Walking With Christ

2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Recently, I was asked why bad stuff happened if God was good. The insinuation is that God can’t be good because bad exists. This is a variation on the question of why a loving God would send people to hell. There are a surprising number of variations to that question.

The short answer is that God doesn’t send people to hell, they choose hell, and God doesn’t cause bad stuff to happen, but the lack of God makes room for bad stuff to happen.

God is love. He wants to give us love. He wants us to return that love to Him. He also gave us free will because love can’t be forced if it’s real. This means we have a choice of whether to love Him back or not. That choice must have consequences and God must enforce those consequences if He is to truly be good. Any parent knows that a child who never has to face the consequences of poor decision making ends up being spoiled and terrible human beings. The only way for them to grow and mature is to face the consequences of choices they make.

2 Peter 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Putting off the responsibility of a choice does not remove the responsibility of the consequences. God knows that eventually the clock has to stop and the balance of our choices has to be measured. How those results are measured is entirely dependent on whether or not we accepted His gift of love and returned what was freely given.