Big questions from little people #3: Why are there so many bad things?
The little pieces of paper said it all. “Why are there so many bad things? Why is there evil? Why can’t I do the right things? If God exists, why didn’t He make us so we don’t do bad things?” Fourth graders or high schoolers have the same questions. We’ve repeatedly heard the same types of questions.
The short answer is “because of sin.” But we must explain where sin came from, so we go back to Genesis. After all, we were created and have a lineage (we are made of the same stuff, so our history goes back to the first two people, Adam and Eve). Like them, we deviate from God’s perfect will, figuring we have a better way of doing things and can work things out on our own.
So, we briefly explain God’s record (the Bible) and how mankind responded shortly after creation, when evil showed up and the first temptation occurred. Things got bad quickly in the first generations and bad things continue to this day. That is why we need a Redeemer. In other words, evil and bad things are real, and even young ones know it from their experience or observation. That is why they ask the questions we hear.
Most young people have not gotten clear answers, or the answers are buried in the dominant world view of evolution, where there was no God realistically involved, no creation, and everything supposedly gets better on its own. With this in view, we have them consider history. Most children take some version of world history in elementary grades. Humans do badly overall, and it has not changed. Sometimes that is a hard nut to swallow when secular education’s core premise is that we get better if we get smarter. Unfortunately, that does not help our heart problem of sin, where we want to do what we think is right and become God-like on our own. In the process, we make lots of messes, and history affirms it from individuals to nations. Even children know something is wrong, even without history’s record, because too many have seen or experience bad things.
“Then why didn’t He make us so we wouldn’t do bad things?” We answer succinctly that He did not make robots with programming. Rather, He made us in His image, and part of that image is that we have full choice about things, including Him. But we generally choose badly. That is why the Bible says we need to turn (or repent) and ask Him to forgive our sins and come into our life. It’s that simple. However unpopular it seems or incredulous to others, it is that simple. History shows our dire need for redemption, and many children know something is not right from their own circumstances or ones around them. They see the breakdown, the presence of evil, and bad things, but not necessarily the solution. That is why we share that “He so loved the world that He gave…” in John 3:16. It is the only solution to our ways apart from God, and the Bible repeatedly confirms this.
