One question that many ask is why do bad things happen to good people. That is an excellent question and it forces us not only as Christians to reflect on what a fallen creation has brought upon us, but to everyone about the often times brutal nature of life. But let’s take a look at the question. We notice two words that stand out, good and bad.

Clearly there is evil in the world. War, oppressions, cancer, disease, a host of things that ought not be. Romans pricks the heart of the matter in verse 3:23, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. The human heart is bent towards evil and only bent because God said, “Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it.” So we know there is evil. If there is evil, we have to make the logical leap to know that there is good because they are both observable. Giving food to the hungry, donating blood, supporting each other, giving someone a taco, all good things. So in morality we have two sides, good and evil. How do we decide what is good and what is evil? I hear you saying, ”How else, we base it on how it feels. If it feels right, good. If it feels bad, evil.” The problem is in some cultures they ask you out for dinner and in others, you ARE dinner, all based on how each culture feels. Humans are terrible on deciding what is good and what is evil. But there must be a moral law to govern the two outside of what each of us feels, thus we must reason there is a moral law Provider. God gave the world 10 commandments, first to the Jew then to the Gentile and summed it up to two when He said in Matthew 22:37-38, ““The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

If there is no moral law Provider, then there is no moral law outside of ourselves to determine what is good and what is evil. If there is no good, then there is no evil. If there is no evil then there is no basis on which we hang our deterministic framework on. Meaning that if I gift a man money and shoot another man one is not better or worse than the other, they simply are. Thankfully that’s not the case.