Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good Christians, and Can I Watch?

One thing that atheists love to say to Christians is “you must pay one gold coin before you cross this bridge I live under, or I will place a curse upon your livestock.” But another thing that atheists say is “if God is real, why do bad things happen to good people?”

This is a problem, because bad things ARE happening to good people, and many of those good people are very annoying, and I would like to watch them get knocked down a peg or two.

But let’s not cast our pears before swine. Pigs will eat anything; don’t give them a good pear. And when you feed a pig, don’t get into the mud and wrestle with it, because my youth pastor says the pig will enjoy it, and you have to keep your hands clean for when your Proverbs 31 wife gives you her good pair.

Anyway, back to the part about bad things happening to good people: this is a new argument that atheists are using, and if we do not quickly address it, it will destroy the Church (and more importantly, my brand). Luckily, I can fix everything, with overly simplistic headings and short sentences that are easily shared to social media.

Jesus said that one thing, about something

Let’s go to the Greek: the teachers of the law, the Philistines and Samaritans, were always trying to trap Jesus into getting canceled. That’s why they were like “this man is blind; who sinned?” But Jesus knew that the correct term was “sight-impaired person,” so he told the guy to go wash in the Jordan Sea seven times, and after he did, he could see, and the guy was like “wow, turns out I have leprosy,” and then Jesus healed that, too. Then Peter was like “let me wash seventy times seven times!” and he spent so much time in the water that Jesus finally walked out and pulled him up and made him stand on top of the water until he dried off. Anyway, the message here is that if bad things are happening to you, it is because you don’t take enough showers.

People who are not me deserve bad things

One thing I learned from speaking at reformed conferences is that people deserve bad things. However, when I learned that this included me, I had to become Armenian.

I should be allowed to watch the bad things happen

Whenever a fellow Christian gets ambushed by ninjas or loses their ministry because they had sex with eleven interns, probably the worst part is when they ask for privacy. How selfish! When you hide your misery under a bushel, the bridegroom cannot find his way up to the city on a hill, because no one brought salt for the lanterns. This is why I am always taking on new trauma clients in my online life coaching: when I hear about how horrible someone else’s life is, it makes me grateful to not be them. This is called cultivating gratitude, which is a part of practicing authenticity, which is a facet of being present, but I only know what some of those things mean. Anyway, you’d be surprised at how sensitive people get when you take pleasure in their troubles. Maybe if they had been a little more spiritual in the first place, they wouldn’t be coming to me for guidance. Makes you think.

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