We have recently had the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Bill 2020 pass in the Victorian Senate. I wrote last month about the players with stakes in this decision. So I am left with the question, “Why do the wicked prosper?”. This was an oft-repeated question by several biblical writers. Here are a few examples :
King David of Israel, in Psalm 37:7 – Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Job, in dialogue with his misguided friends, in Job 21:7 – Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?
The Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, in the last part of Jeremiah 12:1 – Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?
The Old Testament prophet, Malachi, in Malachi 3:13-17 – 13 “You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the LORD. “Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’ 14 “You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’ ”
The question continues to be relevant today as Victoria and beyond, thanks to Daniel Andrews’ overreach into other Australian states and territories given the power he’s amassed for himself through the new law, are about to nosedive even further into a morass of evil. The West, it would seem, has further to go in its determined trajectory towards self-oblivion. It is hell-bent on eliminating God from its considerations on its course of self-determination and desire to make God irrelevant to human beings. But this cannot be done because human beings are stamped with the image of God. That is how we are made.
Many people prosper, both good and bad. Naturally, the prospering of others is to be desired. It is the knowledge that the wicked also prosper that causes concern. Issues of injustice, God’s power or apparent lack thereof and the harm that ensues from such laws strongly emerge. I know that according to the age we are living in, I am not supposed to take comfort in Bible passages such as that following from Psalm 37 but I do, and it is written for the purpose of solace to the people of God.
Psalms 37:14-15 – 14 The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. 15 But their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken.
All Bible quotations here are taken from The NIV Zondervan Study Bible, eBook: Built on the Truth of Scripture and Centered on the Gospel Message. Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
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