Why Tragedy Doesn’t Let God Off the Hook

It’s now two weeks after the worst earthquake to wreak havoc on southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in over 80 years. As of Monday another powerful temblor has struck the same region. Buildings collapsed. More lives were lost.

You’ve heard the argument. You’ve thought it too. 

If God is all powerful and good, why does he allow for so many good people to suffer? Why would a good God let bad things happen in the world he made?

When we witness tragedy in our own lives, like the death of a loved one, or when we experience tragedy on a regional, national, or global scale—the existence of evil and suffering seem to outweigh the goodness of an all-powerful, benevolent God.

If he is good, then he sure isn’t powerful. And if he’s powerful, then God sure isn’t very good. In fact, he sounds a lot more like Disney’s Maleficent than he does a deity.

Or he’s a young child playing burning ants with a magnifying glass. What a maniac. 

Based on these observations about our world, any reasonable person in this world should come to terms with the simple fact that God does not exist. But if God does not exist, then why should anyone have a problem with suffering and evil at all?

If God is not there, if he is nowhere, then why do we call something “good” or “evil” in the first place? If God is not there, isn’t suffering just a feeling—no more or less important than other experiences we live through?

But tragedy doesn't let God off the hook either. If God does exist, then the very existence of suffering and evil is a really big problem for Christians to make sense of. However, it’s an even greater problem for everyone else—because ultimately, evil and suffering have no one to report to in a world without God. They happen to us and we can’t control them, and there is no reason for it and there is no end to it. It just happens—or it doesn’t (if you’re “lucky”). Chance, or luck, meaningless whatever, governs human existence and some have it better off than others, I guess. How should I know?

If God does not exist, then does “survival of the fittest” govern reality? Is that what determines who lives and who dies? Evolutionary choice—the strong consume the weak? If that’s the case, why not make that the acceptable norm? Why have societies that punish criminals? Why try to have just societies and pursue peace if it’s all for nothing and no reason? Why try to play god if there is no heaven above or hell below? Maybe a MadMax world makes sense, with the powerful consuming the weak.

And if God’s not there, isn’t it just natural for people to live and die—some longer than others, but to no real end and with no purpose and with the stronger butchering the weak-minded and simple people?

What I’m challenging here is the notion that all of life is just random chance. If that’s the case, then no one should complain when bad things happen. If it’s a random, meaningless life, then we have nothing to object to, nothing to hold others accountable to, and nothing to live for. Stuff just happens because it happens.

When a person is unjustly murdered, we can’t respond with outrage because it just happens. Why should we care if someone dies, if it’s all just chance and there’s no one to report to?

I realize that this does not let God off the hook for all of the tragedy that happens in this world. God does not stop all evil and suffering from happening, and he hasn’t yet eliminated evil from existence. That’s true. But what’s so interesting about the Christian story is that God does not let himself off the hook either, in fact, he actually has decided to put himself on the “hook” of human suffering. God did this in the life and death of his son, Jesus. 

Jesus entered into this world of evil and suffering, and he became a curse for us within it. He was afflicted, mistreated, imprisoned, beaten, mocked, and murdered. God in Christ knows human suffering, tragedy, evil, despair, fear, loneliness, grief, agony, deceit, frustration, and the rest. All of it. 

God took evil and suffering so seriously that he allowed for his Son to experience evil and suffering to the fullest on the cross. God allowed for pain and death to swallow him up. He took death so seriously that he didn’t just face it head on, but he went down in the grave.

Because God in Jesus Christ did that, we can trust that he not only knows what our suffering is like—and he not only empathizes with us in our pain—but he also has a decisive plan to triumph over all evil and suffering. Death did not get the last word, he conquered the grave by rising up out of it. Because of that, his plan is set into motion and we can trust that he is going to put an end to evil and suffering forever.

Maybe not in our ideal timing, but eventually, it’s going to happen. Because when Jesus came out of that grave that he went into for us, he began this great work of putting an end to suffering, tragedy, and evil for good. He started to step on evil’s ugly head and has been crushing it once and for all ever since. It’s only a matter of time until we experience the new reality that Jesus has ushered in. And that’s a whole lot more than any other view of reality can say. There’s real hope. It’s a promise. That’s a fact.

If Someone Killed Themself, Would They Go to Heaven?

*Disclaimer: This article may contain content that is sensitive and could be traumatic or even triggering to a person. Please consider getting help immediately if you or your loved one has had thoughts of inflicting self harm. You’re not alone, and you matter. There is hope and help available.

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“If someone killed themself, would they go to heaven?”

My son asked this question this morning.

He’s ten.

Yup.

He was watching a show on Netflix yesterday called The Extraordinary Woo. This show follows the career of an autistic Korean attorney, and in that episode, a man attempted suicide by hanging himself by the neck.

So now my ten-year-old's wheels are spinning, and he’s trying to make sense of suicide and it’s implications not as an end to this life but he’s wondering what might happen in the life to come.

Since he’s not alone in wondering about this question, I want to offer some encouragement to anyone who has ever lost a loved one to death by suicide. Suicide is not the “unforgivable and unpardonable sin” like we learned at catholic school or in evangelical camps.

People who have misused the Bible to shame others have taught this. The logic is, “since a person is unable to repent because that sin is committed and there’s no opportunity to ask for forgiveness for it, then the person must be damned forever.” How silly is this logic though? For many of us, we are going to die someday without knowing the exact moment of our death. So it’s probable that many of us head into death with numerous unconfessed sins, and if that’s true then God help us all with this silly logic. How many sins are there that we have committed that we aren’t even aware of (theologians call this sins of omission)? How is it possible to repent for a sin that I don’t even know I committed? This reasoning is absurd.

Rationality aside, the Bible does not teach that suicide is an automatic expulsion from the gates of heaven.

So what does the Bible say about suicide?

Let’s take a look.

Some have tried to use Mark 3:20-35 as a proof text for suicide as the “unforgivable sin” of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, but this is just flat-out wrong. The only unforgivable sin Jesus has in mind here is not suicide, but it’s calling the work the Holy Spirit does “satanic” (for example, when the Pharisees try to say Jesus “has a demon” when he just healed a person—that would be pretty unforgivable to done mess that up, A—aron).

In the Bible, suicide is mentioned only six times when six different people die by suicide.

• To avoid an embarrassing death at the hands of a woman, Abimelech dies by forcing his armor-bearer to thrust him with a sword (Judges 9:50-57).

• Taking a bunch of Philistines with him and while offering a prayer to God, Samson pulls the pillars of a house down upon himself and everyone in it (Judges 16:28–30). The mighty King Saul, wounded, doesn’t want to die by wounds from his enemies. So he asks his armor-bearer to kill him as Abimelech did in his story, but the servant refuses to do it. So Saul falls on his own blade and dies (1 Sam. 31:1–6).

• Ahithophel hung himself under a tree (2 Sam. 17:23).

• Zimri ignited a fire around him to die (1 Kings 16:18–19).

• Judas Iscariot bought a field for himself with his murder money (the silver he won for turning in Jesus), and just like Ahithophel, he hung himself (Matt. 27:5; Acts 1:18–20).

In every one of these stories talking about each person dying by suicide, there is never a moral evaluation and determination made about their death by suicide. For Saul, there is plenty of moral evaluation about his wasted life and how he disobeyed God in other ways, but suicide itself is not listed as any reason for his fate and God’s displeasure with his life.

In the absence of anything in these texts, what then does the Bible say about suicide?

We do have God’s prohibition in the sixth commandment, which is a blanket statement about murder and maybe we’ve heard it said like this: “Thou shall not kill.” The commandment is clear: you shall not murder. This commandment forbids taking any person’s life and encourages us to seek and promote life to everyone around us. But of course, with just war theory there are exceptions if you are a soldier in a war and you must fight for your nation. And there’s also self-defense or protecting others around you from harm (which is the greater sin, allowing a person to murder you and several others or taking out the guy about to do it first?). That commandment while true, has a certain kind of flexibility with it in actual practice.

So going back to the topic of suicide, if we apply the sixth commandment to it we do know that murdering yourself (i.e. killing yourself) is a sin before God. We are depriving ourselves of the life that God has given to us, we are not protecting the sanctity of life, and in effect, we are saying that we know better than God when we should live and when we should die. In that way, there’s also a kind of hubris involved in it. So yes, suicide is a sin. But is it the sin above all sins? Is it the sin that separates us from God eternally?

There’s nothing here that would suggest to us biblically that suicide is an unpardonable sin, to a degree that is worse than any other sin that we could commit. What we know from the Bible is that suicide is a sin, just like any other sin like lying, stealing, committing adultery, coveting, and the rest.

I think where people get confused on this topic, it isn’t our misunderstanding of the Bible on this but it’s our misunderstanding of God on this. Fundamentally, we don’t get God. Our problem isn’t biblical, it’s theological. Many of us are convinced that our repentance—the amount of saying I'm sorry to God about x, y, or z, is what justifies us before God and makes us acceptable enough to walk through those golden gates. So if we just say the right thing, throw up enough Hail Marys or whatever, then we’re going to be good with God and get in.

The thing is, that’s all a big lie.

The only way we are ever acceptable before God is through repentance, yes, but there’s something even more important than that part. Turning away from our pet sins that we love so much is a part of it, no doubt, and turning away from trusting in our own way of doing this is a part of it, to be sure. But the most important part of acceptance with God is faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

We don’t just turn away from ourselves, but we turn toward God. We don’t just say I’m sorry, God. But we look to the only One who can take away all of our sins—past, present, and future. That kind of forgiveness can only be found in Jesus. It’s not our measure of repentance that seals us into the heavenly kingdom, but it’s the Holy Spirit who seals us for heaven (Ephesians 1:13, 4:30) when we trust in Jesus to take us to be with him forever.

The reason I said earlier that we don’t get God, is that we believe the lie that God is a kind of petty god who takes into account a list of rights and wrongs, and like Santa Clause, he’s just waiting up at the North Pole wondering if we made the naughty or nice list. But the kind of God that the Bible talks about isn’t petty, and he isn’t making a list and checking it twice to find out if we are naughty or nice—but he’s this kind of deity who would do anything to save us from our sin and misery. He’s this kind of God who doesn’t look down at us in judgment, but he actually went down to be with us and to be judged for us himself, taking on the penalty of our sins on our behalf. This God is a rescuer, not a ridiculer.

So when my son asks, “If someone kills themself, will they be in heaven?” my answer isn’t a direct “no” or “yes,” but it’s, “In whom did this person believe and trust?” If the person was a Christian and they died by suicide, I have no reason to doubt that they are with Christ forever. That’s not even a question. Not even suicide can stop the precious and perfect body and blood of Jesus from giving us the full and complete forgiveness of all of our sins.