Deuteronomy 16: Do only good things happen to good people?

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Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord you God is giving you.

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Do Christians have car accidents? Do they get cancer? Are they ever fired from their jobs? The answer to all three questions is, of course, yes. But that answer causes big problems for some new Christians. Doesn't the Bible promise that God will protect his followers? How can such bad things occur?

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People puzzled by such questions often refer to Old Testament books where God clearly promised success and protection to the Israelites. In Deuteronomy, Moses spelled out God's promises in complete detail. Israelite wives would have many babies. All the crops- grain, grapes, and olive trees- would produce bountifully. Cattle and sheep would multiply. And Moses even included this extraordinary promise: "The Lord will keep you free from every disease" (7:15)

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For the Israelites to receive these benefits, God asked only one thing in return: They must follow the covenant agreement first set forth in the book of Exodus. God had a unique relationship with this band of refugees who had been roaming the Sinai for 40 years. Moses promised that good things would come the Israelite's way if they merely held up their end of the covenant. If, he said- underscoring that small, but crucial, word. Threads of doubt and anxiety run all through the book. Will the Israelites stick to the terms of the covenant? Will they obey?

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Deuteronomy may offer a clue to the question, "Why doesn't God now exempt his followers from every bad thing in life?" Moses' fear came true: the Israelites proved least faithful to God after they had moved into the prosperity of the promised land. In the desert, at least, they had been forced to lean on God for daily survival. But after a very short time in Canaan, they forgot about God.

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Life Question: When do you think most about God- when things are going well or when you are in trouble.

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I suppose human nature leads us towards the latter. It's easy to take credit for the good things in life, but undoubtedly we never want to take responsibility for the hard times. That said, I've always struggled to make sense out of incidents like the Virginia Tech massacre. Why would God allow something like that to happen? As I've said to a number of folks over the past month, it is amazing, though, how God sends us a "hero" during these calamities to ensure us that mankind can be caring and loving- evidenced by the courageous acts of the VT professor who saved the lives of a number of his own students while he took the bullets.