicy,” and occupies a part of every systematic theology. You know these justifications: God uses suffering to get our attention, to wake us up from complacency or unbelief, some propose. Others suggest that God uses suffering to teach us something. Many religious traditions have even viewed suffering as divine punishment for sins committed. Rabbi Harold Kushner was the author of the best-selling book 20 years ago that posed the question in the same form as the sermon topic does today. Written from the personal perspective of losing his son to a rare disease, he revealed the spiritual poverty of these conventional explanations. His book remains one of the most helpful in dealing with grief and loss, and I recommend it.

For none of these “theories” can really touch either the greatness of God or the depth of human suffering. They offer no comfort to those who cry out to heaven and feel the door is slammed in their face. Why do bad things happen to good people? is rarely asked theoretically, for the sole reason of intellectual enlightenment, but out of the depths of pain or the experience of God's absence. As we consider this requested topic this morning, I invite you to bring your toughest questions, your deepest hurts, your unresolved issues to bear upon your hearing of God's Word.

The reading from the letter to the Romans stands as the soaring climax to the intricate theological argument the apostle Paul has carefully laid out in preceding chapters. He has testified to the universality of sin and to God's redeeming work in Jesus Christ as an atonement for human sin. But while this has been accomplished, sin—and all its miserable consequences—remains. If God has given us the glorious gift of salvation, why do bad things still happen to people who are trying to live right? In the face of this, how can we have hope? Listen for God's Word in the reading from the 8th chapter of the letter to the Romans, beginning at the 18th verse: Romans 8:18-28.

When I was seventeen years old and a senior in high school, a junior girl I knew well was critically injured in an automobile accident. Her family was very religious, and the church where they were members organized a 24-hour prayer circle at the hospital where she teetered between life and death. During the days immediately following the accident, at least two church members came to the hospital every hour to pray and wait with her family. After a week Geri died. I was angry with God because it seemed like a kick in the teeth, that God had not listened to their fervent prayers. I went to the funeral at her family's church, wanting to hear some justification for God's apparent inability or, worse, unwillingness to heal Geri. The minister read the words from the text we've just heard, and chose to focus on verse 28 for his sermon: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according his purpose. In that packed sanctuary, filled with many high school students, the minister spoke about how there surely was a good purpose for Geri's death; how she had been spared some of the temptations and suffering of young adulthood; how she was now in a far better place than this earth. He exhorted us to believe beyond what we could understand. His sermon provoked a crisis of faith in me that was not fully resolved until years later when my own father died. I was furious with God for working His purpose out through the heartbreak of His children. To arrange—or even permit—painful losses in order to bring about good seemed brutal and sadistic.

I'm older now, and few things seem so clearly “day” or “night” to me as they did then. I like to think that minister didn't really say what I heard. But I hear versions of it often enough to know that it represents a perspective that many still hold. Following 9/11, an email article made the rounds that suggested that this terrorist act occurred to punish a nation that had removed prayer in school, supported civil rights of homosexual persons, and legalized abortion. But I also see evidence of it in more benign ways, such as when a church member feels the need to explain why he hasn't been in worship lately, and then asks me to put in a good word so that nothing bad will happen to him. He's joking, of course, but for many there is a direct correlation between our actions and the fortune (or misfortune!) that comes to us.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, are those who doubt that God micro-manages the universe at all. This perspective holds that it's useless to pray for safety in travel, for example. Accidents happen. God is not going to intervene if a jetliner malfunctions, or the driver of an automobile falls asleep at the wheel. God cannot be counted on to protect us from random misfortune.

Is there a middle ground? Can we affirm that God is both good and more powerful than evil? In a universe governed at least to some extent by the principle of uncertainty, can we also affirm a God who is steadfast and trustworthy?

The apostle Paul would answer a resounding “Yes.” Though he was the greatest missionary evangelist, Paul suffered terribly: he was shipwrecked several times, beaten and imprisoned, and eventually martyred. Throughout his life he had some persistent condition from which he sought deliverance; a “thorn in the flesh” that troubled him, and for which he never did get relief. Yet Paul did not attribute these difficulties to God. He saw them as part of the inevitable consequence of living “in the meantime”—before the effects of salvation obtained in Jesus Christ have been fully realized on earth. He didn't deny the painful reality of loss, describing the creation and individuals as in bondage and “groaning” for redemption. He did, however, put that pain in the context of a world whose redemption was certain, but not yet complete. Consider how it is in the natural world: a storm can be devastating, with strong wind and torrential rain. The storm ceases, but there are still the wind damage and the flooding to deal with. I think that for Paul, evil is the storm whose back was broken in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Evil has been defeated, but we still have to deal with its consequences.

Even those consequences, however, are not apart from God's redemptive purposes. God doesn't “cause” babies to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome; God does not intend for teenagers to die in car crashes; it is not God's will that tragedy strike people or nations. But none of these is outside God's power to redeem. Even this side of the grave, God can be powerfully present to comfort, and give hope. An anonymously written story tells of the only survivor of a shipwreck who was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed fervently for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Eventually he managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements. But then one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened; the man was furious. “God, how could you do this to me!” he lashed out. Early the next day, however, he was awakened to the sound of a ship that was approaching the island, coming to rescue him. “How did you know I was here?” he asked, amazed. They replied, “We saw your smoke signal.” God can take our worst shipwrecks, the hottest fires, the freakiest accident, and even our most bitter anger—and transform it into something good.

We have precedent for that in Jesus, who took the very worst that human beings could offer: abandonment, betrayal, hatred, jealousy, and all the rest, and absorbed it into his very being, in order to stop it, once and for all. The buck stops there, on the cross. The power of evil has been overcome. The empty cross stands in silent testimony that all things do work together for good … for God's ways are not our ways.

Did you hear in the text the source of the apostle's confidence about how we can live in this transitional time? The Spirit of God helps us when we don't even know how to pray, when words cannot express our feelings, and when no solution even seems possible. The Spirit intercedes for us “with sighs too deep for words.” If you have ever wondered what to say to a person grieving a hard loss, maybe this can give some insight: sometimes words just won't do it. Your silent presence, your own tears, your support by “being there” speaks volumes about the hope that comes from divine intercession.

For me personally, “all things work together for good” didn't make much sense until my mother and my siblings were choosing scripture readings for my father's memorial service. She wanted to include that verse. I balked, remembering my friend Geri's service. But my mother pressed, saying we had to read further than verse 28 in order to understand how things could possibly work out for good now. It's okay to be mad, she concluded. Or sad. Or confused. Or cynical and unbelieving. And then she continued reading Romans 8 aloud: Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through the One who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Not all my questions were answered, that day or ever. Even though many years have passed, I still miss my dad. But I know something else, deep in my heart. The love of God has overcome death, is stronger than evil, and is far more purposive than chance. Bad and good things will happen to all of us, and God will be there loving us. May God give us the courage to exercise that love in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.

TO THE GOD OF ALL GRACE, WHO CALLS US TO SHARE IN CHRIST'S ETERNAL GLORY, BE THE POWER FOREVER! AMEN.