Chapter 12

One of the truly great questions, a question that has kept many a Christian awake late in the night, is this: Why do bad things happen to good people?

And there are all kinds of answers to it, all kinds of counters to the answers, and all kinds of counters to the counters . . and counters to the counters to the counters and so on. It’s a question, naturally, that argumentative religious people and atheists (and agnostics etc) are all champing at the bit to answer most of the time. Throw that one in at a university bar and see what happens! You’ll find it’s a bit like throwing a choice steak into the middle of a dog pound.

Less discussed, but no less important, is what could be considered the converse or the inverse depending on how pedantic you are with language. And that question is this: Why do good things happen to BAD people?

This takes a bit more explaining, and is much more uncomfortable. I think this is because of people in the “Underbelly” class. Criminals make crime look so exciting and rewarding – they have the money, the fame (infamy is much the same thing!), the power, the girls (not to put too fine a point on it) and anything else they could like.

Sometimes, the fact that they might get caught is a little bit if a “Well, so what?” kind of question. “They got 8 years before being caught,” one might think. “Didn’t they get away with it more than you or I would?

This questions is actually older than dirt, evidenced by the fact that Jeremiah discusses it in chapter 12.

In passing, it is worth commenting on the relationship between Jeremiah and his Creator seen here. How close are they? They must be close when you consider that what you read here isn’t meant to be the deepest level of Jeremiah’s communication with God!

Anyway, this chapter has Jeremiah making his complaint from verse 1 through to 16. In the process, he uses some amazing imagery, grappling with the God who loves and the God who in His sovereign will can’t interfere with bad things happening.

But it is hard for Jeremiah, until God delivers His message, to live with what he sees. He sees the crooks seemingly winning[1]. He sees the countryside laid to waste by the greed of the few.

Finally God answers – and his answer is surprisingly uplifting.

It starts with what we have started to expect in this book – basically “I will smash the evil.” But then something changes. Instead of predicting universal doom and disaster, God changes the way He is relating.

Instead He is saying that he will, after a period of exile in which the evil people are plucked out, rescue His people of Judah.

For us, the message is fairly clear. God isn’t shocked when we ask Him why the bad people win, but He isn’t impressed either.

In fact, this tendency is illusory. Seen over all of History, there is actually going to be justice. But up close, it may not look that way.

Today I was deeply challenged, and it is only appropriate that I pass that challenge on to you. This world is screwed up deeply, so much so that there’s nothing that we can do to fix it.

Yet all that is Christlike within us will demand that we try to do things about the injustices we see around us.

[1] And how abused this word has been, especially by Charlie Sheen of late!