
Recently I've had quite the interesting conversation with some friends of mine my wife and I have been witnessing to. It was concerning God in relation to death and punishment.
My one friend has been raised to believe that God punishes us or at least allows bad things to happen to us as punishment for our sins and wrong-doings.
My other friend believes this as well. Additionally she believes that God allows people (including His children) to be hurt or killed so that they or others may learn from their pain or death.
I believe that because God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (
1 John 1:5) He is incapable of such things.
The reason I know this to be untrue is because it has no representation, Biblically. Never in God's Word does it say he lets someone suffer or die so that others can be brought to Him -
save one, and that is Jesus Christ. That was the purpose of his life, torture, and death -- to be the sacrifice for our sins that we may be held
blameless until his return. The Devil is the one that comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. Christ came that we might have a more than abundant life! (
John 10:10)
My friend asks the question, "Well what if the only way you can learn something is by suffering?" Well, God never says in His Word that he wants us to suffer. He says many times that he wants us to have
peace and life and
prosperity.
1 Peter 4:12-16 says if we do suffer, then to make the best of it, but that's not even close to God wanting us to suffer, or causing us to suffer, and certainly not to die.
To say that God would allow us to die for the "greater good" is especially preposterous.
Death is the enemy! (1 Cor 15:26) Ecclesiastes 9:2-5 says death is evil and that a living dog is better than a dead lion, and that a dead person can't build rewards for the Bema.
So why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people? Well, there's a lot more going on that what we see with our five-senses. There's a spiritual competition going on in which our Adversary, the
god of this world, desires to keep us from the truth. He runs the
forces of this world, and everything they do is designed to hide you from the truth. One of the ways he does this is by making the bad look good and the good look bad. He's not stupid. He's going to make his children look like they've got it easy and endeavor to make it look like doing God's will only makes it worse.
In the end, God's kids always come out on top as long as they're walking
circumspectly. Not perfectly as that would be impossible, but circumspectly. No matter what our temptation, God always provides a
means of escape. He did with Jesus Christ in the wilderness and he will for you!
Ephesians 2 is a good place to read about all this and also learn a little more about Grace.