Since reaching out to christianity, my life has gotten better. The problem is i cant help by link every good and bad thing that happens to me, to God.
For example things are finally going great with school, grades and relationships. However, on my way to school my exhaust broke off, dragged it in to student parking, and now im stressing getting to school. Luckily spring break starts saturday, so i have some time to figure it out. One problem is the money i know this fix will cost me. I tell myself im wrong, but i cant help but to feel like this has to mean something. Why things always go bad once they go good?
Are there any bible passages to help me with these thoughts?
The closest to anything directly relating to the idea of "why do bad things happen [to me]?" is the book of Job, a book in the genre of ancient Jewish wisdom literature (along with, for example, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes). While Job is wisdom literature it is in the form of narrative prose that details the story of a man named Job who has been blessed with many great things in life--wealth, family, good health--and the story recounts an encounter between Satan and God where Satan (it's probably unclear if at this time in Hebrew thought if Satan was regarded as a rebellious agent against God or [still] largely regarded as more of a court prosecuting attorney) suggests that Job is only faithful to God because Job is well off. God then permits Satan to do anything he like, except kill Job, Job loses everything and becomes very very very ill. The bulk of the story has Job's friends try and explain to him why this is happening to him. Ultimately God steps in and gives His thoughts on the matter. Ultimately when Job questions why God let this happen God's response is, "Who are you to question Me? I'm God."
That's not a very satisfying answer, especially to us moderns, if what you're looking for is a deep philosophical answer to the problem of theodicy (why bad things happen); but it reflects the ancient Jewish understanding of wisdom, that the wise person is the person who fears God, follows His commandments, and upholds justice. And it's not really a very satisfying answer if one is seeking comfort due to problems outside of the context of: "God's got this under control, trust Him" that works for someone whose faith is strong, but probably not for someone struggling, or one who doesn't believe at all.
I would actually argue that there is no single place or passage in the Bible necessarily that really covers this subject. Instead, I'd argue, most Christians try to read the entire Bible more holistically in order to see the bigger themes and the bigger picture, the bigger picture for Christians, of course, is Jesus. So we see in both our experience and in the larger themes and narrative of Scripture that in this world there is death and sin, injustice that seems to almost viscerally defy an innate sense of what
should be. We see this in the story of Eden where the serpent tricks Eve to eat the fruit God said not to eat, and then Adam also disobeys; this results in being cast out of paradise and to a life of weariness and turmoil--and death. It's not long after this that the first murder is described, and it is an act of fratricide. The story of the flood might simply seem to be a story of God getting mad and killing everyone because they're just so awful, but if we really pay attention we'll notice that it seems the flood was supposed to be a kind of "do over" and yet it seems to accomplish absolutely nothing: human beings are just as awful after the flood as before. A drunken Noah passes out naked and when his son Ham comes in and exposes his naked father, Noah curses Ham's son. generations later and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are so horrible that God sends fire upon the cities to wipe from the map. The flood didn't really solve anything, but maybe that isn't the point of the story, maybe the point of the story is that simply starting over isn't the solution to human evil, maybe something else is: redemption.
And for Christians the entire biblical narrative leads forward, progressing onward in the story of Abraham to Moses to Israel to the Prophets and, ultimately, Jesus Christ. And it is Christ where we find the way in which God is going to address the problem of death, sin, and suffering: Christ, the very Son of God, suffers the inglorious death of a rabble-rousing renegade, crucifixion. He is mocked, He is tortured, and there is no nobility in His death--it is a public spectacle, a shame. And in this God has, in Jesus, identified with every ignoble, humiliating defeat of every person, every victim, and every nobody who suffered unjustly at the hands of irrational fear, violence, and human inhumanity. In dying Christ turns to those who despise Him, kill Him, mock Him, spit at Him and cries, "Forgive them!" In the death of Jesus God has just robbed violence of its power, and robbed injustice of its might. And in rising from the dead Jesus has turned that defeat into victory, the paradox is that the cross was an instrument of terror and torture by the Romans but Jesus made it an instrument of salvation, hope, and victory by His own death, and His rising from the dead destroying and defeating death.
The Christian therefore says that when God encountered the world it crucified Him. And when the world crucified Him like it had so many countless millions before and since, He embraced those nails and that spear and took hold of the whole world in love, declaring peace in the visage of His own violated corpse, and then rendered it restored, redeemed, by rising undoing all death and granting to the whole world the hope, and the promise, and the reality that suffering, death, violence does not get the final answer to the story of the universe. The final word to the story of everything is Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, about whom St. Paul writes, that by whom and for whom all things were made. And there is life, and peace, and victory, and every shackle of defeat and every chain of doom is made undone by His spilled blood and His empty tomb.
-CryptoLutheran
