Theodicy
From Neoredemptive
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
This is one of the oldest questions of all time, isn't it? Depending on the tragedy, we may respond with grief, shock, horror, revulsion, pity... any combination of emotions. As our initial reaction subsides, our search for understanding and rationalization begins. And that leads us back to the question above: "Why does a God - who is supposed to be good and want good things for humanity - allow us to experience and endure terrible, painful, situations?" Biblical theodicy attempts to defend God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.
The Bible itself contains numerous examples of this struggle to understand suffering. One of my favorites is found in Judges 6-
"Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon... was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
“Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites." (Judges 6:11-13 NLT)
