September 01, 2022
Daily Devotion:
"When Bad things happen to good people…"
Psalm 44:20-22
New International Version
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, 21 would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart? 22 Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
In a variety of different ways, the classic question we keep asking over and over is: Why do bad things happen to good people? Never has that question been more sharply focused than for the faithful remnant who, along with the idolatrous neighbors, were victims of the brutality experienced during the exile. Though they had not bowed their knees to idols, they were being punished along with all the others who had. So how could that punishment be just? It's a timeless question asked by generations of the faithful who have faced undeserved suffering. An easy answer, of course, would be that it wasn't punishment at all, only a matter of chance circumstances in which all of us get caught up from time to time. Yet that only begs the question of why God would allow his faithful people to suffer at the hands of sheer fate. More intriguing is another possibility typically overlooked in the conversation that the faithful remnant may not be completely without responsibility for what is happening to them. Just because they didn't personally bow down to idols isn't the end of the story. What had they done to stop their neighbors from worshipping idols? What words of rebuke had they passed along to the priests who they knew were either winking at the people's sin or actually joining in sin with them? What had they done to warn their children against Forsaking God? When bad things happen to good people, the definition of good is always worth a second look.
The probing question is: If I feel like I don't deserve the bad things happening to me, is it possible I've overlooked what I Might have done to prevent some of them from happening?
