- Pray for godly wisdom and do not doubt. You will receive it in due time. – James 1:5-7
- You must “exercise” yourself in these things constantly if you want to grow. – 1 Timothy 4:7-8
The overarching answer: to test your faith and to bring you true joy and peace.
A few prerequisites to understand:
- Everyone is a sinner. There is only one good – Christ.
- We live in a temporary, 7,000 year world filled with the knowledge of good and evil, and sometimes getting caught in the crossfire of bad things (where there’s just so much of it) is inevitable.
- Not an opportunity is wasted with God. He works all good and bad things together to ultimately produce a good outcome for you.
- Our trials/tribulations produce in us the godly characteristics of: patience, self-control, perseverance, and the ultimate end: wisdom, holiness, peace and joy – if you embrace your tribulations and take the opportunity to learn from them in a godly manner, not in a worldly manner. Example: You’re rich and God takes away all your riches and possessions. Learning from the world, it teaches you to start a new business or get an even better job, earn more money and come back 10 times stronger! In the wisdom of God, if you let Him, He’s simply teaching you that your joy and peace isn’t in your wealth and possessions, so you can focus your efforts on the joy of loving and righteous relationships and leading a slow, simple, quiet, peaceful life instead of the chaotic rat race. Another example: God removes a friend from your life. He’s teaching you that bad company corrupts good character – whether the friend was the bad company or you are.
- Every action has a reaction. Something unfortunate or bad that happens to a good person (“good” by the standards of God – not the world) may produce a chain reaction of goodness. Example: You’re a good, godly person and your good, godly spouse that is filled with godly love and the fruits of righteousness gets killed in a car accident by a drunk driver that lived. First, your godly spouse is now in heaven with our Heavenly Father and Jesus in the best place imaginable, and you will be reunited with them for eternity shortly (what’s a few years in the light of eternity?). As for the drunk driver, he was awoken and accepted Christ, and lived to make 20 more disciples of Christ in prison. It was also a wake up call to his drinking buddy, who now no longer drinks and drives and endangers others.
- Understanding free will: Some “good” people by the world’s standards are just never going to accept Christ and become truly good people according to God’s standards. So whether God takes that person at 8 years old or 80 years old, that’s His prerogative according to what He needs to do to bring His 7,000 year story for humanity to its necessary conclusion (every action at any specific time has a reaction that guides the story to its ultimate conclusion). (And yes, an 8 year old can understand right from wrong at this point. The age of accountability is low, so teach your children the ways of God straight out of the womb) Also see note: How can God predestine/elect/choose/qualify humans for salvation, yet give them free will?
- God works very, very slow, and takes years to develop and unfold His plans – most of the time decades, sometimes even centuries.
Job
Consider the story of Job. He was a good, holy man with lots of wealth and a good family, and Satan said to God that he only “loves” God because he’s rich and has a “perfect” life. So God, to ultimately teach us today a lesson via the story of Job, allows Satan to take everything from Job (including his health) for a decade, where Job never loses faith in God or curses Him, and where God ultimately restores his fortunes twofold, teaching us that:
- Bad things in this evil world can and do happen to “good” people (good according to the standard of God).
- To stand by God, not to give up on Him, and blindly trust Him in the midst of all your trials and tribulations, knowing He works the good and the bad together for our ultimate good.
- God will bring you out the other end with more peace and joy than you had before, building godly character in the meantime.
Now the wealth and possessions Job possessed in the beginning and end are merely a symbol of true, godly joy and peace – not false worldly “joy” and “peace” from the thought of possessions and wealth. God isn’t telling us that possessions are the source of true joy and peace, He’s merely making a point using visible, physical, tangible wealth and possessions to show us that a good, godly person with little possessions, who is rich in contentment and true joy and peace, can have something bad happen to them, where God, over the course of many down years, if you let Him teach you and don’t curse Him, will teach You new ways of His and bring you back out on the other end with even more godly wisdom, true joy and peace than you had before, ultimately making you an even better person.
A test of faith:
God loves to test our faith to make sure it’s genuine. Like the story of Job, will we curse and abandon God in the midst of a trial? Or will we patiently endure and blindly trust His leading?
If you’re built up firmly on top of the foundation of the ways of God and thoroughly understand them, you realize that there’s not much “bad” that can happen to you and negatively affect you:
- Losing riches and becoming homeless: You’ve mastered contentment and truly realize that there is just no true peace and joy in the lusts of the flesh and eyes (only misery), therefore you’re not a slave to money and possessions, and simply don’t care about not having any, and you know that God will never leave us without clothing or food.
- Losing 5 star meals and having to live off food stamps: You’ve mastered contentment, knowing that the end of the lusts of the flesh (the love of food and drink for joy and peace) are nothing but misery, and you know that we merely eat for physical survival that ultimately teaches us the need to “eat” of the “bread of Christ” and to “drink” of the “water of the Holy Spirit” to survive spiritually. Therefore you are content with simply getting your 1,500 – 2,000 calories per day for bodily survival and aren’t concerned with eating for pleasure.
- Losing a loved one: Were they saved? You have the joy of them being with God and know that soon you will be reunited with them forever. Were they unsaved? It’s unfortunate but you possess the knowledge that there is no such thing as “dying before your time” – before getting a chance to believe – and that God knew from the beginning that they would never accept Christ. You also are firmly rooted in the knowledge that bad company corrupts good character and that it’s not good to be “unequally yoked” with an unbeliever because it robs you of your joy and peace, and if they were worldly and you are truly godly, their lack of worldly presence can be peace for you.
- Physical and mental ailments such as cancer and diabetes: This is most unfortunate and probably the hardest to answer. The first thing, you’re confident in your salvation and know you have eternal life, so you don’t fear death, and the thought of possibly not having to grind through decades more of this painful life and go to paradise where all is well is comforting. Second, having to suffer through excruciating pain is extremely unfortunate, and all I have on this is that this is just part of the nature of the cursed human flesh/body that experiences aging, decay and death. As for why God chose to put your soul/spirit in a suffering body/flesh and not another, I don’t have an answer from God for you other than only God knows and that He does have a reason. And going back to Job who was cursed with health problems as well, He still continued to trust in God blindly and not curse Him for it. But again, you know that this temporal life of suffering is but a blip compared to eternity, and you know that all will be well in the next life for all eternity – never to remember your suffering ever again – and that gives you some comfort.