Why Do the Wicked Prosper? Reflections on faith, cancer and my misspent youth
When your body is failing, it is perhaps only natural to look back with rather rose tinted spectacles on earlier times in your life when health was something that you simply took for granted. And over the past couple of days, I have been taking a trip down memory lane to my twenties when I lived in London with my best friend from university.
I confess that I wasn’t exactly being a health addict at that stage in my life. For a while I had a ‘thing’ with the leader singer of an up and coming indie rock band and would go on most nights to watch them play at the likes of the Marquee and the Rock Garden. They weren’t first league but supported some major bands and we afterwards we would hang out in the ‘star bars’ of the Hippodrome and the Marquee with the likes of Ian Astbury of the Cult, Bret Michaels of Poison, Martin Degville of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and his then girlfriend Janet Street Porter. It was all great fun.
Even after it all fizzled out, my flatmate and I remained on the guest list of all the major clubs for a year, until the band moved to the US where they were modestly successful touring with Mötley Crüe before they disappeared out of sight.
It was this tenuous connection toMötley Crüe that spurred me to watch band biopic Dirt on Netflix last night. And as I watched the band members drink mind-numbing quantities of alcohol, take just about every drug know to mankind and generally trash their bodies, I couldn’t help wonder how on earth they were still alive and kicking when so many good people, living apparently healthy lifestyles, had succumbed to cancer?
Now I must make clear at this point that my ‘rock and roll experience’ never approached even an iota of the excesses of Mötley Crüe. My experience of the London rock scene was more ‘pint of lager and a packet of crisps’ than the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll life’ and since my 30s I have been more a ‘kale, quinoa and alcohol-free beer’ type of girl. It may well be that I am facing cancer once again partly because of my mildly misspent youth, but I also know so many others have led really moderate lives and still had cancer.
Which brings me to a question that dominates much of the Old Testament - why do the righteous suffer and the ‘wicked’ apparently prosper? Job, a particularly poignant example of the suffering righteous man, puts it like this:
Why
do the wicked live on,
growing
old and increasing in power? (21: 7)
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Mötley Crüe are actually ‘wicked’. Yes, there were dreadful excesses, including rumours of Satanic parties but they were hardly alone. And a decade spent editing PRWeek magazine in the 1990s, taught me that this stuff is absolute gold dust to music PRs.
It would also be wrong assume that there was no suffering in the mix. Nikki Sixx ended up on the streets as a kid because of a troubled childhood, Mick Mars suffered from a degenerative bone disease which gradually crippled him, Vince Neil tragically lost his daughter to cancer and I am sure Tommy Lee’s life wasn’t all a bed of roses either. Real life isn’t black and white.
However, somehow they are still standing while those who have lived apparently more sober lives are suffering from the ravages of cancer. If you were one of those people it would be easy to feel resentful and envious, and the Psalms are full of calls for God to wreak his vengeance on the ‘wicked. But I’ve always found these calls rather disturbing; they seem petty and unworthy of us.
The reality is that no one is truly 'wicked'. Within every one of us a battle is taking place between our baser human instincts and the person that God wants us to be. And, while I’m not making excuses for people, the reality is that - whether through up bringing or life circumstances - some are better equipped to fight that battle than others. It is a lot easier to be good if you’ve been loved and cared for than if you are a recipient of, and surrounded, by darkness.
And as Jesus was at pains to point out, he didn’t actually come to earth for the ;good' but for those supposedly ‘wicked’ sinners! He is the shepherd who cannot bear to lose even one of his sheep; who will go to extraordinary lengths to find and redeem even the single disobedient ‘wicked’ ruminant who strays from the flock – with an extraordinary and non-judgemental love.
Still this doesn’t seem to explain why so many of the ‘righteous’ still suffer (or why people who haven’t spent a lifetime pickling themselves with booze end up with cancer!). The reality is that we aren’t going to know all the answers here on earth. Lets face it, if we could understand God he would not be God. But whenever we are tempted to feel sorry for ourselves or envious, it is important to remember that our God is not one who stands aloof from us raining down arbitrary judgement.
Rather, in Jesus we have the ultimate righteous man, who has suffered more than we can ever imagine, but is also God who understands and meets us in our suffering – something I have been so blessed to experience.
And yes I still love indie rock and heavy metal.
Kate Nicholas is a preacher, Christian author, broadcaster and consultant. Her best-selling memoir Sea Changed ( shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) is an account of her unconventional journey of faith and previous healing from advanced cancer.
Kate has gone on to share her message of hope through her TV series on premiere Christian TV channel TBN Living a Transformed Life , speaking events, online courses and bible studies including Sea Changed: A Companion Guide for individuals and groups which helps people to see how God uses all the circumstances of their lives to transform them.
Her latest book, Soul’s Scribe: Connecting Your Story With God’s Narrative , draws on scripture, philosophy, psychology and over 20 years’ of reflection as a Christian communicator to take you on a journey through the various chapters of your soul story, providing you with the tools to share that story in a way that will inspire and encourage others.
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