When Bad Things Happen to Good People

During Sunday night's Gathering, we talked about why bad things happen to good people. We came up with three ways to respond when it comes to suffering:

1. You can look at it as a formula: you do good things, you're #blessed and if you do bad things, bad things happen to you. This isn't good theology. We looked at how that idea changes over the course of the Bible into the concept in the New Testament that if you're being challenged, it's a sign that you're close enough to God and growing enough in holiness to withstand a trial that may purify you and your faith. Stay strong.

2. You can look at it as a mystery: sometimes in this fallen world, crap just happens. We talked about C.S. Lewis' excellent example in The Problem of Pain, where he presents a wooden board and says that boards are great, they build things, they're strong...but what about a world where that same strong board would turn to mush if someone tries to use it as a weapon? We'd go mad, it wouldn't make sense. There are laws in this world, and sometimes that means accepting the mysery of suffering.

3. You can look at it as an opportunity: sometimes, suffering is just the thing that brings us closer to one another. Think of how everyone bands together after a national tragedy. Do you have even the slightest recollection of how patriotic everyone was after 9/11? Suffering is rough, but it also connects us to each other, and to the One who took the ultimate suffering on the cross.

And just today, I saw a quote that seemed appropriate to add to the conversation:

St Augustine's letter to Proba: "We do not know how to pray as we ought. Perhaps you may still ask why St Paul said when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, since it is impossible that he or those to whom he wrote should not have known the Lord’s Prayer. Yet Paul himself was not exempt from such ignorance. When, to prevent him from becoming swollen-headed over the greatness of the revelations that had been given to him, he was given in addition a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, he asked the Lord three times to take it away from him. Surely that was not knowing to pray as he ought? For in the end he heard the Lord’s reply, telling him why even such a great saint’s prayer had to be refused: My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness. So when we are suffering afflictions that might be doing us either good or harm, we do not to know how to pray as we ought. But because they are hard to endure and painful, because they are contrary to our nature (which is weak) we, like all mankind, pray to have our afflictions taken from us. At least, though, we owe this much respect to the Lord our God, that if he does not take our afflictions away we should not consider ourselves ignored and neglected, but should hope to gain some greater good through the patient acceptance of suffering. For my power is at its best in weakness. Scripture says this so that we should not be proud of ourselves if our prayer is heard, when we ask for something it would be better for us not to get; and so that we should not become utterly dejected if we are not given what we ask for, despairing of God’s mercy towards us: it might be that what we have been asking for could have brought us some still greater affliction, or it could have brought us the kind of good fortune that brings corruption and ruin. In such cases, it is clear that we cannot know how to pray as we ought. Hence if anything happens contrary to our prayer, we ought to bear the disappointment patiently, give thanks to God, and be sure that it was better for God’s will to be done than our own. The Mediator himself has given us an example of this. When he had prayed, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by, he transformed the human will that was in him because he had assumed human nature and added Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.