Far and away the primary objection you hear people say regarding the pursuit of God in their own life is the question: If there really is a God who cares, why is there so much suffering and pain in the world? Why is there so many things wrong on this planet?

If there is supposed to be this loving God who has the hairs on our head numbered, then why is the world in such a mess? Why is there so much human suffering?

Why is there so much inhumanity—man’s inhumanity to man? Why are there so many wars, why is there so much killing, pain and heartache? Why is that all happening if there is a God who actually cares?

The answer to that question is the first step toward God, and it’s important for your own personal pursuit as well as your commitment to God. Basically, the answer to these questions is “ignorance.”

The Prime Contributor To Bad Things Happening: “Ignorance”
Ignorance of the plan of God; ignorance of the purpose of God; and most significantly ignorance of the spiritual law that governs our experience of life. That’s the prime contributor to bad things happening in the lives of good people.

Ignorance of not only the purpose of God and the will of God, but ignorance of the spiritual law that governs our experience of life. Most people don’t even acknowledge the reality of spiritual law. But every physical occurrence and every physical consideration has a spiritual root. The spiritual realm gives rise to the physical realm in which we live.

It doesn’t matter if you like or believe in physical laws, they are going to work no matter what. You may not like the law of gravity, but if you jump off a cliff, you are going down my friend!

It’s true that physical laws constrain our experience of life in this physical world, yet we fail to recognize that spiritual law—which is more fundamentally important—is even more significant in describing our experience of life.

So where do we learn about spiritual law? There is only one place we can learn about heaven and hell, life and death, God and the devil, and matters of eternity. These things can only be found in one place: the Bible.

Not Knowing Spiritual Laws
People need to come to a point where they begin taking the Bible more seriously and start learning what it says. It’s also important to understand that the Bible is a mystery to those who are not saved or born again.

In Mark 4 Jesus Himself said that you can’t understand the contents of the Word of God until you have made the Son of God your Lord—until you have been born again. When someone is not saved, they do not have the capacity to understand the Word.

That is why it is fruitless to argue the Bible with anyone you know who is hesitant to believe in God. They need to be saved before the Bible will make any sense to them. It is in the Word of God where you learn about the purpose of God and about the spiritual laws that govern our experience of life.

There are lot of good people who are trying to live right by the world’s standard; they are trying to do the right thing and be decent human beings. But they still experience a lot of bad things because they are ignorant of spiritual law.

The Bible provides us with an understanding of the Big Picture and about the spiritual laws that govern our success in this arena and therefore will govern our behavior in the eternal ages to come. And it’s this spiritual law that we must understand and become familiar with if we are ever going to explain ‘Why Bad Things Happen To Good People.”

If we want to experience the highest quality of life possible, we need to understand this spiritual law within the framework of God’s purpose for us as a race of people.

And therefore we can see that spiritual law revealed by the Word must be our primary consideration if we are going to understand the things that will benefit us in this life and in the eternity to come. The will and purpose of God has to be first.

The spiritual law that governs life within that arena falls into one of two categories. There are spiritual laws that are going to work whether you like it or not, know it or not, or believe it or not. The law is going to work regardless of whether you believe it or like it—or not. Take gravity for example. You may not believe in this law, but it doesn’t matter because if you jump off a cliff, you the law of gravity is going to pull you down!

Likewise, there are spiritual laws that are set in motion that govern the experience of human life for believers and unbelievers alike. It matters not whether you believe in the spiritual law itself.

The Bible Needs To Be Your Source
The Bible is a book that in the minds of many intellectual arrogant people has become outdated and inappropriate in relation to how people think. Even in religious circles, the Bible is seen as a book that is difficult to understand with a variety of contradictions, and not something that is relative to contemporary living. And that is sad!

But the Bible is the only source of information we have regarding the spiritual laws that is going to determine your experience of life. It is the only place we can find out about these eternal issues which can’t be empirically validated or authenticated.

So we therefore need to know these things. Your life will remain confused and uncertain until you do. But where are you going to find out about them? If you get this information from anywhere other than the Bible…if you begin believing something about life and death, heaven and hell, God and the devil, from a source other than the Bible…there is only one possible origin for it.

And that is the mind of man.

It is the opinion of some other person who is just as prone to error as you know yourself to be. Again, if you form beliefs about eternal issues from any source other than the Word of God, it is simply the opinion of man.

Do you want to hang not only your experience of life on this earth, but also your eternal life on the opinion of man? I would certainly hope not!

Some people might say “I thought the Bible was written by man?” No it wasn’t! The Bible was not authored by any man. The Word describes itself as God-breathed, divinely inspired, and unlike other world religions in general.

Christianity is not a religion insolently. It is unlike other world religions which almost all had a single instigator or a single sponsor an individual who initiated that particular pursuit.

The Bible has no single initiator or sponsor in human terms. The Bible came to us through almost one thousand different scribes and prophets over thousands of years. Yet the Bible forms a perfect picture of God’s plan for man and His purpose for you and the spiritual laws that govern your experience of life on this earth.

So the first step in trying to answer the question of why bad things happen to good people, is to acknowledge our ignorance of spiritual laws and to seek answers in the Word of God.