John 9:1 Now as Jesus was passing by, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 9:2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?” 9:3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.
Ecclesiastes 3:16 I saw some else on earth: In the place of justice, there was wickedness, and in the place of fairness, there was wickedness. 3:17 I thought to myself, “God will judge both the righteous and the wicked; for there is an appropriate time for ever activity, and there is a time of judgment for every deed.
You may not agree with the language, but it is true – shit happens, and one of the mistakes of faith in the sovereignty of God is to believe that He somehow allowed or caused that shit to happen for some greater purpose. But sometimes, shit just happens.
Growing up it was common in my church to believe that if you were going through some personal suffering because the devil was trying to divert you from your path. Specifically, I can remember thinking that there was some special call on my life from an early age. When you grow up hearing of Daniel, David and the other heroes of the Bible, it is easy to believe that you too will be heroic. Some kids thought they would grow up to be Spider-Man, I thought I would be Joshua. Whenever I felt particularly tormented by life – teasing, sickness, or struggling with issues of faith – I thought it was because there was this call on my life that Satan recognized and wanted to keep me from becoming.
This is a weak type of faith. Certainly I am not denying that there are powers and principalities that seek to subvert the message of Christ, but not every stub of the toe in the dark is the work of Satan. Sometimes, you just stub your toe. Sometimes, shit happens.
In the first passage, from John, we have the story of a blind man being healed by Jesus. Jesus' disciples ask who is responsible for the man's blindness – was it caused by some sin of his parents or the sin of the man himself. I can just picture Jesus having to swallow his annoyance before answering. He does answer them that no one's sin caused this but that the man's blindness served to reveal the glory of God. Now you may think this verse serves as evidence against what I am saying – here we have a clear example of God allowing or causing blindness for a higher purpose.
The difference here, is the direct revelation of Jesus that this was its purpose. At the same time, how many hundreds and thousands of other people were blind in the world? They were not all caused or allowed to be blind for a purpose – some of them were blind because blindness sometimes happens to humans.
Ecclesiastes could just as easily be called by the title of this post. The Teacher is writing about the futility of life and how to deal with that. One of the futilities recognized is that justice, fairness and equality are non-existent in the natural order. In other words, good things happen to bad people and vice versa.
The point is this, if your belief is that God uses trials and tribulations to prove a bigger point, when the point goes unfulfilled or unrecognized, you will begin to resent God. Sometimes, being human causes human things – disease, death, hardships. This is not to say, though, that God doesn't use these things to reveal his glory, but sometimes, shit just happens.
