InterVarsity Press

Conversations: Why Do Terrible Things Happen?

Liz:

I want to know how such terrible things happen to people if God is all powerful and all good like the church says. The answer people try to give me is that bad things happen because people are bad--that the Fall of Adam and Eve caused the world to be invaded by evil. But that doesn't solve the problem for me.

Ruth:

I'm with you. I've heard that same argument made time and time again.

The problem is I don't have a better answer. I don't think there is an answer to that dilemma of an all-powerful, all-good God.

Just the other night I was having dinner with friends, and this very issue came up, and John offered the same response—that of all bad things that happen originating in the Fall. I said that such makes more sense if someone gets killed in Iraq; we can blame that on the evil of human beings. But, then I brought up the matter of an earthquake that has nothing to do with human choices. His response was that the buildings should have been built better. That's a stretch in my mind, and I could have given a better illustration of a tornado hitting at random—or a meteor suddenly falling out of the sky.

As modern-day rationalists, we sometimes think that we must have a logical, rational answer for every question. I think that this is one question to which there is no answer—and we as Christians have to trust an all-loving, all-powerful God, without knowing how such a God can exist.

Being a Christians does not mean having all the answers, and this matter is one that is best left to the realm of mystery.

Shalom.