199 Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People?”, originally shared on March 17, 2022. It was the 199^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Why do good things happen to bad people? God is just and God is merciful. How can God be just and merciful at the same time? Is God more just or more merciful, and does it make a difference? Today, we’re going to find out.

   It’s been said that there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.

   So, let me be clear that, when we speak of good people and bad people, we are speaking about generalities, even though most people would say they were in the “good” group, if you asked them.

   But most people would be wrong.

   The last words of the 16^th century Church reformer, Martin Luther speaking of our standing before God, were, “We are all beggars. This is true.”

   We are all separated from God by our sin. Paul writes, in Romans 3:22b-25a,

For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.

   Big or little, Sin separates us from God and we cannot change this. But the good news, the Gospel, is that we have a Savior in Jesus Christ who has overcome that separation at the cross. That salvation comes by faith, not by anything we must (or even can) do.

   But the Christian life looks like something. We are saved by faith, by the grace of God. But the Christian life, is what we do in response to the grace of God. It’s a new life. It’s a do-over lived in Christ. Its content is what the Bible calls “bearing fruit”.

   What does that have to do with fig trees?

   Jesus once told the parable of the fruitless fig tree. It goes like this, in Luke 13:6-9,

⁶ Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷ So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹ If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

   The first definition of a “parable” that I ever heard was that it’s “an earthly story, with a heavenly meaning”.

   So, what’s the heavenly meaning in this parable?

   I was looking at the fig tree in our back yard the other day. It’s not bearing fruit yet. It’s not even bearing leaves yet. But it has a problem.

   It bears fruit, and it’s been good fruit in most years. That is if we can pick it before the squirrels get it. But it’s been tasteless the past two years and I’m not sure why.

   This year, we started cutting the tree way back. And I found some fig tree food at a local nursery. And I dug around the tree to aerate the soil. So, I’m hopeful that this year will be better.

   Jesus describes a similar approach to fig tree health in this parable. He tells it right after he tells a couple stories about being ready for God’s Day of Judgement.

   The owner of a vineyard found no fruit on the fig tree he had had planted in his vineyard. Again. In fact, he had found no fruit on it for three years. But rather than cut it down, the owner hears the caretaker’s advice to let him give the tree what it needs to bear fruit.

   We don’t know if it was a young fig tree, or an old one. But we find this law in the Bible’s book of Leviticus, part of the Torah, regarding the regulation of fruit-bearing trees, in Leviticus 19:23-25,

²³ When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. ²⁴ In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the Lord. ²⁵ But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the Lord your God.

   Why no eating of the fruit for three years? I think that its so the tree can fulfill its purpose.

   What is the purpose of a fig tree? It’s to bear fruit, but not primarily to provide food. That’s a secondary benefit. The primary purpose of a fig tree is to produce more fig trees.

   All healthy trees grow and reproduce. If they don’t, we need to correct what is unhealthy about that tree. That was the premise of a church growth program called Natural Church Development that was popular years ago. The program didn’t last. Programs don’t grow churches. People do. People guided by the Holy Spirit. But it did offer useful insights into what Spirit-filled and Spirit-led people can do.

   If we are not growing and reproducing ourselves as Christians, there is something in us that is not healthy and needs to be corrected.

   If God were bottom-line oriented, he would just remove us and replace us with someone else. But, in this parable, God instead provides us with everything we need to bear good fruit. And one hopes that another year without fruit would be greeted with the gift of another year of being given what we need to proclaim the good news and to be the means by which God opens people’s hearts and leads them to life and salvation.

   God seems to be more merciful than just, but someday the Judgement will come.

   There is an end, and it’s coming, but I think that Father Nicky Gumbel, the Anglican priest who started the Alpha program for reaching people with the gospel and helping them grow, had the right idea when he said that he believes that after the Judgement is finished, we will look at it and say, “That’s fair.”

  Some say that, even today, a judgment is taking place.

  Christianity is in decline in the United States and Europe. But it’s booming in the Southern Hemisphere, in Africa and South America, and in many countries in Asia, and even in places in India where it is heavily persecuted. We can’t change that, but we can be the means for change.

   How can we be ambassadors for Jesus Christ right here and right now? How can we be the means by which the Good News of Jesus Christ rules in people’s lives in the West? What can we do to be the means by which God acts? Here are seven possibilities.

   First, share your story with friends and family members, whatever the cost. We have accepted the price of tolerance: keep your beliefs private and we’ll tolerate them. That has to stop. How did you become a Christian, or why do you remain one? Share your story. Often.

   Second, we can demonstrate a superior alternative to the world around us. What do we offer people who are looking for a better life? The church is not a social club, or a friendly family, or a social justice agency, or any of the popular models for being the church today, unless it is first the Body of Christ, with Christ as its head. That means Christ is the Church’s face and its brain, its senses and its leadership. May Jesus be what we present to the world.

   Third, the Church says that it offers transformed lives, forgiveness, and change for the better. What is the mechanism by which we expect that to happen in our churches and how do we provide for it?

   Fourth, we live in a world in which more and more people, especially younger people, only have, at best, a foggy idea of what it means to be a Christian. At worst, they see Christians the way they are portrayed on the news and in other media: greedy, perverse, haters who desperately cling to their imagined past. Ross Douthat suggests that two things have brought the church out of periods of decline in its history: holy living and the Arts. Paul’s description of the transformed life can provide both a model for holy living and a source of inspiration for the Arts, in Galatians 5:22-23,

² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   Make us known for that.

   Fifth, be ready to go on defense, as Peter writes in 1 Peter 3:15b-16a,

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶ yet do it with gentleness and reverence. 

   For example, what would you say to a person who finds out that you go to church and asks, “What is a Christian?” If you don’t have an answer, I’d like you to think about that this week and put together a short, meaningful and accurate answer.

   Or, if someone says that they don’t believe in God, you  could say “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Chances are that they have some weird and inaccurate ideas about who God is.

   Sixth, be ready to go on offense. If you’re not sure if someone you meet or know is a Christian, ask them, straight up, “Have you heard about Jesus?” If that person says, “No”, how would you reply? If you don’t know, think about that, too. Be ready.

   Or, you may know people who used to consider themselves Christians but don’t anymore. Get to the root of what may actually be or not be their faith, as Pastor and author Tim Keller says, “When people tell me that they once were believing Christians but now have rejected it all-I often ask them (after long, close listening) why they originally believed Jesus rose from the dead and how they came to decide that he now didn't. They usually say it's a helpful question.”
   Seventh, put your resources into youth ministry. It’s been said that Jesus taught adults and played with children. We do just the opposite. According to The Barna Group, 94% of people who come to Christ do so before their 18^th birthday. Even in churches without many young members, enrichment programs, tutoring, mentoring possibilities, service projects, service hours, and other opportunities can bring young people to the church and position the church as a place that cares about children and young people.

   I went to a gas station in La Verne the other day. The price for a gallon of gas was $5.70/$5.76, cash/credit. Diesel was $6.14/$6.20. This is after prices had gone down over a few days.

   On the other hand, if you pay $3.75 for a Grande (16 oz.) coffee at Starbucks, you’re paying $30.00 a gallon. For coffee! And nobody thinks twice about that.

   Perspective is everything.   

   Does it make a difference that God is more just or more merciful? It would if God could be only one of two things? But God is God and can be anything and all things at once.

   We, both “good” and “bad” people, are saved by God’s unearned and undeserved grace, through God’s gracious gift of faith.

God’s justice and God’s mercy are the same for those who receive God’s gift of faith and believe and are baptized.

   Jesus said, in Matthew 5:43-45,

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

   If we can live in a world where coffee costs 5 times as much as gas, and we’re OK with that, is it that much more difficult to accept the generous incongruity of God’s grace? The grace that God calls us to express in love, even of our enemies. It’s just a matter of what we value.

   God’s grace is free, but it isn’t cheap, as Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer murdered by the Nazi’s pointed out. It come at a price, paid by Jesus on the cross.

   And that means that God’s grace has consequences. It means that our transformed Christian lives are now lived sacrificially for the sake of others because we want to. Because that is who we are.

   God gives us the Holy Spirit, like streams of living water, to feed and nourish us and to do everything we need to bear fruit in this life, and in the life to come know the perfected presence of God. It is as natural for us to do God’s will, and to repent when we fail and live as God’s people again, as it is for fig trees to bear good fruit.

   Why do good things happen to bad people? Because God seeks all people to turn to him and live, to be transformed, to be saved, to repent and turn toward God, to receive the benefits of His ongoing care so that they bear good fruit for the benefit of the world and to the glory of God.