"If God exists, why do good things happen to bad people?"

How many of you have ever thought/heard this? I always think "Why not?"

Note: From now on I will be going on the basis that God does exist, as only makes sense for the answering of this question.

Okay, so I can’t exactly answer why any certain thing happens in any certain circumstance to a particular person, since only God would know the plans and the eventual outcome of said happening. However, this is not a new dilemma, and I would think that anyone who has read parts of the Bible has realized that indeed, ‘bad’ things happen to God’s faithful. Sometimes it is a consequence of their actions (directly from God or not), and sometimes it is something that God is incurring for some other reason (not a consequence, but a trial or a service).Ever heard of tough love?
Just like good earthly parents, God knows that spoiling us and giving into our every whim won’t make into the people we have the potential to be. He is the Great Provider, of our every need, not our every want. When something you don’t like happens to you, you can take in and try and get the good out of it, pray about it, and continue serving God through it, or you can whine and complain and indulge in self-pity. Every experience can be used to draw closer to God. God never promises that when we follow Him everything will be bed of roses (that's thornless), but He says that “in all things [He] works for the good of those who love Him …” Whose definition of good? God’s. Not our's. Because I would say that often we don’t really know what’s good for us. I doubt God includes money, power, or fame as part of His definition of ‘good’.

Even when we stray from the path that God would like us to be on, we can get back on that path and pray that God will turn our sins into something beneficial to Him, even just a learning experience. Keep in mind that, as God’s Word continuously intonates, we bear the fruit, and reap the consequences, of our actions.

When someone puts pottery in the kiln do they say, “Why does hot fire happen to good clay?” I doubt it, because they now that the end result will be better (hopefully) than what they put in. So, keep trusting God’s plan, and hopefully we can all go into the fire and come out better on the other side.

There’s a lot more I could say on this, but that’s all I shall divulge for now. Like a past entry says, comments or questions are more than welcome.