Why Do The Wicked Prosper?
It is often assumed that the super rich are rich because they have been blessed by God, even if they are wicked, but there is no Biblical support for this.
A person named John (I share his name because he commented publicly) recently commented on one of my past episodes, “Why Does God Hate Me?” in which I discuss the feeling a lot of us who are having a rough go at it in this broken and fallen world that God hates us, and I talk about why we are completely wrong when we think God hates us. In his comment to the blog post, John said, “Lies. God rewards child molesters, rapists, dope dealers and children abusers. Period. God was nowhere to be found for me as a child and still at 57 not found. But oh ya, God loves me... No that's funny...”
My first thought was that John was just a heckler and wanted to not let an opportunity pass by to criticize Christianity and I considered deleting the comment, but then I got to thinking about it and realized that, perhaps, John was hurting and was actually sincere and could not understand why God had not helped him in his life and why it appears as if God blesses the wicked, and perhaps he is searching and truly wants answers. The comment may or not have been sincere and it may or may not have been an attempt to criticize Christianity, and it could have been both at the same time, but either way, I feel obligated to give an honest, thoughtful and caring response to the comment anyway, and this episode is an answer to the comment.
Regardless of what John’s motivation was in commenting on the blog, I have to go on the assumption that he wants an answer and go forward with that mindset, and if his motivation is only to make fun of me and/or my beliefs than my answer may, God willing, provide an answer to someone else who is searching for answers.
First off, I am not sure if John will ever read this blog post or listen to this podcast episode, but I would like him to know that even though he does not agree with me, I am grateful that he took the time to read the article, and I am grateful that he took the time to comment. I will never discourage people from commenting, even if they don’t agree with me, and I always appreciate it when someone takes time out of their busy schedule to read or listen and then to reach out to me. The only time I have ever or will ever delete comments is when they are spam, when they contain profanity or other things which are in poor taste of if they are making an obvious attempt to lead people away from Jesus because the prime directive of this podcast and blog is to lead people to Jesus.
There are several items in the comment that require attention, and I will discuss each one of them individually and I hope that I can answer them in a way that not only addresses the concern but is also pleasing to God. First off is the claim that what I said in the blog post about God loving us is a lie, and I won’t waste a lot of time on that one because every word I spoke in that podcast episode and every word I wrote in that blog post was true, and even for those of us who has not realized it yet, God loves us, each and every one of us, with a love we can’t even fathom.
In the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower one of the characters asks one of his teachers why some people wind up with people who are not good for them and the teacher responded by saying, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Most people who don’t know God have self-esteem issues and will not accept the love of God because they don’t think they deserve it, even if they are not aware that it is the reason they don’t accept God’s love.
Sometimes we don’t feel the love of God because we intentionally distance ourselves from him and everything that is about him and we are not able or willing to accept his love. also, it is difficult, if not impossible, to love God when we are blaming him for everything bad that has ever happened to us. As discussed in the post that John commented on, there was a time in my life when I was convinced that God hated me, mostly because I was attributing the poor actions of others and the results of my own poor decisions to God. If you have not read or listened to the episode, “Why Does God Hate Me?” I would highly recommend it.
The second claim John makes in his comment is that God rewards the wicked, the child molesters, dope dealers, rapist, murderers and abusers, and while it can sometimes appear to be the case, I can unequivocally say that it is not true; God is not pleased with anyone’s wicked or vile acts and he certainly doesn’t bless them for performing them. The question then becomes, if God does not bless the wicked than why does it appear as if he does? The answer to that question is somewhat complex and will take up the bulk of this discussion and I pray that I will do it justice. I am not a pastor and I have never been to Bible College, but I have read the Bible literally hundreds of times and read from its pages on a daily basis, and my answer to the question will be based on the truth found in the Bible. I acknowledge that what the Bible says will not satisfy anyone who hates God and does not believe in the divinity of the Bible, but the Bible is the word of God and therefore that is where I must turn to answer the question from God’s perspective.
Some of what people attribute to the blessings of God is actually the Devil supporting those who are his faithful servants so that they can have as large of an impact on the world as possible, but since the Devil only cares about his agenda and not those who work for him, once they are no longer useful he will gladly allow them to fall on their faces. Whenever anyone makes a deal with the Devil, knowingly or not, the only one who wins is the Devil. Of course, some of the people who succeed in wickedness do so just by dumb luck or by perseverance and hard work, and of course, being well connected with other evil people. All evil is abhorrent to God and we should never assume that God is blessing evil people because they, at least temporarily, prosper.
A lot of the time when it appears as if the wicked have prospered it is all a facade and they have not prospered at all and they are deeply depressed and hate life, and when a person is abusing others it should cause them grief and should lead to a change in action, but it often does not. A good recent example of a person who appears to have prospered in wickedness is the late Jeffry Epstein who was a convicted child rapist and was charged with the sex trafficking of children. If we were just to judge whether or not Epstein prospered because of his wealth than it would appear as if he prospered indeed, as $77 million is a lot of money, but when we consider that he died of suicide in prison under suspicious circumstances that makes investigators question whether or not his death was actually a suicide and the fact that he will only ever be remembered with disdain, than it does not look like he prospered much at all.
All crimes will catch up with us, either in this life or the next, and I know it does not seam fair when a person escapes punishment in this life, and it is not fair, but because we as humans are flawed there will always be some who get away with their crimes in this life, but that does not mean that God has blessed them. As Jesus said about those of his day, (Matthew 6:2) “They have received their reward in full” in this life and when they die they will not like what is waiting for them.
A lot of the people who commit atrocities claim to be Christian, which is to be a follower of Jesus, however, Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” (Mark 8:34). Those who indulge in crime, such as Epstein, were obviously not denying themselves and taking up their cross and therefore, regardless of what they claimed, they were not following Jesus and were not Christians.
Yes, there are a lot of wicked people prospering, at least by the world’s standard, and but that in no way means that God blessed them. The wicked people who are rich did not get their wealth as a blessing from God but rather from utilizing their natural talents, and some of the wicked who are wealthy got their wealth by nefarious and dishonest means. However, it would also be a mistake to assume that every wealthy person who is wicked got their wealth in an unethical or illegal manner and it is possible for a person to be a horrible person and still be honest and fair in their business dealings. I have talked about this in detail in the past, but wealth, or the lack thereof, should not be a measure of how well God loves someone or how much divine providence they are receiving.
Sometimes it appears as if the wicked are prospering because God does not obviously intervene and prevent the atrocity or punish them for having committed it, but if we are honest we can’t say that God doesn’t prevent bad things from happening because the things he prevented never happened and we therefore never knew about them. Some of us have gotten the wrong impression of God and think that when a person sins they will be struck down by lightning and that if it doesn’t happen than God is blessing that person, or simply does not exist, but that is not the case and there are a lot of things in this world in which God just lets happen as it will happen, such as the weather. Jesus said, “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” (Matthew 5:45) and we should not assume that because the laws of nature and the weather have the same negative or positive impact on the sinners and the righteous alike that God is punishing the righteous and blessing the wicked. It is also of note that, with a few rare but notable exceptions, the wicked people in the Bible were not struck down by God in obvious ways and most of them wound up much as the wicked to today where some get away with their crimes and some die untimely deaths at the hands of their enemies or are imprisoned for their crimes.
The thought that God is blessing the wicked is not new, and throughout the Bible followers of God have questioned why the wicked were allowed to prosper. Jeremiah prayed, “Righteous are You, O Lord, when I plead with You; yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” (Jeremiah 12:1).
Job had the same lament: “Why do the wicked live and become old, yes, become mighty in power? Their descendants are established with them in their sight, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull breeds without failure; their cow calves without miscarriage. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. (Job 21:7-13)
God does not want us to be concerned with whether or not another person is prospering or whether or not another person is being punished by God. David cautions us not to worry about the prosperity of the wicked. He writes: Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. . . . Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way. . . . Do not fret—it only causes harm. (Psalms verses 1, 7-8).
Only a few hours after vehemently swearing that he would never deny Jesus, Peter denied him three times, one of which he cursed at a young girl when she suggested that he knew Jesus. Peter not only denied Jesus, but he completely abandoned everything he had devoted the last three years of his life to and went back to his old profession as a fisherman. After his death and resurrection, Jesus restored Peter and told him that he would die for his faith and Peter basically asked, “Yea, but what about John?” and Jesus rebuked him by saying, “What is it to you what happens to John? I’ll worry about John, all you need to worry about is following me,” (John 21).
The reason I bring up the story of Peter asking about John is that even after all the time Peter had spent with Jesus and even after witnessing first hand how Good Jesus was, he was still worried about not being treated fairly and thought that if he was to die for the gospel that John should have to die for the gospel as well. John, by the way, though he faced an extremely difficult life because of his faith, was the only apostle who was not martyred. Just because we think God is not fair does not mean that he is not, and we are to worry about ourselves and whether or not we are following God and not worry about whether or not another person is getting more or less than us from God.
In Psalms 37 David shows the end of the wicked: [Evildoers] shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. . . . For evildoers shall be cut off. . . . For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; indeed, you will look diligently for his place, but it shall be no more. . . . The Lord laughs at him, for He sees that his day is coming. . . . But the wicked shall perish; and the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish. Into smoke they shall vanish away. . . . [T]he descendants of the wicked shall be cut off. . . . I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree, yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more; indeed I sought him, but he could not be found. . . . But the transgressors shall be destroyed together; the future of the wicked shall be cut off. (verses 2, 9-10, 13, 20, 28, 35-36, 38)
We tend to spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not those who are more wicked than we are blessed, but in the end it doesn't matter! Our neighbors' fortunes are completely out of our hands. God will deal with them when it is appropriate, and only He knows when that time will come. What is under our control is how we respond to it and—far more importantly—how we handle what God has given us. Rather than gaze enviously at our neighbors' wealth, we should strive to reach the apostle Paul's example: "I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content" (Philippians 4:11).
In the later portion of his comment in response to my blog John said, “God was nowhere to be found for me as a child and still at 57 not found. But oh ya, God loves me... No that's funny...” I can’t speak for John, and I since he did not give a last name I don’t know if he is one of the several men I know named John who identify as an atheist, so I can’t determine whether or not he actually ever really looked for God or just always wrote God off as the villain or as a fantasy, but I can say generally that the reason most people who have not found God have not found him is because they have never really looked for him and have never really given God the chance.
For those of you who have determined that God doesn’t care for you or that he doesn’t exist, when is the last time you have humbled yourself before God and actually asked for his help? I would wager that it has been quite some time, if it has happened at all. When I was angry with God and thought that he hated me, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to humble myself before him and to admit that I could not do it without his help. Yes God loves us, but he will never force us to accept him, and when we do come to God we must do so on His terms and not our own, and coming to God on his terms is not often desirable when we are not living according to his will because it always requires us to chance something about ourselves to become more like him. If we don’t want God more than we want our current life that God will not force himself upon us, and when that happens we can’t blame him for not coming where he is not wanted.
Growing up I was always to told the story of a family friend who had a flat on a country road and did not have a jack in the car so he walked to the nearest farm house to ask to borrow a jack. This man had an inferiority complex and was so negative in every aspect of his life that he assumed the people would not loan him the jack and the whole way to the farm he told himself how rude the people were going to be to him when he asked for the jack so when he finally stepped on the porch and knocked on the door he was steaming angry. When the farmer opened the door the man said, “I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t want to borrow your jack anyway,” and he turned around and stormed off. I am convinced the farmer was quite flummoxed as to what had just occurred. A lot of us have that type of attitude toward God and we have already decided that he won’t help us, so instead of asking for help and expecting to get it we tell everyone that God hates us because he didn’t help us when we not only did not ask but was not willing to accept it if he did offer to help.
John could have only commented in an attempt to argue, or to convince me that I am wrong about God, but I am going to go on the assumption that he was hurting and did not understand why God had allowed bad things to happen to him, and I spoke in great detail on the subject in an earlier post called “If God is Good Why is There So Much Pain and Suffering?” and I would recommend listening to the podcast or reading the blog.
If a person is willing to put aside his or her pride and truly seek God they will find him, but it is nearly impossible to find something when we go out of our way not to find it. Not always, but in the majority of my discussions with people who do not believe in God, they are not listening to learn but rather listening to respond and instead of making any attempt to discover the truth in what I said their only goal is to pick apart everything I said and thus confirm the bias he or she already had, which is that there is no God, and when I was an atheist I acted much the same. However, even though I refused to admit it, I often found the argument for Christ compelling and there had been times in my life when I had to do some mental gymnastics to preclude God from having a hand in helping me.
Yes, God loves each and every one of us, even those of us who does not love Him, but he will not force us to love or accept Him, and when we refuse to accept God we are also refusing to accept help from Him and we are refusing to offer the salvation that He offers, paid for by the death of Jesus on the Cross.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” (John 15:13).