April 29, 2008: Was His Death The Judgment Of God?

Recently I received the following question from a ministry colleague:

I lead a small DivorceCare group. In my group there is a sweet, godly woman (Anne) who leads a preschool program at a Baptist Church. She divorced her philandering husband after twenty years while he was in his fourth affair. He has a PhD in Psychology but is an arrogant bully. She receives relatively little support and only has the kids half the time. She read and liked my book The Prayer of Revenge, and has been confident that God would accomplish justice on her behalf.

I just found out that the bed-hopping 40-something ex-husband dropped dead last night - somehow related to diabetes. The kids heard a crash in his bedroom, but ignored it, and found him this morning.

She's probably going to ask me: was this an act of God's judgment?

How would you answer her?

And here is my answer.

Interesting!

My short answer is no.

I think that unless we are prophets legitimately claiming inspiration from God, it is simply too difficult to make the connections between "misfortune" (including illness, suffering, poverty, death) and behavior. Job was good but had it bad while the evildoers of Psalm 73 enjoyed all the good luck in the world. Righteous Jim Elliot died at 28; the evangelist of atheism (and serial adulterer) Bertrand Russell lived to 99. (For that matter, Hugh Hefner is still going strong in his 80s! Why on earth doesn't he get judged?)

I gave up long ago trying to figure out what God is doing or what message he is sending when he grants long or short lifespans to people. A few weeks after we arrived in Colombia we were told point-blank by an Ika leader that the tribe would never accept our translating the Bible: we could stay there only if we never translated. Within a year this man was kidnapped by paramilitares, tortured and killed. I thought at the time that God was clearing away the obstacles so that his Word could reach the Ika people. But then this leader was replaced by another who was even more adamantly opposed to our mission! My prophetic guesswork about God's judgment was proven false.

Jesus said that the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and the 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, were not worse sinners than any others (Luke 13:1-4). My opinion is that the 40-something bed-hopper was probably no worse than millions of other bed-hoppers who have all gone where bed-hoppers go (see Revelation 21:8: "the sexually immoral... - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur"). Ironically, the philanderer's early demise may actually have been a mercy from God, because he was by death prevented from piling on another 50 years or so of sin which would only have raised the temperature of his personal hell.

I have a serious practical concern for those who are inclined to draw connections between things like death (or any other seeming misfortune) and the judgment of God. My fear is that they'll become very discouraged - or even doubt their faith - when things turn out the opposite of what they were led to expect. Painful as it might be for someone like Anne to hear, it must be said at some point: There is nothing in our understanding of God that would make it impossible for Anne to be the one who drops dead in her 40s (or worse, comes down with paralysis or a degenerative nerve disease), while her son-of-hell ex-husband lives a long healthy happy life! It is not till the life after this one when all wrongs will be set right, and justice (tempered with mercy) will be done, and many of the last shall be first and the first last. This requires perseverance on the part of the saints.

At the same time, I'm very happy for Anne (assuming the recent events are not disturbing to her!), and if you would, please pass along my greetings and best wishes. I don't know what her state of mind is, but I know a Christian man who confided in me, "If my ex-wife passed away now I don't think I'd feel any grief. All my grieving went on during the years she became a denier of God and a hater of me." A painful sentiment, but an understandable one. My prayers will be with Anne as she (perhaps very quietly) rejoices, even as her children grieve, and as she figures out how to manage with them on her own.