Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible
Why are bad people not punished?
Dear Father Paul: My boss is a loathsome person. He actually brags about his sins and I have personally heard him laugh and challenge God to “strike me with lightening.” I’m serious. Besides his open hatred of other races, I’m pretty sure he steals from the company, cheats on his taxes and cheats on his wife as well. Fortunately, I don’t have to interact with him all that much. My big question for you is … how can God stand by and do nothing? I thought God punishes sinners. This guy lives in a huge new house, drives a late model BMW and just got a big raise. Meanwhile, I am just getting by. It just doesn’t seem fair or right. — No Name.
Dear No Name: I think I know exactly how you feel. Most of us, at one time or another, have come across someone exactly like your boss. It’s more than a little hard to watch an absolute jerk like your boss “live the good life” while we are barely making it.
Why doesn’t God do something, we ask? Like a nice case of prostate cancer, for instance? Or maybe his kid could flunk out of college? I know, God could cause his big house to catch fire and burn to the ground. Wow! That’d show him for sure. You’d think God could at least arrange for him to get caught by the company and fired, right?
The problem with this kind of thinking is that when we allow ourselves to wallow in daydreams in which some smarmy character we know, like your boss, “gets what’s coming to him from God,” we have literally crossed the line and become, at least to some extent, exactly like the person we revile. Seriously.
Sorry, but if you are looking in this life for “justice” in which the wicked are always punished and the righteous are always blissfully happy, I predict that you will be sorely disappointed, and you risk ending up an angry and bitter person yourself.
Jesus speaks to this issue in a brief passage in Matthew 5:43-48. The passage is aimed at godly, believing people who are experiencing persecution and disappointment from wicked people. Like you, they ask, “What gives?”
Jesus challenges his hearers to act like “true children of your Father in Heaven, love your enemies … and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus adds that this is what a mature Christian is commanded to do. Jesus then speaks this profound truth which can set you free from your feelings toward God and your boss if you’ll let it. Jesus says, “For he (your Father in Heaven) gives sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” (NLT).
Here’s the truth. God does not pay bills and balance accounts every 30 days as we do. No, God is infinitely patient, merciful, compassionate, and forbearing. Why, we ask? Why doesn’t God just zap all the unjust people like your boss and send them to hell? Here’s why. Because God wants to give all the wicked and unjust every opportunity to come to their senses, repent and become part of God’s flock. For that reason God often (not always) withholds his hand of judgment.
Psalms 145:8 describes God’s deepest character. It says, “The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.” (NLT).
But God is also just. Eventually God must put all things just and right, and his patience will not last forever. Eventually, even God says, “Enough!!”
In Genesis 6:3 God says this, “… My spirit will not contend with man forever … ” (NIV). And the Bible clearly teaches that, while we can repent of our sins, receive God’s forgiveness and become part of God’s family at any time while we are still alive, upon our death, that opportunity is lost for eternity. Hebrews 9:27 affirms this sobering truth when it says … ”And as it is appointed (by God) unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (KJV).
With life so tentative and fragile, I, for one, think it strongly behooves all of us to anticipate that day when we each will be required to stand before God and give an account of everything we have done while here on earth. Pray for your boss that he will come to his senses and get ready for that day.
Do you have a question? Email your question to me at paulmassey@earthlink.net and I will try to answer your question in the paper.
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[Father Paul Massey is Pastor Emeritus at Church of the Holy Cross in Fayetteville, Georgia. Visit www.holycrosschurch@wordpress.com for information, service times, directions and recordings of Sunday services.]
