This week I am going to introduce you to my wonderful, funny, and beautiful young friend Savannah Smalling who is going through a tough few years in and out of the hospital. And when things like this happen, or any other tragedy, we ask ourselves the same question we hear in the lamentation Psalms–why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? We’re going to look at Psalm 73 and how the Bible encourages us to bring our complaints and confusion and anger to God. Is this a question we can even answer? Let’s find out.
If you are on Facebook, you can follow Savannah’s journey here. She loves talking to new friends!
https://www.facebook.com/My.Sweet.Savannah.Smalling
If you can’t see the podcast player, click here. This is probably a better one to listen to than to read, if possible. Tone of voice is important in things like this.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
Today we’re going to talk about my good friend Savannah Smalling and her family. They are people who I love a whole lot. And we are also going to talk about something called Theodicy. And theodicy is something we find a lot of in the Bible and especially the Psalms. Theodicy is the fancy word that theologians (those are people who study all the stuff about God) use when they are asking, “If God is good then why is there so much evil in the world?” And maybe you have asked that too—we all ask that. It’s normal. It’s a good question! There is nothing wrong with asking that question because we find it all over the place in the Bible. The Bible gives us permission to ask God all sorts of things, and to be angry, and confused, and to even ask if God is really so good. Never forget that God already knows exactly how you are feeling and thinking so you might as well be honest with Him.
Many years ago, I was very angry with God about things that happened when I was a kid. And He never protected me. He let bullies hurt me for years. And I hated Him for it. I loved Jesus but I hated God and maybe you feel like you hate God too sometimes, but maybe you can’t admit it because everyone around you might freak out. But you know what? Sometimes they hate God too. Sometimes they are angry and confused and wonder what on earth He is doing! Now, in the ancient world, all the pagan nations could never admit that about their gods because their gods would just nuke them or worse. If one person got angry at their gods then they thought terrible things might happen to the whole community. Maybe there would be no rain and they would all starve! Maybe locusts would eat all their crops and they would starve! Maybe the earth would open and swallow them down whole. Maybe an army from another country would kill them all because their god wouldn’t protect them anymore! They had to be super careful around their gods because their gods were super touchy and easily offended. But one of the ways our God shows His goodness is by allowing us to be angry, and to ask questions, and to sometimes even accuse Him of stuff when we just don’t understand why everything is going wrong.
And the reason He allows us to do that, to be open and honest with Him when we are angry and struggling, is because we are in a Covenant with Him. That means that we have a real relationship with God—we aren’t just people who go to church and sing worship songs and put money in the plate. We are people who live with God every moment of every day. We are people who God sees and knows inside and out. Jesus said that every hair on our heads is numbered—wow, God loves you so much that he even keeps track of your hair. It means that God doesn’t forget us. That He hasn’t abandoned us. That we can always talk to Him about everything and anything we are thinking or feeling or going through and we can know that He really does care. When we accepted Jesus as our Savior and King, it meant that we started a wonderful relationship with God, and that we will live with Him in the world to come—when Jesus is King of the earth. And that is a wonderful promise.
But that also makes God very confusing because we want the kind of relationship where He protects us from everything bad that could ever happen to us, where we never get sick and no one we love ever gets hurt or dies. We want to always have enough money and for the weather to always be nice. We want the people around us to be kind and generous and if they aren’t we want them to be punished and we want everyone to hate them and see how awful they are! Those are the kinds of things we think and those kinds of thoughts become something called expectations. Expectations happen when we believe that someone else owes us something, or that we should be able to do something just because we want to be able to do it. And we all tend to think that God should make our lives wonderful and easy, right? We don’t want the bad stuff to happen to us or to the people we love. We don’t understand why He allows so many terrible things to happen to the people who love Him. I know that I really struggle with that too because if I was God then everyone I love would have it really good and would never get sick or suffer at all. But then I imagine that the people who make me mad wouldn’t be very happy because if Miss Tyler had that kind of power, then she would probably start to be pretty evil and mean. Just being honest here. No one except God and Jesus can handle that kind of power and not be crazy about how they use it.
But, yesterday I found out my friend Savannah is having problems again. Savannah and one of my sons have the same medical problem. They have something called hydrocephalus—which means “water on the brain.” Our brains are surrounded inside and outside by something called CSF, and it keeps our brains floating so that when we fall or turn our heads, our brains won’t crash into our skulls and we make more CSF all the time in our bodies. But with Savannah and my son, they keep making more CSF but the old CSF doesn’t go away and so it can be very painful. Just think of a bottle with something inside it. If it has a hole near the top, then you can keep putting in more water forever and the bottle won’t burst. But if the bottle doesn’t have a hole then the new water will just keep trying to force it’s way inside. So Savannah and my son have valves in their skull that allow the CSF to drain away into another part of their body where it isn’t a problem. My son hasn’t had many problems and he has only had four shunts put in since he was six days old and got his first one, and he got his last one two years ago when he was nineteen. But Savannah hasn’t been as fortunate—she has been suffering so much and the doctors have tried so many things and yesterday I just got so angry and so I went into my backyard and was digging up my dead strawberry patch and was yelling at God.
“It’s not fair! How come my son’s shunt is okay and Savannah’s isn’t? Why does she have to hurt all the time? It’s not fair. You can fix this—why are you letting her hurt like this. It isn’t like she deserves this. She isn’t a criminal and she loves you and her parents love you. I love my friends, Lord, and I don’t even know what to say to them and they live so far away that I can’t be there for them and I am angry. I am grateful that you have been so kind to my son and to me and God, I feel guilty that Andrew is okay and she isn’t. What’s going on? Why Savannah? I know you see how hard this is on her parents. What do you want from them? Are we not praying enough? I know that isn’t the problem. I just don’t even know what to say because I am so angry and I am embarrassed because I don’t have any answers for them and it doesn’t seem right that, with all the terrible things I have done in my life, and with what a goober my kid can be—why this has happened like this. We don’t deserve this Lord, and they don’t deserve it. I am grateful but I am also so confused and hurt. Why is one doing okay and the other isn’t? I know it isn’t because you don’t love her because when I pray I feel your love for her. Why won’t you just fix her!!!”
And eighteen months ago, I did the same thing when my son’s shunt was not working for the second time in a month and we thought he would die. And two years ago, when a young friend died unexpectedly, and over the last two years when so many people I knew were so sick with COVID. And over the last month with the war in Ukraine. I get angry and I talk to God about it and sometimes I am so frustrated with Him that I don’t even know what to do. Maybe you have felt that way when you are sick, or have a sick pet, or when bullies are after you at school, or you studied really hard but failed your test, or broke your leg just before the big game or whatever. When life isn’t fair, we ask the big questions. We want there to be easy answers but unfortunately, sometimes things just happen. And we get angry because we know in our hearts that life was never supposed to be like this. Maybe it’s because of the Adam and Eve DNA that we all have in us, We know that our lives were meant to be perfect and wonderful, without sickness and death and hardship. And because we know that, deep down, we get angry when we are stuck with this crazy world where sometimes everything seems upside down. God didn’t mean for it to be like this but we’ve always been out of control and so we have sickness and there are people who hurt other people and sometimes we hurt other people. If we all just loved one another like the Bible commands, there would be almost nothing left for God to need to fix.
In Psalm 73, we see someone who is really angry at God, but really confused too. This is the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version:
“God is really good to his people, the people who aren’t just out there faking it. But I lost my balance and almost abandoned him because I was jealous of all those people who are just so full of themselves and the really mean people I know who have everything they could ever want. Life is so easy for them—they don’t struggle and they’re eating out at fancy restaurants every night. They never get caught for the stuff they do and they never get in trouble. They never get sick and nothing ever goes wrong for them. So they are out there with their noses in the air thinking they are all that and a bag of chips, and it’s like it doesn’t even matter how much they hurt people. They get to eat so much that even their eyeballs are fat, and whatever they want to do, they just go and do. They make fun of others and spread lies about them to hurt them, and they threaten to do terrible things to people who can’t even defend themselves. And they even disrespect God and never miss an opportunity to just say whatever nasty stuff they want. And so people see them not getting punished and they actually like go out following them and listening to them! They just can’t get enough. And these villains say, “God is powerless, if He knew what I was doing and saying and He was really so great, I’d be dead!”
“I mean, just look at those guys! They never have any troubles at all, life is so easy for them, everything goes their way and they just get richer and richer. Come on, am I following God for nothing? Am I obeying His commandments for nothing? What’s in it for me? My life is so terrible, all day long and every morning it’s like something worse comes around. But if I admit it in public, if I admit how much I just am jealous of those guys who do nothing but wrong and enjoy nothing but blessings, I know that I am going to send people in the wrong direction, away from you. And I have tried to understand, but nothing made sense and I didn’t think it ever would. But then I came into your Sanctuary, into your presence and the place where Your throne is, and you made me understand—You gave them everything to see what they would do with it. You made their lives easy to see if they would be good or bad. And because they have had it so easy, and should have been so grateful and humbled, they have no excuse for what will happen to them when you finally judge them. When I thought they were blessed, it was actually a curse because their blessings became a trap. They won’t even know what hit them because it disgusts you to see what they have done with all their blessings.
“I really thought they had it made, because I was hurting and I was acting like what we have here in this life is all there is. I was forgetting what You have done for us and what You promised to give us. Yes, You see what they are doing and how evil it is but You are not smiling at them, You have never abandoned me and You are always here to whisper encouragement to me when I need it. You have kept me on the right side of things and I will spend eternity with You in Your Kingdom where everything here will seem like nothing in comparison. You are my future and everything I want in this life. Even though I fall sometimes and mess up and forget how good you are and even though I will grow old and weak, You are there for me always and I can depend on You. You are all I really need. Those people who I envy now, their end will be terrible—sometimes I forget that. But as for me, I have You in my life and that is more than wealth, and good food, and health and whatever else those villains seem to have that I don’t. I will tell people about that.”
You see? That’s in the Bible. Things are wrong, and we get angry, and we talk it out, and then we remember what we have, that they don’t have. We remember that this life isn’t all that there is and that the people who seem to have it all sometimes actually have nothing. But still, we might ask ourselves why we aren’t getting perks in this life and special treatment. Well, I imagine that we do sometimes and we just don’t see it because there are things we just don’t see because they never ended up happening. Car accidents are probably a big one. But why doesn’t God just reward us with easy lives? Wouldn’t that seem like the right thing to do to reward our loyalty?
I don’t think it would. I have known a lot of people with easy lives and they are some of the worst people I have ever met—like the guy who wrote Psalm 73 was talking about. Think about it from God’s point of view—if nothing ever went wrong for us, we’d be like those kids who are spoiled rotten and mean-spirited, always screaming and kicking to get what they want and not able to handle hearing the word no or even knowing how to deal with disappointment and pain. We’d become people who are just insufferable and we’d think that our lives are easy because we deserve it and that people who have troubles must deserve it. And I know people like that. Some of them are in churches and they make life really hard for others. But if people around the world started seeing that Christians were all rich and never got sick or had bad things happen, then everyone would become a Christian but not because they loved God or really believed in Jesus or wanted to keep the commandments to love Him and other people, they’d just be in it for the blessings. I guess it would be like if you were really rich and had a lot of friends but you wouldn’t ever know if they just wanted you around because you had the money to pay for everything. What if you ran out of money, would they still even like you?
Because we have bad things happen, and still love God and still try to follow Him, people who don’t believe in Him notice that we are different. It shows them that God is real—but God isn’t sending horrible things against us just to teach other people that He’s worth worshipping. The truth is that things happen to us the same way that things happen to everyone. How mean would it be for God to only let bad things happen to people who refused to worship Him? That would be just so spiteful and petty, right? Why would anyone trust a God who is only good and kind to the people who love Him? Jesus said that even the tax collectors were nice to their friends—but it didn’t mean that they weren’t being rotten to the people they didn’t like. Because God is love, He doesn’t punish people for not worshiping Him. He uses the bad things that happen in our lives to grow us up into more compassionate, loving, merciful and humble people—but He isn’t sending those things on us. Bad things happen to everyone. Things go wrong in everyone’s lives. A while back, my son broke his ankle and sprained his knee and my dog suddenly died within six hours on a Friday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even have time to cry about my dog because I had to take care of my son! But pets die all the time, and especially since my dog was almost fifteen years old. And people have accidents at work all the time. That’s just normal. But when bad things happen and we make it through, God is showing us that He never leaves our side even when it feels like He doesn’t care at all.
So why does God let terrible things happen to good people? I don’t know. But I do know that bad things happen to everyone sometimes. And sometimes people have a lot of bad things happening like my friend Savannah. But it isn’t because God doesn’t love her—He loves her so much. I can feel His love for her when I pray for her. And when I was yelling at Him for how unfair this is, I could feel that He understood. People, since Adam and Eve, have made a big mess of things, and sometimes they just decide to pile up on a person—but that’s when that person is also getting extra attention from God. He is watching and He sees and He is working in ways that they may never know about. And He has plans for them, even when they think everything is horrible. And when we trust Him even when everything looks like we shouldn’t, we can know that it makes Him happy even though our being hurt doesn’t make Him happy. How do we know that having everything go wrong doesn’t mean that God hates us or leaves us or is punishing us?
From beginning to end, the Bible is full of stories of terrible things happening to the people God has chosen to do special things for Him and people who made Him happy. Did God hate Abel just because Cain killed Him? Nope, Abel’s offering made God really happy but Cain chose to do something evil. That wasn’t God’s choice, that was Cain’s choice. God gives us the choice to be good to people or evil, if we didn’t have that choice then the planet would be filled with a bunch of really nice puppets but it wouldn’t mean anything because no one could do what they wanted. Sarah couldn’t have a baby until she was ninety years old because she was disabled and her womb was broken. Everyone would have thought she was useless as a wife and a woman and maybe even being punished for her sins—that’s what they thought in those days. And Sarah got kidnapped by kings, twice, because she was beautiful and they decided to steal her from her family. She also lived through terrible famines. Sounds like she must have been a terrible person to deserve that! Nope, that stuff just happens to people. She didn’t deserve those things.
Joseph’s mom died when he was very young. His ten older brothers hated him and tricked him and threw him into a pit and then sold him into slavery in Egypt. And even though he was a very honest slave, the wife of his master lied about him and he was left to rot in jail for many years. But he was innocent, and God wasn’t being cruel to him—people were. Aaron and Miriam grew up as slaves. The Israelite baby boys were commanded to be killed by Pharaoh. Aaron’s two sons died on the same day.
David was chosen by God to be King of Israel when he was just a teenager, the youngest child of a very large family. But King Saul was jealous and hunted him until he was forty years old. David had to always be on the run and hiding in caves and his wife Michael was taken away from him and then his wife Abigail was kidnapped. Those bad things happened because people decided to do evil things, but not because God was angry.
What about Jesus? He was perfect and was tortured and killed because people made evil decisions. What about the prophets? Many of them were killed by people who were angry about what they were saying about sin. And John the Baptist, he was killed by King Herod for talking about sin. And if you read 2 Cor 11—you won’t even believe all the stuff that happened to Paul as he traveled the Roman Empire preaching about Jesus. Bad things happen no matter how much God loves us or uses us for the good of His Kingdom.
What about Samantha, my young friend? What she is going through isn’t fair, and it isn’t a punishment from God, and He doesn’t hate her. And I don’t know why things are so hard for her and her family. It isn’t right. It was never supposed to be like this. We should all be tending a Garden and making it spread all over the earth. That’s what God wanted, that was His plan for us. And so now we have to do what we can to make the world less bad. And so when we think of Savannah, we mention her to God, and we pray and ask Him to help her. We ask Him because deep down we know how good and kind He is even when we are confused and angry. So, would you please pray for my friend Savannah? Maybe we will understand someday, but right now all we can do is wrestle with God and complain and trust Him that in the end, everything will be the way He planned it from the beginning—a world without sickness and death and evil.
I love you. I am praying for you, and I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.