by J.D. Wood

Created on: February 02, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

What this question is really asking is, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

This is probably one of the biggest questions about God. "Why did my mother die?" "Why did my dog get run over?" "Why did God allow 6,000,000 of his 'chosen people' to die in the Holocaust?"

Let's look at this from a purely logical standpoint:

1. If you accept that there is God, then you probably also accept that He is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. "The Almighty" says an awful lot. Yet he does not intervene in your particular crisis. How odd.

2. God has promised eternal life in paradise... heaven. Eternal. Forever. Longer than the human mind has the ability to contemplate, and in a state of perfect bliss on a level that we can not possibly fathom. To date, no one has proven that he does not deliver on this promise.

So I theorize that it is simply a matter of context... you are being removed from your mother/dog/etc. for, what, a few decades at most? You are afflicted by unknown illnesses for which there is no cure?

Eternal life, with the ones you love, in a perfect body, in perfect bliss.

In this context, death is not death. Weakness is temporary, pain will expire, and the evils of this world will fall away.

So the question is not "Why do bad things happen to good people?" If you are interested in fairness, nothing short of eternal damnation is due. Grace... mercy... compassion... if you accept God, you cannot turn around and deny that these are present... the rewards and pleasures of life (and, presumably, heaven) outnumber the bad by a factor of infinity. There is no comparison.

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