The Question

The ques­tion is not “Why do bad things hap­pen to good peo­ple?” but “Why do good things hap­pen to bad peo­ple?” The first ques­tion was answered in the book of Job. The sec­ond was answered by Jesus. For Job, it was a test of his char­ac­ter. It was also in com­plete defi­ance of the con­cept of Karma. There is not always a neat lit­tle for­mula con­nect­ing good or bad actions with good or bad outcomes.

When bad things hap­pen to us, we imme­di­ately look to see what we have done wrong. We quickly con­sider those evils as just rewards for our sin­ful­ness. We seek to get clo­sure to the mys­tery. By doing so, we cheat the mys­tery itself. Regard­less of the evi­dence, we stick with our com­fort­able “just rec­om­pense” theories.

Accord­ing to Jesus, God is not petty. “He sends the rains on the just and the unjust.” In other words, Deity allows for gen­eros­ity for all and is patient toward all. Also, the con­cept of good peo­ple and bad peo­ple is more in our imag­i­na­tion than in actu­al­ity. Yes, there are some clear crim­i­nals in life, but we are all depen­dent and some­what spir­i­tu­ally flawed crea­tures. What­ever good that is there within us is from another Source. Good and evil are often mere con­jec­tures for the dis­tor­tions of life on a “fallen” planet.

I have learned to ask bet­ter ques­tions. Here is one of my favorites: Given all I have expe­ri­enced in life so far, what is the char­ac­ter I attribute to God? So far the answer is: Mys­tery upon mys­tery. The for­mu­las all even­tu­ally fail. As life pro­ceeds, I look for bet­ter ques­tions. The “answers” and for­mu­las some­how just lie in the dust behind me.