Why do bad things happen to good people
Why do bad things happen to good people (and conversely, why do good things happen to bad people)?
I previously wrote about this topic but it seems to return in many forms. After the September 11th events of 2001 it was a common question and after the Asian Tsunami of 2004 even Christian priests were asking this question. Of course people die every day, even good people. The question is the same whether we ask it about a huge disaster such the Asian Tsunami or a trivial incident such as why an apparently good person gets passed over for a job in favour of a lessor-qualified candidate who sucked up to the interviewer.
To answer this question we must consider the question of what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are and also: ‘Why are we here’? It would seem apparent that if we are here to enjoy ourselves then something has gone disastrously wrong. It is apparent that many people do not enjoy life. Whilst life to some is drudgery, worries and pain, it is often held up as an example of the unfairness of God that, at the same, to others it is wealth and indulgence.
This question is often answered with the response that ‘God has given us free will’, but this begs the question: Why?
People often divide actions and events into two divisions: good and bad. They have arbitrarily decided that certain events are ‘good’ and others (which presumably include pain and death) are ‘bad’. There’s an old saying: ‘Never consider someone lucky until they’re dead’. The reasoning behind this is that what may appear to be a lucky event may turn out to be a misfortune, and visa-versa. Many times people have what they think is a severe misfortune only to look back and say that it was the best thing that could have happened. Conversely, I’ve heard of people who win huge amounts in a lottery only to find that it destroys their family. Good and bad are arbitrary labels that have no real meaning in the scheme of things.
Pictures on a video screen or printed are made up of a number of dots, on a printed page typically 300 – 1200 dots per inch. The eye combines the dots and blurs them together. The sum total of all the blurring forms what appears to be an image. If you view the picture through a magnifying glass all you see is a series of dots – you can’t make out a pattern. It is similar to viewing a city. On the ground the layout may not be apparent but from the air as you go higher you are able to see the patterns in the street layouts, the areas of parkland and built up areas etc. In the same way, the real status of what appears to be good or bad is not apparent when seen close up. A better term is to see events in terms of constructive and destructive. Sometimes in order to create you have first to destroy; and what is destroyed must once have been created. Destruction is not ‘bad’ it is simply part of the cycle of life and death.
The aim of all this is to evolve. Real evolution comes through effort and effort is spurred on by hardship, and so the cycles of creation and destruction, and stress and release gives people the opportunity to evolve.
Take the example of someone who is a bad driver. Others may even remark that he is an accident waiting to happen. When it finally does happen the driver (and even his friends) may blame this on God – “How could he let this happen?” but of course this is not God (or at least, it is not God involving himself in the world in an unexpected or miraculous way). In order to learn one needs to make mistakes, and these mistakes have consequences. Inherent in the idea of free will is that so-called ‘bad’ things (and ‘good’ things) will happen. Without it there is no evolution, only stagnation.
I read frequently about teenagers who have been driving for only a few months getting involved in horrible accidents. Often they have a car-full of their friends, they drive too fast and someone gets killed. Sometimes it is the driver, sometimes one of the passengers and sometimes an innocent passer-by. Sometimes we can see the pattern of cause and effect: the driver is driving too fast for his experience and so gets killed; the passenger should have listened to the inner voice saying “Don’t get in the car – it will end disastrously”; and sometimes we simply don’t know – why did an innocent passer-by get killed and the reckless driver get a few cuts? We are too close to the picture so all we see is the individual pixels. Just because we do not understand the reason immediately does not mean that there isn’t one. Sometimes the pattern becomes clearer later on in life.
In the animal kingdom the journey is hard and painful. A fish will lay thousands of eggs but only a few will reach maturity. When animals kill for prey there is no anaesthetic. A lion will bite into a wildebeest and devour it alive. It is not just the weak or the stupid who fail. Kangaroo joeys that are not well guided by their mothers will become prey to dingoes. The mother learns the lesson eventually.
We are, as were, on a thread. At one end of the thread is our ego. For many people this is as far as they get on the mystical journey. They are unaware of any other aspect of their being. But if we follow the thread it takes us through our own unconscious (or at least it is unconscious to most people), through the collective consciousness shared by all humanity, through the consciousness shared by the Earth and on to “The Journey to the Lord of Power” as the Sufi Ibn Arabi put it.
The process of evolution is this journey. It is as easy or as hard as you make it, but every journey is different. We are all unique as we are all drops from the ocean. Every drop is part of the ocean but has its own unique essence.
What we call death is merely a passing through from one plane of existence to another and we should bear this in mind when it seems that the kindest, most humble people have been killed while others who seem less deserving survive. Death is not 'bad', it is just part of a cycle.
