01/12/2025
4. In the Bible, why does it seem God is unfair, commanding that whole towns and not just the wicked people are judged? Or, putting it another way, “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”
As we have already discussed, the Bible makes clear that no adult human is truly good or innocent; while we may know people who are kind, friendly, or considerate, biblical goodness means sinlessness, and only God is good. Even Jesus, when called good, quickly replied that "no one is good except God alone".
To understand this difficult scenario which may seem at odds with our idea of what is right we have to adhere to three fundamental truths which never change:
God is always good
God is always right
God is always fair
If these three things are true then whatever God says, does, or commands must also be good, right and fair.
So, when we consider the destruction of the Canaanite towns, it is important to understand that these were not idyllic villages of gentle families but societies steeped in abominable practices—child sacrifice, prostitution, abuse of women, forced sexual acts, gang violence, and degrading idol worship—confirmed both in Scripture and archaeology. For over 400 years, while Israel was in Egypt, the Canaanites filled the land with these horrors, and though the Old Testament focuses on Israel, there is abundant evidence in scripture that God expected Gentile nations to follow His ways too, sending prophets and judgments when they refused. To condemn without warning would be unfair, so we must conclude that God warned them repeatedly, and for fourteen generations they ignored Him and grew worse. God gave them far more chances than humans usually give each other, but eventually His patience ended. Because He sees the future, He knew that children raised in this culture would grow up to perpetuate the same cycle of wickedness, and so His judgment was both righteous and necessary. By ending the Canaanite cycle, God achieved two purposes: He stopped the spread of wickedness itself and He protected Israel from being corrupted by it, though tragically Israel later failed to remain separate and the very thing that God was trying to avoid came to pass, when Israel adopted the ways of the people they had failed to remove from around them.
Scripture shows this pattern repeatedly—the flood in Noah’s day, the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel’s captivity, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70—and we are now approaching another cycle as the world grows increasingly like the days of Noah, awaiting Christ’s return to judge and establish God’s kingdom.
