“Why do bad things happen to good people?” How to Answer the Most Common Question in Ministry

If I could make a list of the most frequently asked questions in ministry, this one might top it. It is a question every single person asks and answers, whether they can put it into words or not. I’ve made an attempt to put my answer into words over my many years of ministry, drawing from Scripture and personal experience. It’s taken the form of an outline of principles which help guide conversation. I have hesitated to convert that outline into an article because the last thing someone who asks this question needs is to be sent a seminary paper or a blog post—and don’t you dare go and do that with this article! What they need is a friend to listen to them and to cry with them. Still, I think it might be helpful to share my outline. Whether you’re grappling with this question yourself or you are hoping to equip yourself to have better conversations with those around you who ask it, hopefully you can find some guidance here. 

 

“Why do bad things happen to good people?” 

Principle 1: People often give a general, cold, objective answer when the question is asked from a specific, deeply personal, and deeply hurting situation. 

A general, methodical answer will never be sufficient when the heart of the question is really “Why did my dad get cancer?” or “Why was my best friend sexually assaulted?” or “Why do I still have depression as a Christian when I pray for God to give me his joy?” Specific questions demand specific answers, and until the question behind the question is addressed, the conversation won’t be helpful. Other questions we ask along side this include: 

• Who is to blame? 
• Was this deserved? 
• What did I do to earn this? 
• When will it end? 
• How can a good God allow this? 

More general questions like that do have answers, but those answers rarely provide consolation. The goal of any Christian who’s asked this question ought to primarily be to love the person asking it and to secondarily be giving a thorough, theologically sound answer. That doesn’t mean you need to force someone to open up about their question behind the question. Sometimes people aren’t ready to share that. Sometimes they don’t even know what the real question is. It’s simply good to remember that people aren’t brains on sticks. There’s no such thing as an objective question, because we aren’t objects. Every person is a subject with their own life and struggles. Don’t disregard their humanity by giving a blunt, objective answer. 

 

Principle 2: Defining terms 

One of the challenges of this specific question is the ambiguity of the terms “good” and “bad.” In the Bible, we see the same words used in different senses, and while they have important overlap, it is equally important to differentiate those senses and clarify which specifically are at hand in the conversation. 

What do we mean by good? The Bible clearly teaches us that nobody is perfect (Matt 19:17; Rom 3:9-18, 23). All people are sinners, and remember what sin warrants. Anything short of hell is mercy. But does that answer the question? Not really. Simply responding with that might end the conversation. It might address the surface-level question. But that’s not usually what people mean by “good.” 

There are at least four ways we might think about goodness. 

1. Good (ultimate) = morally perfect, without sin, deserving by merit all the benefits and glory and honor of union and relationship with God. Think about Jesus who “knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21) and was “without blemish” (Heb 9:14). 
2. Good (human) = human decency, exemplified in people who actively pursue righteousness and regularly repent of sin. Think about Abraham or Job who were considered righteous, though clearly not sinless. This is usually what people mean when they talk about “good people” 
3. Good (prosperity) = pleasure, happiness, comfort, ease; lack of suffering, conflict, harm. Generally this looks like health, wealth, and harmony. This is usually what people mean when they talk about “good things.” 
4. Good (cultural) = subjective and defined by the particular culture one finds oneself in. What one culture praises as virtue might be considered heinous evil by another. Further, what one particular culture defines as good may not align with what the Lord defines as good. Cultural assumptions of what is good or standards of what constitutes the good life can color the conversation. An extreme example from Scripture: the people of Sodom would have considered it a “good thing” to abuse the angelic guests of Lot. On a more relatable note, Americans have an incredibly high standard of living compared to most of the world and most of human history. We might consider it a trial when the air conditioning breaks in one of our multiple cars. That isn’t meant to dismiss someone when they ask “Why do good things happen to bad people?” But it is helpful to put their suffering in context. 

What do we mean by bad? Suffering? Pain? What determines what is bad? Who’s the judge of that? There are at least three ways we might think about “badness.” 

1. Bad (moral) = anything contrary to God’s will and law; i.e., sin. Scripture teaches that God demands moral perfection to remain in his presence, and to deviate from his will and law in even the smallest of matters for the shortest amount of time leads to eternal judgment (Matt 5:17-20, James 2:10). Something as small as eating the wrong fruit led to the fall of humanity and the curse of creation. In this sense, as said before, every human being outside of Jesus is “bad.” There are certainly gradations; some are worse than others, and all must give an account for their good and bad deeds (Matt 12:36, Rom 14:12). What matters is the perspective we take. From a worldly perspective, you may be a pretty good person. From God’s perspective, you have “denied the Holy and Righteous One” and have “killed the Author of Life” (Ac 3:14-15). 
2. Bad (harm) = any suffering, pain, or discomfort one experiences. This is the opposite of good (prosperity). Often this is something caused intentionally. 
3. Bad (calamity) = disasters, cataclysms, etc. While similar to bad (harm), this is more on a broader scale. Think natural disasters or accidents. If a tree falls on a car and totals it, or if a person randomly trips down the stairs and ends up paralyzed, this is often considered “bad” but not in the same way we’d consider someone slashing their ex’s tires or pushing their ex down the stairs bad. 

When helping someone find an answer to their question, it is important to figure out what they really mean. The question “Why do bad (calamity) things happen to good (moral) people?” is entirely different than the question “Why do bad (moral) things happen to good (cultural) people?” 

 

Principle 3: Clarifying misunderstandings

Here’s a few points in no particular order. 

Because no human is ultimately good, all are deserving of justice and in and of themselves ought to have no expectation for mercy. Anything short of immediate damnation is mercy. We could change the question to “Why do good (prosperity) things happen to bad (moral) people?” The Bible asks this question constantly, both in the sense of “Why do the wicked prosper?” and in the sense of “God has had mercy on sinners.” 

“Why do bad (harm and calamity) things happen to good (human or cultural) people?” Is a fair question and the one most people mean when they ask. First off, human and cultural good are not the measures by which God judges humanity. Even a sinner’s humanly or culturally good acts are in sin (Isaiah 64:6) so if God inflicts harm and sends calamity it doesn’t compromise his justice. Humanity is not innocent and therefore, as stated above, ought not expect to be treated as innocent. Suffering should not surprise us. Anything short of immediate and full judgment following the eating of the forbidden fruit is all undeserved kindness. Suffering is always a product of sin one way or another. 

“If I am a Christian with a genuine faith and I am pursuing sanctification and practicing repentance, why am I still suffering?” Excellent question. There are several causes of suffering. 

 

Principle 4: Causality 

It is important to differentiate between primary cause and secondary causes. According to the Bible, the primary cause is God. He is the First Mover who sets all things in motion. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “The decrees of God are his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence. The work of creation is God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good. God’s works of providence are his most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions” (WSC 7-9, 11). As such, we can rightly say that in one sense God causes all bad things, but we must immediately clarify this. Scripture uniformly states that God is not the author of sin and never causes humans to sin. We humans have moral agency and bear full responsibility for our actions. 

Secondary causes include things that happen within the created world—the cause and effect of the material world. If I drop my phone over the toilet it will fall in the water. If I punch someone in the face they will get a black eye (and I will probably break a few bones in my hand). In these instances, it’s no great mystery what caused the bad things: I caused them. Secondary causes are not always so easy to follow, however. 

Christianity sits in the tension (or harmony, one could say) of a sovereign “primary cause” God and legitimate secondary causes. God is definitely sovereign and “the first cause” (Col 1:16-20; Rom 8:28-30, 9:21-24; the whole of Scripture). And secondary causes are still a thing (Ezek 18, Gen 3, people are responsible for their own actions; James 1, sin is a product of our evil desires). 

Still we’re left with a mystery as to the causes of sin, both for its beginning and for each instance of committing a sin. We’re not given an answer as to how sin first entered creation. How did Satan ever come to the decision that he wanted to tempt Adam and Eve? Satan tempting Eve and Adam’s silence are the introduction of sin to humanity. Humans are now ontologically, categorically sinners. Sin is more than a mere action; it is a root of identity. Scripture tells us that in our sin we are orphans, enemies of God, children of wrath. Nature produces desires which lead to action, so sinners have sinful desires which lead them to sin. Sometimes we sin simply because we want to—because it is who we are in our sin nature. Sometimes sinful desire is inflamed by temptation from outside of us. Sometimes Christians with the best intentions desire to do the right thing but still end up causing harm and/or breaking God’s law. So even at the level of sin, causality is hard to trace. 

 

Principle 5: Causes of Suffering

Right at the heart of this question is the matter of suffering. I define suffering in this way: Suffering is the human experience of undergoing or processing various forms of “bad.” Suffering is an inevitable consequence of sin, though experiencing suffering is not a sin itself. Suffering can manifest itself in a lot of different ways (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational, empathetic, etc.) and has a myriad of causes. Different types of suffering are often interrelated and are therefore even harder to explain/solve. 

“If God is sovereign and the first cause then isn’t he responsible for all the evil in the world and all the pain I am feeling?” The Bible emphatically answers this question “No!” Job displays this well with God “causing” evil (calamity) by allowing all these wicked things to fall on Job but Satan being the actual one to inflict evil. Satan desires to inflict suffering (1 Peter 5:8, John 10:10) on all creation, he finds pleasure in sin and suffering. God uses suffering to accomplish his goal of bringing glory to himself and his church. Satan is subject to God, as are wicked men like pharaoh; God hardens hearts and the wicked act on that. Yet God is still innocent and the wicked are guilty. 

There are many different types of suffering we could parse out. 

1. Suffering as a result of the consequences of your own actions. If you don’t study for an exam, you could fail it. That’s on you. In this instance, responsibility falls on self. This can be either intentional or unintentional. 
2. Suffering as a result of other people’s actions. Someone rear-ends you at a stoplight. Responsibility is on the other. This also can be either intentional or unintentional. 
3. Suffering as a result of living in a fallen world. Scripture seems to tell us that diseases and natural disasters are a product of the fall and that when Christ returns to establish the new heavens and the new earth they will be done away with forever. So suffering caused by these things aren’t necessarily any one person’s “fault” but more so a product of the curse. 
4. Suffering at the hands of God as punishment. Scripture clearly portrays God inflicting suffering on sinners for their sin. Consider Saul and the harmful spirit in 1 Sam 16 or Ananias and Sapphira dropping dead after lying to Peter in Acts 5. God is just to do this, so while God is responsible for inflicting it, he is not guilty of moral evil. The guilt falls on the one suffering from the punishment; suffering is the payment of the guilt. 
5. Suffering as a means of discipline and sanctification. Scripture tells us that God as a loving Father uses pain to grow his children’s faith and maturity (as unpopular as that is in our “gentle parenting” culture). See Hebrews 12:3-17. God is not committing moral evil by inflicting or facilitating harm/calamity to discipline. Discipline is not retributive, but is rather restorative. It is never to punish Christians for their sin. All their punishment was inflicted on Christ at the cross. 
6. Suffering as persecution from a world who despises righteousness. This is more specific but still worth addressing, since many Christians are surprised by persecution today. The Bible tells believers to expect persecution as a result of living in a world that rebels against God and his order (1 Peter 3:13-4ff). 

 

Principle 6: Response to suffering

Often when people suffer they want to be able to find someone or something to blame. That’s not always possible, nor is that always beneficial. It can be easy to pin blame hastily or undeservingly in a rush to find a target to hate. The most common mistake is to blame shift all the way back to the primary cause and pass the buck to God. That is unequivocally the wrong answer. God is not guilty of sin (by definition of the word, and also by evidence of His character in the Bible and history). God does not have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would much rather they repent and be saved (Ezek 18). God is just and will carry out justice in his treatment of the wicked; when God does this, the wicked have no defense and cannot say that God is wrong. 

So either: 1) God is not the cause of your suffering so it’d be wrong to blame him; 2) God is the cause of your suffering but he’s either disciplining you in love, pruning you to make you more like Christ, or punishing you in justice—all are ultimately good; or 3) God is sovereign, in his good pleasure he has decided to allow your suffering for a time because it is a part of his ultimate plan, and we have no more right to question God than clay can questions a potter “Why did you mold me this way?” God is compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. If he is your God, he is your Father; trust, love, obey, plea, TRUST. 

Another mistake can be to misidentify spiritual causes of suffering as physical and vice versa. Sometimes what we assume to be God’s judgement or a demonic attack might actually just be indigestion. On the flip side, we might mistake mental distress as a medical phenomenon when its source is in fact spiritual (again consider 1 Sam 16). Mislabeling the source of suffering doesn’t help clarify the problem or the solution. 

Causes of suffering can be so complex, diverse, and interrelated that one can be totally overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. Small steps are important, small improvements are significant. Change what you can when you can if you can. Searching endlessly for every single cause and reason for one’s suffering is futile and will only add to misery and hopelessness. The reality of our world is, we don’t know why most things happen, both in an efficient sense and a final sense. We don’t know what causes led to our situation and what God’s ultimate purpose in that situation is. Attempting to discern every reason behind our suffering and God’s allowance of it will leave us staring into the “hidden things” of God. God will not reveal all His methods or reasons this side of heaven (and maybe not even after that) and trying to discover those hidden things sends us deeper in the “abyss” and “labyrinth.”The revealed things are sufficient, whether or not we’re told all we want to know. 

What are we supposed to do instead? At least three things. First, Pray for deliverance. Personally, I’ve been so obsessed with attempting to find the origins of my suffering that I forget that isn’t suffering’s solution. Crying out to God for deliverance is always the best thing we can do, and sometimes it’s all we can do. Second, lean into the heart of Christ. Remember that Jesus was not only tempted in every way that we are, he also suffered all the slings and arrows of injustice and persecution. Even more, in bearing our sin on the cross he embraced all the weight of justice as well. 1 Peter 4 touches well on how we share in Christ’s sufferings, and Peter lives this as an example in the early chapters of Acts. Our suffering not only strengthens our dependence on Christ, it plunges us more deeply into his heart and life. 

Third, we can alk to people about it. Ask for help, vent, emote. Fight isolation. Suffering has an immense power to isolate. Life starts to revolve around it, you can feel like no one else understands or cares. Joy is smothered by misery. Breaking isolation is vital to perceiving suffering properly and fighting against the suffering itself and its side effects. 

 

Principle 7: Why faith matters

Telling someone who doesn’t believe that God is a good Father who brings beauty from chaos and good from evil about all the ways God loves them and means their suffering for good will probably not be helpful. Trusting in God is the foundation of strength, hope, peace, endurance, and joy in the midst of suffering. Though we can’t track every cause and reason for suffering, we’ve been given the gist. We’re sinful people and sometimes bring suffering upon ourselves. Other times, God sanctifies us through suffering, and our glory will be magnified by it in the same way that Christ’s glory was magnified by the cross.

You will not find a more satisfying answer to the question of suffering outside of Christianity. The God of the Bible alone gives us a coherent explanation of suffering. Christ alone gives us hope that one day every wrong will be made right and all suffering will cease. Only his Holy Spirit can give us hope and strength to weather the storm until then. Christianity has practically nothing to offer the world apart from the gospel. It is important to remember this when asked the question by a non-Christian. What they need more than a cosmological argument or a good counseling session is the reason for the hope that is in you. We would do well to emulate Paul: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Co 2:2-5).

The Bible explains why suffering exists and tells us that God is doing something about it. The Bible has tons of examples of people suffering “unjustly” and God delivering them (both in an eternal salvation sense and in a physical, temporal sense).

Perhaps the most important point: suffering is a true test of faith. When rubber hits the road, every Christian is forced to ask themselves “Do you really trust God? Is what you say you believe what you actually believe?” How will you respond to suffering? Will you look elsewhere for deliverance or will you wait on the Lord? Will you try to find an easy, clear explanation—one that excuses any personal responsibility or creates a scapegoat to funnel your hate—or will you accept the uncertainty and ambiguity of your limited perspective while trusting God’s wisdom? Outlining this dynamic explicitly in conversation can be a life-giving transition from processing pain to taking next steps. 

 

Principle 8: Some random additional thoughts…

Hypotheticals like “I wish that had never happened” or “If you could go back would you do it again?” are entirely impossible and not helpful. The past is the past and cannot be changed; pretending that things could have gone otherwise removes one from the present reality. However, it can be helpful to look into the past for the sake of the future (not making the same mistake twice, avoiding similar situations or failings). 

Christianity has at the heart of its faith a God who suffered for us. We worship Jesus as the man of sorrows and the suffering servant. We read about how in Christ we can have joy in the midst of suffering. We even read stories like Acts 5 where the apostles are beaten and then leave “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Ac 5:41). With all that, sometimes Christians fall into the trap of pursuing suffering. They want it. They even learn to enjoy it. 

This is foolishness of the highest degree. Christians are not masochists. Suffering would not be suffering if it were enjoyable in the slightest. “Well if we shouldn’t enjoy it,” says the critic, “should we avoid it at all costs? I thought it was good to be disciplined and glorified!” True enough, those are good things. That is why Christians ought to expect suffering to come. Christians ought not be offended at God allowing them to suffer for a time because, as it is written, God disciplines us for our good (Heb 12:10) and plans something better for those that suffer unjustly (Heb 11:40). At the same time, remember why it is we suffer. Suffering is not an end in itself, so don’t try to be content in suffering. Let suffering only sharpen your longing for the country you belong to. 

It’s better to suffer while working in the Master’s vineyard than to suffer outside of it (Matt 20). The reality is, suffering is inescapable in this life; nobody gets out unscathed. The parable of the workers in the vineyard gives us an opportunity for an interesting side conversation. One might come to the question, “is it better to be a worker who was hired at the eleventh hour than to be one who was hired first?” From one perspective, it depends on what you value. If you only value the denarius but despise the work, you’d probably prefer the former. However, the reality of the kingdom of heaven is that working in the Master’s vineyard comes with its own inherent reward. 

Yes, laboring in the vineyard involves bearing the burden of the day in the scorching heat, but the end result of that day’s labor isn’t just the denarius one earned, it’s also the fruit of the labor for the Master. In another sense, the workers hired at the eleventh hour still had to bear the scorching heat of the day, but what did they have to show for it? Comparatively little fruit for their comparatively little labor. 

Two insights come from this. First, notice the immense grace of God. Our reward isn’t based off of our productivity, but on his own generosity. No matter how long or short we labor for him, we can rest in the full reward of God’s promises. Second, when we recognize the goodness of the Master, we have good reason to delight in bearing the burden of the day—even in scorching heat—because his kingdom is worth our full labor. His kingdom is worth a full day’s effort, it’s worth our whole lives. Our labor is not in vain, both because we’re promised full payment regardless of how productive we are and also because the fruit of our labor is valuable in and of itself. (I’ve written more about this here.) 

 

In Closing

Obviously this is not the end-all-be-all of the problem of pain. There are hundreds of books written as a response to this question, dozens of which I am sure are worth reading and maybe three of which I’ve read myself. I’d recommend Tim Keller’s Reason for God, C.S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain, and J.I. Packer’s chapter “God’s Wisdom and Ours” in Knowing God. I am not the most qualified person in the world to answer this question. Neither are you. And yet we’re all asked it—and asking it ourselves. 

Perhaps the best advice I’ve ever received on how to help someone answer this question is to start by shutting up, sitting down, and crying with. Job’s friends were on the right track in Job 2:12-13. “And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” The truth is, people who ask this question aren’t just looking for an answer. They’re looking for comfort and connection. We worship a God who took on flesh and for thirty years, before he worked a single miracle or preached a single sermon, simply sat with humanity in our mess. We should do the same. 

That’s not to say we never get around to giving an answer. Scripture teaches us to lead with silent, but Scripture doesn’t remain silent. As this article has shown, the Bible has a lot to say on why bad things happen to good people. I hope these principles can help you share the Bible’s truths in a way that comforts and connects.