Monday, March 01, 2010

Sunday's Sermon 2-28-10

Pondering Unanswerable Questions
Why Do Bad Things Happen?
Text: Job 42:1-6
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
February 28, 2010

In late 1944 and early 1945 Allied Armies began to liberate Nazi Concentration Camps. The world began to witness the horror of these death camps. Around the world people began to ask the question the victims in the camps had been asking for years. Why did God allow this to happen?

In August of 1969 the police found a crime scene unlike any they had ever seen. Sharon Tate and a group of friends had been murdered in a rather barbaric fashion. Shortly afterwards, another couple was murdered in the same fashion before gang members, led by a man named Charles Manson were arrested. People asked: Why did God allow this to happen?

In March 2009, Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. People asked: Why did God allow this to happen?

Every day wonderful, beloved people get sick and eventually die. People are killed in horrible accidents and children and babies lose their lives. People ask: Why does God allow this to happen?

There is an unanswerable question that we ponder. Why do bad things happen?

The definitive answer is this. I don't know. To be perfectly honest, as a minister, if there was any one question I wish I knew the answer to, it is this one. It is the question I am asked, in a wide variety of forms, mostly personal forms, why did this happen to me?

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People was a best selling book written by Rabbi Harold Kushner. The book was a well done Bible study on the Book of Job; Job is the definitive example of a good person to whom bad things happened. It is an excellent book, but many people find it lacking because he really doesn't give you an answer.

I did some searching on the subject and one person did come up with a definitive answer. His answer was this. There are no good people so bad things never happen to good people. But to say his answer is a bad answer is falling way short. It's a dreadful answer.

There is a dictum that needs to be lived by in attempting to answer this question of why bad things happen. The dictum is this. It has to be an answer given in the presence of the burning children at Nazi Concentration Camps. Cheap answers when young innocents are being gassed is blasphemous. It has to be an answer given in the presence of parents who have lost their young son or daughter. When innocent children die, an answer like, "They never were really good in the first place," is an obscene answer.

So how do we even venture answering the question? With care and without being definitive.

When I dare even approach this question, there are things that do come to mind that begin to give us some insights.

The first venture is this. God has blessed people with a free will. Or maybe God has cursed people with a free will. Or both.

In the history of the world some of the greatest acts in humanity came as the result of people exercising their free will and doing something great; conversely, some of the most heinous acts in human history occurred because people exercised their free will for something dreadful.

Most of us, if asked, would choose having a free will ten times out of ten times. We cherish the ability to act freely. We love freedom and we love free will.

But, like freedom, free will comes with a cost. It means that there will be people who choose evil over good. Our world will always be filled with evil people. It also means, at times, we will choose evil over good; we will choose to sin rather than to be righteous. Sometimes bad things happen because people have used their free will to make those bad things happen.

The second thing is this. Life happens and in life there is good and bad; there is evil and justice, there is joy and there is sorrow.

In John 10:10 it reads:
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Schlitz Beer company, for years, advertised their beer with the motto that people ought to ‘live life with all the gusto they could get.' I guess the point was, that the way people live life is filled with joy, enthusiasm, and Schlitz Beer.

Often, when people read the words of John 10:10, I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full, they read the words as if they were listening to a beer commercial. Jesus was not a beer commercial, however. Far from it. His words are best interpreted in light of the words of Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under Heaven:
2a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
6a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

The author of Ecclesiastes, a man named Qoheleth, was not an optimist. His statement about time is not a statement about enthusiasm or joy, but a pretty blunt
statement about life. There will be good times and there will be bad times. There will be a time to be born and a time to die. For everything good, there will be something bad; and for everything bad, there will be something good and we have, in his thoughts, no control over either the good or the bad.

And then Jesus says the words, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." When we look at the words of Jesus in the context of Ecclesiastes, we have everything BUT a beer commercial. We have, at its core, very difficult words to digest. I have come that you may have life to the full; that you may have joy and grief----to the full. There you will laugh and weep, profoundly. There will be life, and there will be death and there will be no exceptions.

Life happens. And not everything in life that happens is good. Not everything in life is sweet and kind and nice. The reality is that much of what happens in life is painful and difficult. God is strongly telling us that we are not promised only good things; we are promised the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful. Perhaps it's best seen that it isn't what happens that is of the most importance; it is what we do with what happens.

The last thing is this, and it relates directly to the Scripture reading this morning.

Listen again to some of Job’s words:
"I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

The Book of Job is an amazing book. It essentially begins with a bet between God and Satan. Is there one person so good that no matter what you do to him, he will not turn away from God. God bets on Job and Job does not turn away from God, so Satan loses the bet.

But Job does begin to question: Why did this happen to me?

Three of his friends listen to his questions and laments for quite a while and say nothing. Ultimately their answer is the same one I found on the Internet. The problem is that you, Job, are probably not really good and are being punished. The debate carries on with Job insisting that, no, he did nothing wrong.

A fourth friend enters the dialogue and even though you are sure this friend will be truly wise, his counsel is the same. Job must have done something to deserve God’s wrath. Job knows that he didn’t and insists on his innocence.

The, finally, in Chapter 38, God enters the conversation. And God REALLY enters the conversation with the words:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
[2] "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
[3] Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

And Chapters 38, 39, 40,and 41 are a relentlessly blistering series of questions that God gives to Job until we read Job’s response:

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

God’s response to Job is simple and somewhat earth shaking. The answer is that the only way to know the answer to this question is to be God, and God reminds Job that he, Job, is not God. But, in reminding Job that Job was not God, God is also reminding Job that Job, like all of us needs God.

Often people find the Beatitudes, teachings of Jesus in the Gospel, to be mystifying. Why are we blessed when we are poor in spirit, or mourn, or suffer? The answer is that when we are poor in spirit, or in grief, or suffering in any way, we are reminded of our need for God. In 2nd Corinthians 13, St. Paul reminds us that God’s power is strongest in us when we are weak. The more we recognize our weakness, the more we can embrace God’s strength.

So, why do bad things happen? This is, in reality, not a question we can really answer. Ultimately, in the end, it may be actually the wrong question to ask ourselves. Perhaps instead of asking the question ‘why do bad things happen?’ we would be better served by asking the question “How do we deal with bad things happen to us?”

Helen Keller was deaf, mute, and blind and became one of the most accomplished and celebrated Americans of all time not because she lamented why these bad things happened to her, but she inspired people by how she dealt with those things.

Out of the horror of the Holocaust grew the nation of Israel and a greater understanding, worldwide, on the seriousness of deal with hate.

Ultimately, as Christians, the horror of the crucifixion turned into the glory of the resurrection and the spread of the Gospel.

Do bad things happen? They do and they can be and often are devastating to us on so many levels. But let us that while not knowing the why’s of things, we also can live with the confidence and faith that when we are at our most hurt and most vulnerable, God is there for us in rich and special ways.

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