by Rebecca Remer

Created on: November 11, 2008

Why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people? Why are some babies born to live a day and others are born to live to 100? Why are some people beautiful and rich and others poor and ugly? Why do some people have severe handicaps, deformities, and diseases? It does not take long to look around this world to figure out that life is not fair. Some people have to suffer in this world more than others. Secular psychologists would give the simple answer that we are just a product of our environment and genes. While these can be contributing factors, I would look to the answer that it has more to do with divine guidance in our lives. There are some profound examples in the Bible of unfairness being divinely guided.

To get the right perspective, we need to first take a look at the beginning of God's creation in the book of Genesis. In the beginning, God made the world perfect and fair. Genesis 1:31: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." God then made man (Adam and Eve) and put the tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden. God did not want robots. He gave man a choice to either obey him and live or disobey and die. Satan, who had already chosen to disobey God, played a major role in the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Satan hated God and his creation. The minute Adam and Eve took that first bite; Satan had his first victory. Suffering, evil, and death entered the world.

A revealing example of unfair suffering can be found in the book of Job. Job was a "perfect and upright" man before God. He was blessed with good fortune and prosperity. As a test of his integrity, God allowed Satan to work whatever disasters he wanted on Job. Job's three friends: Eliaphaz, Bildad, and Zophar thought Job must have done something wrong. In Job's day it was a popular belief that God only caused bad things to happen to bad people. Job knew that he was righteous and could not understand why God was doing this to him. "I will say unto God, do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me." Job 10:2. In the end, God reminds Job and his friends (through wonderful, poetic description of his creation) how little we really know. Job then repents "therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not."

In the New Testament, God's purposes could not be carried out without the use of suffering people. Jesus could not perform his miracles without the blind, deaf, and dumb. Matthew

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