Why does God let really really bad things happen to people who are in the eyes of the world "innocent"?
Like what he let happen to Jesus?
Why do people let really bad things happen to God? They don't give him his due honor or praise.
They let bad things happen to God but don't like it when God lets bad things happen to them?
You can explain original sin but the response is that why is it fair for someone to be be punished for someopne elses sin?
But God chose the best representative to stand in our place at the garden. How is that not fair? God knew who had the best shot. I would rather go with God's choice than my own. An all-knowing being says that X is the best choice, then it's safe to say that X is the best man for the job. Getting the best representative we could possibly have, chosen not by a fallible, emotional democracy of humans, but rather by the infallible God, is
more than fair. It would have happened to any of us since God's own pick failed.
And, we are punished for other people's sin all the time. A father makes a bad business decision, the family loses everything. The kids suffer. They get fish sticks and tater tots every night instead of meals prepared by the live-in maid, now. They have to get clothes from K-Mart instead of designer clothes from Sacks 5th Ave. They don't get cable for their room any more. This isn't fair! Perhaps the kids should get to divorce their parents and someone else should keep them living the style they were accustomed to? After all, why should people suffer for the poor choices of their representative?
Now, there's a flip side to this as well. You see, if you don't want to take Adam's guilt, then why think you should take Christ's righteousness? Is this the "fairness" we want? Go back to the kids. Let's reverse the story. Say the father was poor; he invested his last dime into a company that hit the ceiling over night. He makes $100,000,000.00 off his investment. Now, do those kids have to leave the parents? Stay accustomed to their previous style? So, when people don't want Adam's guilt, because it's not fair, then they don't get Christ's righteousness. They wanted to do it for themselves in the garden; they get to do it for themselves in the second garden--Gethsemane. They need to live the perfect life.
They are sinners. So, even if they didn't have original sin, they've sinned plenty of times since they were born.
I have great problems though in explaining this convincingly to someone who does not believe and feels great pain.
Good thing we have a God who suffered like us, in every way. Their suffering is, as Lewis observed, God's megaphone; it's getting their attention. Yes, life sucks. Why? If there's no purpose, if we've evolved out of uncaring matter, if this universe is as Bertrand Russell says in
A Free Man's Worship,
Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.
Then this is your lot. Nothing cares. There is no purpose other than what you have subjectively invented. So, your suffering is superfluous. Meaningless. Pointless.
Or, we have the Christian story. One that explains,
and provides a remedy for, suffering. And it's not like God doesn't care. He sent Jesus who shared in man's suffering. Who suffered more than any of us have, given his nature as the God-man. Not only that, but we will have redemption. The curse will be reversed.
So, if your friend really is upset with suffering, really things it is a meaningful problem, then s/he needs to become a Christian. If s/he remains obstinate, consciously accepting Russell's universe, then his or her suffering is pointless, meaningless, and simply a creation of his or her mind. Time to get stoic.
So, why does God allow it? To draw people to Himself or to provide damning evidence against them. And, indeed, heaven will be that much better having had to go through suffering. A redeemed creation is better than one that never fell. Sin is ugly and disastrous. How else would we appreciate the blessings of redemption had it not been for the suffering we experience ourselves and observe in others.
