On November 8, 1994, Scott and Janet Willis were traveling down I-94 just south of Milwaukee, WI.  They were heading to a family birthday party in Watertown, WI.  They had 6 of their 9 children with them.  The family was traveling in their Dodge minivan and were following behind a large, semi-truck when a piece of metal flew off the truck, punctured their gas tank, and causing the minivan to instantly explode. The couple escaped with serious burns, but all six of their children eventually burned to death as a result of the inferno.

The tragedy was all over the local news.  I was attending our seminary in Mequon, WI at the time.  Newly married, this tragedy struck me.  I just couldn’t imagine that happening.  To make matters worse, an investigation led police to uncover a scandal in which Illinois Secretary of State officials took bribes to provide illegal trucking licenses and allowed uninspected rigs to travel on the highway system.   Oh. I left out one bit of information Scott Willis is a Baptist pastor. 

Why would this happen?  Why would it happen to a family that was just minding their own business?  Why would this happen to a Christian family? To a pastor’s family?  My mind goes back to Romans, chapter 8.  

So, why do bad things happen to “good” people?  It begs the question: what is “bad?”  And who is truly “good?”  

Paul begins a discussion on this topic of good and bad back in chapter 5.  He reminds us that we who hope for the glory of God will also share in suffering as we move from groaning to glory.  Paul tells us that there is a future glory awaiting us.  This future glory is the climax of God’s plan of salvation for his people and his creation.  Since we have not yet reached that pinnacle of glory, we are to eagerly and patiently wait for it.  In the meantime, there will be hardships and suffering along the way.  Paul doesn’t hide the fact that even believers will experience pain, grief, loss, and suffering.  Back in Romans 5 as Paul addresses the topic of good and bad, he reminds us that bad things like afflictions produce endurance and that endurance produces character and that character produces hope. There is “the good” coming from “the bad” as he mentions in Romans 8:28.  

I sense that there are good people here – Bible-believing Christians – who have a hard time with that concept.  It’s really hard to swallow the “good from bad” idea when we live in a world that constantly tells us that hardship is bad, and that comfort and convenience is always good.  We live in a post-modern, secular-humanist culture which says that the only reason there is bad in the world is because we have not evolved to the point where we can eradicate it from this world ourselves.  “Put your hope in humanity.”   That is the gospel of a post-modern world. It’s the belief that we are able to achieve the acme of human perfection here on earth.  

The Bible says differently.  When God finished making his created universe, it was very good.  The earth was perfect.  Today, however, it is a groaning creation.  And this is all the consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve.  It’s not creation’s fault, however.  Creation was subjected to this frustration.  Ever since our first parents were evicted from Eden, this has been a decidedly imperfect world.  Ever since the fall, this world has been in “bondage to corruption” as Paul puts it.  And we get that. Everything and everyone gets old, declines, and dies.  Coronaviruses and other disease will continue to plague us. Coroners and funeral directors will continue to have job security.

Now, the phrase “bondage to corruption” can also be translated as “slavery to abortion.”  In our society, “abortion” is a loaded word.  We automatically either think about unborn babies murdered in the womb or the right for a woman to remove of undesirable fetal tissue from her body.  It comes down to semantics in culture.  God isn’t concerned about semantics or cultural emotion.  “Slavery to abortion” is a good way to look at all of this. To abort something is to remove the bad in order to save the good.  It means to jettison away from the bad in order to preserve the good.  This can be a good thing.  “Abort mission!” means to reverse action in order to prevent disaster to save the crew or the team.  To be enslaved to abortion or in bondage to decay means there is good and there is bad, but one party is stuck and so the two shall never meet or agree.

And that’s us with God.  God could have aborted his creation project.  He could have jettisoned the plan.  He could have left Adam and Eve to exist in an eternal state of corruption.  They could have existed in a perpetual, aborted state. Forever rejected by God. Unwanted.  Unloved.  Despised.  That could have been Adam and Eve and all of their children. That includes you and me.   

The Lord would have been good and right in his choice.  That’s because God alone is the One who gives life. Now, that very idea runs in complete contradiction to today’s worldview.  As a post-modern society, we have legally determined that only one person has sole right, autonomy, and authority over human life.  And that is the mother.  Now, I am not talking about the harder issues like the life of the mother being in danger in childbirth or whatever. Those are other issues to which other principles apply. I am talking about our society’s insatiable blood-thirst for death.  We treat human life as if it were a pair of designer jeans.  One day, it fits my lifestyle, the next, it cramps my style. So, they get kicked off into the corner.  Aborted.  Unwanted. That’s because people have concluded that they don’t want bad things in their lives, only good.  As a result, our culture has destroyed the good gift of marriage, family and home. Our culture has corrupted, defiled, and deified sexuality.  And the cost? A lot of gals want to turn America into a feminist version of the Themiscyra Plain (the pretend home of Wonder Woman). It has also turned men into metrosexual, irresponsible, ashamed little Homer Simpsons who need their mommies.  The good of gender which God established has been corrupted.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Misogyny is an idol as much as feminism.  And I’m pretty confident that Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein deserve to rot in prison. 

But who pays the price?  What good thing still suffers because of the bad?  Creation does.  Life suffers.  All life.  Human life.  Animal life. All of creation.  And so, what do we bad people do? We boldly go out to the world and snatch exotic animals away from their parents to save them from poachers.  We lock them up in cages so that we can ogle them.  We study them and we give their babies cute little names and we anthropomorphize the created world in order to feel a little better about killing our own.  We abort babies and adopt puppies.  There are wheelchairs for crippled chickens, but the elderly we cast aside from society. We toss them in urine-soaked, cinder-blocked institutions to die.   And there are a lot of people who are just fine with that reality until the tables get turns.  The young bohemians are alive and well.  

All the while, creation groans.  Our hearts groan along with it.  And so, does the Holy Spirit within us.  We groan because we know what has been lost and aborted.  Perfection and connection with our Creator has been lost and aborted.  And Paul says that the whole creation is on tiptoe just waiting to see the aborted, corrupt, and the lost finally become the liberated and glorious children of God.  The world itself is waiting for God to move everything from abortion to adoption.  In other words, there is still hope, even in the midst of suffering.  

And in a grand display of love and mercy, the Lord adopted all the aborted and unwanted. He did it by aborting, rejecting, and forsaking his very own Son.  And Jesus willingly offered himself so that you might become the adopted children of God. Jesus lived, died, and rose again to secure your adoption papers.  His blood is the currency that frees us.

In old paintings that depict Christ’s crucifixion you will often see a human skull, right at the base of Jesus’ cross. Museum procurators and art experts will say that is supposed to be Adam’s skull. It is a reminder of when human beings first disobeyed God and fell into evil. It is a reminder of the time when death first became a part of the human experience.  It depicts the corruption, abortion, and separation that befell the human race as it is spelled out in Genesis 5.

I don’t think Adam and Eve weren’t thinking of Jesus’ cross when they first reached out to pick the forbidden fruit. They were looking at a tree in paradise—one that was beautiful, green, full of fruit, lovely to the eye, tempting to the taste, and desirable for knowledge. They could not have imagined the very different tree they were bringing about by their rebellion against God. That tree would stand at Calvary, not in Eden. Instead of beauty, there would be horror, instead of green leaves, dry, rough wood. It made no appeal to the eye or taste; people turned from it in fear and disgust. And what hung on its branches was the dying Son of God. Forsaken and alone.  

Adam and Eve may not have foreseen Jesus’ cross—but God, the Father, did. Walking in the garden that evening, the LORD God called out to his lost children. “Adam, where are you?” He knew what had happened. Still he heard their half-hearted confession and their blaming and defending.  He warned them of the consequences to come and covered their shame—all the while knowing that the cross lay in his Son’s future. God himself would reject his one and only in order rescue his aborted, sinful children at the cost of the life of his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Because of Christ, there is now no condemnation for those who trust in him.  We have been adopted into God’s family.  The Holy Spirit’s powerful presence is the sure security deposit that God loves you eternally.  You have the gift of faith to believe that you are God’s own child, even in the good and the bad.  And one day, we will rise triumphant and eternally transformed to dwell in unending glory with perfect bodies in a new heaven and earth!  

On Nov. 8, 1994, however, a 30-pound bracket holding a semi-truck’s mud flap in place had broken loose.  The Willis’s’ minivan ran over the bracket on I-94, south of W. Layton Ave. The bracket punctured the gas tank and dragged like a matchstick over asphalt. The spray of sparks ignited the gasoline and the van exploded in flames.  What are the odds?  Astronomical odds. Horribly, bad odds. All six children had burned to death.  One — 13-year-old son — survived the night but died the next day. A hospital attendant told the parents that their son knew he was dying and asked her to hold his hand. She couldn’t, however, because his body was so badly burned.  What suffering! 

Scott and Janet’s suffering must have been unimaginable, too.  But the Lord can turn astronomical bad into extraordinary good.  In an extraordinary shift, it was the grieving family who comforted a shocked community.  They thanked those who stopped to help them. They thanked the rescue workers, the hospital staff and the outpouring of support from around the world.  And they thanked Jesus. Scott told news reporters that his children “were given of the Lord, and we understood they weren’t ours. They were his, and we were stewards of those children’s lives. And so, God chose to bring them home and turn temporary bad to eternal good.  That family who had children snatched away from them in death will be reunited as adopted family in God’s eternal kingdom. That is the Day of Judgment.  Now, God’s judgment sounds “bad.” And it is for all who do not have hope in Jesus Christ as their Savior.  Having saving faith in Christ Jesus is a good thing especially when the Lord returns to judge.  God will not be silent on that day.  I believe that day will be especially horrible for those who deliberately ripped people away from the opportunity to know Jesus. I think of nations/ countries/tribes/peoples and policies that perpetuate the generational sins of unbelief and the corruption of souls.  One day when the sky rolls back on us, we will rejoice, and the others fuss because every knee must bow and tongue confess that the Son of God is forever blessed.  That will be a true reckoning! For all whose hope is in Christ it will be a glorious day. It will be a day of reunion for Scott and Janet Willis and their children, for the countless multitude who did not lose hope in Jesus in the midst of the good and bad here on earth.  We, too, are included in that countless, crowd of adopted children as well as our loved ones who trust in Christ.  That day will be the eternal end of weeping and tears and it will be the first day of the rest of our lives. No longer separated or aborted, but forever with the Lord; together as his adopted own. Amen.