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Today’s question is a big one. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I’m

guessing all of us at one point in our life have thought about this question. Even people who

don’t believe in God or the church think about this question. This week I talked to some folks

from Chain of Lakes. They recently had some conversations with a person who is asking all

sorts of questions about God. One question that this person is wrestling with is “why do bad

things happen to good people?” The question is keeping the person from coming to church.

Our views about suffering keep many people from enjoying a complete relationship with

God.

I hope that all of us at Chain of Lakes will be able to share a basic response to people

who have this question. In order to help with this I plan on preaching about this at least once a

year, I could imagine devoting an entire series of sermons to this, and we could have some small

groups that look at why do bad things happen to good people.

Let me tell you what we’re going to do in worship the next few weeks. Next week we’re

going to celebrate the baptism of Taylor Ivers, and I’m going to preach on “What is special about

being Presbyterian.” The following week we’re going to celebrate Camp Sunday. David

Jeremiason from Presbyterian Clearwater Forest is going to be with us. On that Sunday I’d like

many of us to share during worship stories about going to camp when we were youth. I’ll be

sharing a few stories myself. Three weeks from today I’m going to start a Lenten sermon series

on the Sermon on the Mount.

Today—why do bad things happen to good people?.

I’d like to invite you to get out this brochure that is in your bulletin. On this brochure

you’ll find a place that has a devotion that connects to today’s sermon. This week you have the

opportunity to read six passages from the Scriptures and a devotion that shares a perspective on
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suffering. I’ve included passages from the Old Testament, the New Testament and Revelation. I

would love for us to have some sort of conversation about this devotion. Maybe we could do

this on our church Facebook group page. On this brochure you’ll find a place for prayer

requests. Please keep all these people in your daily prayers. And you’ll find a place to take

notes. I believe that God might say something to you today in this sermon that you’ll want to

remember.

Today I’m starting out in the head—as I want to share some intellectual responses that

people throughout history have shared to this question. But I want to move to our heart because

the way that you and I respond to people who suffer will go a long ways towards creating an

impression about God and an impression about people in the church. Finally I want to move to

our feet because I hope we can be inspired through this sermon to help someone who is hurting.

I’ve been very fortunate as I’ve hardly suffered myself in my life. The worst thing that

ever happened to me is a girl decided she didn’t want to be in a relationship with me. Though

that was traumatic at the time and caused me to be very angry with God, that suffering was tiny.

However I’ve been with people who have suffered.

I think about a woman in Plainview named Sally. She and her family were good friends with my

family. Sally was just a gem to Amy after Hannah was born. Sally got cancer and it took about

three years but she eventually died—in her late 40’s. She was one of the most devoted mothers

I’ve ever met. She died just as her two kids were getting married and having children. She

missed that.

I think about Bea—another friend of our family. Her sister died in a car accident caused by a

drunk driver on Christmas day. The accident happened over 40 years ago, but Bea thinks about

it a lot. It still impacts her life

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I think about Sharon—a marvelously talented woman who died of a very rare disease. One day

in worship she stood up and cried because of the pain she felt when she looked at poverty in

Central America. She pleaded with us to give to the Heifer Project. A couple years later all of

us cried as I officiated at her funeral.

And I think of my friend, Jeff. He was one of my best friends. I knew him since we competed in

the esteemed 2nd grade kickball championship at West Elementary school in Worthington,

Minnesota. We were good buddies. I officiated at his wedding and he stood up for Amy & me

when we were married. Jeff was the boys basketball coach at New Prague High School. He

suffered from a very aggressive cancer. He would come to Rochester and go through treatment

at the Mayo Clinic. I would often sit with him as his body was filled with chemicals. I was with

him almost every step of the way. When I was with Jeff I learned how terrifying it is to sit in a

small room and wait for a doctor’s prognosis—waiting to hear whether you are going to live or

die. I got the call at 2 in the morning on a frigid January days two years ago that Jeff died at

Methodist Hospital in Rochester. I officiated at both of his funerals.

This is a tender issue because all of us have either suffered ourselves or have been with

people who have suffered.

I want to start out in our head today and look at some philosophy. The question that I’m

going to examine is who is responsible for suffering. Let me share how two different schools of

philosophy have looked at this. One group is the Stoics and the other is the Epicureans.

SLIDE The Stoics were a school of philosophy founded in Athens by a man by the name of Zeno

about three centuries before Jesus lived. The Stoics believed that a person who was wise was not

influenced by emotions. Destructive emotions were the result in errors in judgment. We

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probably know people who we would describe as stoic. They don’t display joy or grief or

pleasure or pain. A lot of us Midwesterners are stoic people.

Besides their indifference to emotions the Stoics believed that everything that happened

is determined or occurs by necessity or fate. There is a reason for everything. Everything has a

cause; nothing is random. All suffering has a reason or cause. If a marriage doesn’t work out

there is a reason it didn’t work. Or if little girl walks to the grocery store on a Saturday

afternoon to hear her congressman speak and while she is there she is killed by a gunman, there

is a reason that little girl was killed. The Stoics don’t believe that anything that happens is

random.

If we believe that everything is determined by something, then it is easy to think that God

is the cause of all suffering. The ancestor of the Presbyterian Church is John Calvin. Some of

the people who followed him are called Calvinists. I’m not convinced that Calvin was a stoic,

but many Calvinists are stoics. What I mean by that is many Calvinists would say that God

caused the suffering in the world. When the 35W bridge crashed John Piper—a Calvinist, pastor

of Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis—wrote on his blog that there was a reason God didn’t hold

up the 35W bridge. Piper implied that God let the 35W bridge fall so that people would fear

God.

SLIDE On the other side of the spectrum are the Epicureans. Epicureanism is another

system of philosophy. It was founded by a man named Epicurus about three centuries before

Jesus. The Epicureans believe that the universe is governed by luck; there is no divine purpose

or order. Suffering is bad luck. If our marriage fails or somebody gets struck with cancer the

person just rolled the dice wrong. Suffering is not God’s fault—it’s nobody’s fault. Bad things

just happen. According to the Epicureans if everything in life is luck the goal of life is to get
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lucky. The purpose of life is to live in such a way AS to derive the greatest amount of pleasure

in one’s lifetime.

What we’re talking about here is the issue of determinism. Does everything happen for a

reason or does everything happen by luck or chance. What do we think about this? Would we

agree with the Stoics who believe that our suffering is caused by God or would we agree with the

Epicureans that our suffering is caused by luck. Or would we fall somewhere in between. If we

find ourselves there, we would have to discern what is caused by luck and what is caused by

God.

In my experience most of us can accept that suffering happens. But it’s very hard to

accept suffering happening to an innocent person. It’s not hard to look at Denny Hecker and all

of the pain that he caused and to think that he deserves to be in jail for ten years. But it’s not fair

that the little girl, Christina Green was killed on a Saturday morning in Arizona.

What happens I think for many of us—whether we know it or not—is we develop the

belief that our goodness should be insurance against suffering. We’re upset when life isn’t fair.

We’re especially horrified when life isn’t fair to us when we’ve been good.

In getting ready for this sermon I bought and read this week Rabbi Harold Kushner’s

book “When Bad things happen to good people.” He and his wife had a son who died at the age

of 14 from the disease of progeria. They were told when their son was three that he had progeria

and wouldn’t become an adult. He wrote this:

“we often find ourselves asking why ordinary people, nice friendly neighbors, neither
extraordinarily good nor extraordinarily bad, should suddenly have to face the agony of pain and
tragedy. If the world were fair, they would not seem to deserve it. They are neither vey much
better nor very much worse than most people we know; why should their lives be so much
harder? To ask “Why do the righteous suffer?” or “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
is not to limit our concern to the martyrdom of saints and sages, but to try to understand why
ordinary people—ourselves and people around us—should have to bear extraordinary burdens of
grief and pain. (Page 11)
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He wrote this book as a personal response to all the questions he had about God and

suffering. I recommend the book. If you put yourself on the Stoic side of determinism, you’re

not going to like what he wrote.

Why doesn’t God prevent suffering for those who are good?

We can see this line of thinking in the Bible story from John. It’s a beautiful story of

Lazarus and Mary and Martha. The three were brother and sisters. When Jesus arrived at the

scene we discover that Lazarus had died. Mary rushed up to Jesus. She kneeled at Jesus’ feet

and said, “Lord if you have been here my brother would not have died.” Mary was crying as she

kneeled in an attitude of worship at Jesus’ feet. The emotion of the scene was strong. Mary was

crying. Many of the people in the crowd were crying. Jesus was overcome with emotion. He

started crying. Some of the people in the crowd were astounded that Jesus was crying. See how

he loved them, they cried out. It was as if Jesus’ tears were a sign of Jesus’ love for Lazarus.

But some in the crowd were not overcome with emotion. They knew that Jesus had recently

given sight to a blind man. They wanted to know if Jesus could heal the blind man, then why

didn’t he do something for Lazarus.

One of the reasons I love the Bible is the Scriptures have the same questions that many of

us have. We want to know why God didn’t do something about the pain. Why didn’t you stop

the girl from going to the market on a Saturday morning, why didn’t you help our failing

marriage earlier, why didn’t you change the biology of my friend Jeff whose cells turned to

cancer and then killed him. We know you could do something, Lord, why didn’t you do it.

After thinking about this question for at least 20 years. I’ve done a lot of reading about

this. I’ve come to the conclusion that our suffering is the natural consequence of having free
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will. I believe that God is all powerful and can do anything that God wants to do. If God wanted

to reverse the laws of nature to save an airplane God could do that.

But instead of preventing suffering, God limits God’s self in order that you and I have

freedom. Though God is all powerful God intentionally limits the divine self in order to let us be

free. We can’t be free unless we have the possibility to suffer.

Someone can say why does it seem that God helps out some people and doesn’t help

others. Why do some people get cured of their cancer and some marriages do work out.

This is where faith comes in. For we can take the question of why and keep asking it and

asking it, but as we keep asking it we’ll eventually find ourselves at the edge of a cliff.

Inevitably the question of why leads us to a dead end. No matter how hard we probe for some

questions there are some questions that don’t have an answer. I can think as hard as I want about

why all these terrible things happen, but after I’ve wrestled with this question enough I have to

come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I don’t know. We don’t get answers to all of our

questions.

For some questions we will never know the answers. I just don’t believe that God is the

cause of our pain. I don’t believe that God wanted or caused my friend Jeff to die, or that God

wants or causes our marriages to disintegrate. I actually don’t believe that the world is governed

by luck or chance, so I don’t agree with the Epicureans, But I don’t believe that God causes our

suffering. I do not believe that God is the cause of our pain.

A favorite saying of mine is God is the source of our healing and not the cause of our

pain. Jesus is the best illustration of God’s desire for healing. In today’s story we heard Jesus

healed Lazarus. Jesus brought him back to life. Jesus did this consistently in his ministry. He

healed people who the world forgot.

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This is where the church comes in. You and I are called to share the compassion of Jesus

with others. Compassion comes from the Greek word “splanchizomai.” It means sharing our

heart or guts with each other. In today’s story Jesus shared compassion. We can see Jesus’ heart

when he authentically shared tears at the sorrow that he felt around him.

You are I are called to share that compassion.

Compassion is easy because all it involves is sharing four words. “I am so sorry.” That’s

all we need to share. When Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus he was saying to others, “I am so

sorry about what happened.” Share our heart.

Compassion is hard because all it involves is sharing four words. We pragmatic

Midwesterners want to share more than four words. You know what I mean. We say “I am so

sorry” but we can’t stop there. We say something like

You never should have gotten yourself in this situation

You should do this or you should do that
You’re going to get over this
This is going to be good for you in the long wrong.

The problem is often our advice is the right advice. When a person is hurting they don’t need to

receive advice from us. What they need from us is for us to say, “I am so sorry.”

I remember when I was going through a painful time in my life—and it involved a girl. I

received a phone call from a pastor friend who told me I would be better off in the long run.

That wasn’t what I needed at the time. I needed him to say, “I am so sorry.”

The hard part about not giving advice is often the advice we give is the right advice. My

pastor friend was right. I was better off in the long run. It’s just our timing is off. There is a

time and a place for advice and truth telling. It’s just not when we’re hurting.

Our head is developing the belief about who is the cause for suffering; our heart is

sharing the four words, “I am so sorry.”

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Which leads me to our feet. You and I know of someone who is suffering. How can we

share compassion with that person this week. How can we share the heart of Jesus with that

person.