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In the overview of this series on "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People", we confirmed that the Scriptures clearly say God is good and yet bad things happen to people. We realized that personal virtue or lack thereof has nothing to do with whether bad or good things happen to each of us. And we learned that none of us have enough virtue to earn favor with God anyway. So, how do we reckon the fact that a good God could allow bad things to happen to His beloved creation?

Introducing Free Will

The best way to understand the difficulties we all encounter would be to consider the issue in context. Jesus states in John 14:15, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Jesus says this because we have the freedom to choose to love Him or not. We have the freedom to choose to love Him by keeping His commandments or to reject His lordship by doing something else. It is our choice. It was our parents' choice as well. All the way back through to the beginning of mankind, we have had this choice: Love God and keep His commandments or don't.

The first place where we see mankind making a significant choice is in Genesis 3 where man and woman decide to disobey God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This was their free choice. But God knew they were not prepared to deal with this knowledge, so God gave them good instruction before they made the choice, as any loving parent would give: "