Why Do Good People Suffer - An Honest Answer

A woman down your street goes to church every week. She pays her accounts on time, feeds the neighbour's dogs and never misses a funeral. Then the scan comes back wrong. She sits in her car in the hospital parking lot and asks the only question she has left. Why me?

Maybe that woman is you. Maybe you buried a child, or lost the business you built over twenty years, or watched people who hurt others carry on fine while you fell apart. You want an answer. You do not want a pamphlet.

What Jesus said when somebody asked

Somebody did ask him. A man had been blind since birth, and his disciples wanted to know whose fault it was, the man's or his parents'. Jesus gave a one-word answer: neither (John 9). He refused to hand out blame. Then he healed the man.

The book of Job goes the same way. Job lost his children, his money and his health in one season. His friends sat down and told him he must have done something to deserve it. At the end God spoke to those friends and said they had got it wrong. If someone has told you your pain is a punishment, you are hearing from the wrong side of that story.

What we can say for sure

Jesus said the rain falls on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). We live in a broken world, and broken things hurt good people too. A bad diagnosis is a fact about a broken world. Your character was never on trial.

God does not cause every hurt and then call it a lesson. Romans 8:28 says he works all things together for good to them that love him, and that includes the things that make no sense while you are standing inside them. Ask the woman who buried her husband and still gets up at five to make the school lunches. She would never have chosen any of it. She will also tell you who held her up.

And the story goes past the grave. Jesus was executed for nothing he did, and three days later the tomb was empty. That is God's answer to unfair pain. The worst day of your life does not get the last word.

"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

- 2 Corinthians 4:17 (KJV)

What we cannot explain

Some pain gets no answer this side of heaven. A lecture does not help at a graveside. What helps is a person who sits down next to you and keeps quiet. That is most of what a church is for.

Come without the answers

At Fountain of Grace International in Pretoria North nobody will ask you to pretend. We meet on Sundays at 09:00 at 323 B Danie Theron Street. Come in the clothes you are wearing, with the question you are carrying. Or submit a prayer request and we will pray with you directly.

You may also want to read why life feels empty, or listen to sermons on why life keeps collapsing and why some problems will not leave.