Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People



Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

A man said to the universe:

"Sir I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation."

- Stephen Crane

The question of why do bad things happen to good people is based upon the premise that we have that bad things should not happen to good people. Belief systems that believe in a beneficent deity tend to believe we will be rewarded for being a good person. The term good therefore has a subjective meaning depending on the individual belief system involved.

Man has, of course, tried to rationalize his predicament on this earth since his inception. When the first tidal wave swept away a village of good people or the first earthquake swallowed a whole community of good people, the surviving members of those communities needed to create a reason for the perceived insanity of Nature. This is where our first belief systems began. It was much easier for that surviving member of one of the aforesaid villages to imagine that he and his village had done wrong and had angered a force greater than themselves than understand the reaction to a tectonic plate shift or byproduct of another natural occurrence. It has therefore been in our nature to think that if something bad happens to us then we have done something wrong. Our subsequent fears spawned physical sacrifice and have throughout the eons ended with metaphoric sacrificial rituals to appease or worship the deity who has the power over our existence.

What we may argue is that if bad things happen to good people who are trying to be good, then there may not actually be an audience for our supplicative acts. If we live in an indifferent universe that does not interfere with our daily existence, then bad things happening to good people may purely be random chance.

It seems that our expectations of bad people receiving what they deserve, and vice versa, are simply futile and naïve thoughts we have to rationalize our existence. This is why we should not be surprised as something as pedestrian as the movie industry and its production of so much romantic escapism. We do not want to live in an uncaring universe. We want to believe that good will always defeat evil, the hero will always conquer his nemesis, the righteous will always prevail.

Therefore, bad things happen to good people because bad things happen to everybody – the universe does not discriminate.

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