Monday Morning Meditation #52: Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Finishing the last few verses of Esther, I move on to -- Job. Goodness, that is a book that I wrote about at length in my book, Blest Atheist. Is there anyone, Christian or otherwise, who does not know the story of Job?

Reading: Job

Meditation: I do not think I can add anything to what I wrote in Blest Atheist, at least not at this stage in my spiritual development. I have probably understood it as well as I could at this point. Maybe, with greater knowledge, time, and spiritual maturity, I will have more insights and greater understanding. It is a deep story, and I am still learning. For now, here is what I wrote in my book:

[In response to my question why God had not stepped in and protected my children from birth defects, I was directed to the Book of Job.] I found the Book of Job and read it. Ah, the patience of Job! That is an expression everyone knows. I did not think, though, that the message I was supposed to be getting had anything to do with patience. After all, how does patience explain why children might be born with handicaps?

So, I read the Book of Job again. I read about all the torments and testing, about how Job remained faithful through all the tests. I did not think that was the message I was supposed to be getting, either. That, too, did not explain why children would be born with handicaps. My children were not torments. They were delights.

So, I read the Book of Job a third time, paying attention to how Job’s friends exhorted him to turn his back on God, but instead he turned his back on their advice. This, too, did not seem to be the message I was supposed to be getting for I neither blamed God nor believed in God at the time of my children’s births.

The reading of Job was becoming rather frustrating, and I began to think I would need the proverbial patience of Job to ferret out whatever meaning I was supposed to be getting from it. So, I read the Book of Job a fourth time and began to feel much empathy for him, especially in the loss of his children. I noted well that I had been spared such pain even in the case of Doah whom doctors refused to believe would live. An understanding was beginning to emerge but not one that I could articulate. Just one more time and perhaps I would understand!

I read the Book of Job a fifth time, and then I finally got it. It was not the concept of patience that I needed to understand, nor was it a test whose requirements I needed to meet. No, it was the concept of unconditional love that I needed to develop. No matter what was taken from Job or what he had to endure, he continued to love God. That, I think, is a message that is not often preached. More frequently preached is a panoply of "benefits" of coming to Church, being holy (whatever that means), and exercising patience. I don't need to be promised wealth in order to give to God. I don't need to be promised the avoidance of eternal damnation in order to obey God. Nor do I need fear of reprisal to walk along the path that God has laid out. I don't even need to be promised salvation in order to love God. I do all of these things because I want to not because I have to or fear the consequences of not doing them. Love for God is not a selfish love, looking for something we can get from it. It is an unselfish love, like God’s love for us, full of desire to give back to God by modifying our behavior to be worthy of God’s love, serving as God’s instrument for good, and being open to whatever it is that God would have us do.

What the message of Job says to me is that God's presence in our lives and what happens to us and those we care about are separate things. God has promised us to be with us if we allow it. What happens to us, on the other hand, is often a result of free will with which God is determined not to interfere although sometimes God does intervene. Love of God must be unrelated to what happens to us, and our love of God must be as unconditional as is God’s love for us. It took five decades, but I do finally get it. What happens in life—the bad things and the good things—cannot be conditions for whether or not we love God. They are tangential. These things generally come from our own misguided actions allowed by free will, the free will of others that encroaches upon us, the sometimes infelicitous combination of genes as people marry into various gene pools (i.e. the free run of nature), and even perhaps as in the case of Job with the interference of Evil. Just as God’s love for us is unconditional, not depending on whether or not we are always “good” (an impossibility, anyway), so, too, our love for God must be free of conditions. I understood that God was not to blame for any of the bad things that happened to Job or to me, but God has been omnipotent at turning the bad, once it happened, into good.

The reading of Job took care of my question as to why there could be a God and my children might be born with birth defects, why God might not want to intervene, or why it might be better to allow the birth defects to occur. My children’s lives are not defined by their birth defects but by what they do with their lives, how they help others, what they contribute to the world. It is defined not by what they cannot do but rather but what they can do and do do.

There was one more thing, though, one that seems to be overlooked frequently. God protected Job. It did not seem that way to Job because Job was not in on the agreement that God had made with Satan. Satan could take things away from Job and then, later, God even allowed Satan to torment Job physically. Job, however, was never in danger of dying. His life was always in God’s hands and protected by God, as so many times have been my life and the lives of my children even when I, like Job, could not see that anything good at all was transpiring.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for all the times He has protected me whether or not I have been aware of that protection, to praise Him for His ability bring good out of bad, to repent for any time that I have not trusted Him to do that which He does so well and has done so consistently for my family and me (turning seemingly hopeless situations into hopeful, meaningful ones), and to ask Him to forgive me for any moments that my faith has wavered and to give me greater faith in any such instances in the future. Then I will spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves, knowing that I could have no better Protector.

I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.