Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

It is such a difficult question, one that triggers a watershed of emotions. Why do bad things happen to good people? It evokes the deepest sense of despair and the greatest surge of anger. We all have past experiences that force us to ask this question. Maybe it happened to us personally. Maybe it happened to a loved one or a friend. It could be that it happened to someone that we greatly respected and admired. The fact of the matter is that hardship exists in this world, and since no one is immune, it will ultimately effect every one of us.

So why does it happen? What is the Christian answer? What is the true answer? There is actually a very simple and concise answer that I claim is true that will leave most everyone vastly unsatisfied while working them into an emotionally provoked frenzy. I will offer that answer here, and attempt to defend it using critical reasoning and thought.

So why do bad things happen to good people?

Answer: They don't.

It really is that simple! But, one is probably asking at this point, what about Uncle Bob who died of cancer!? What about little Susie who suffered that horrible accident last year? What about the genocide in Darfur or the victims of 911 or the tsunami? These are valid and honest questions that need to be considered. But before I move on, I would like to try to take an objective step back and try to separate the sticky mess that is the difference between reason and rhetoric.

When asking a question, one is most often looking for a reasonable response. In most fields of academia, if the answer is not reasonable, it is rejected outright. If the question is substantially difficult, it would take a fair amount of time and clear thinking to arrive at a valid answer. However, in areas that are more conversational, often times our validation for our reasoning comes not from clear, precise thinking, but rather from a vast sea of emotional rhetoric or story telling. It is easy to see this in politics, where name calling and evoking emotions from the masses is more important than actually provoking thought from the audience. J.P. Moreland puts it very well when he says:

"Because of the mindlessness in our culture, people do not persuade others of their views (religious or otherwise) on the basis of argument and reason, but rather, by expressing emotional rhetoric and politically correct buzzwords. Reason has given way to rhetoric, evidence to emotion, substance to slogan, the speach writer to the makeup man, and rational authority (the right to command compliance and to be believed) to social power (the ability to coerce compliance and outward conformance). Rhetoric without reason, persuasion without argument is manipulation"

It is my goal to give a reason for why bad things happen to good people... or rather why bad things don't happen to good people... without delving into the sea of emotional rhetoric that could easily accompany such an answer.

To answer any question, one must always be able to determine what it is the question is asking. In order to answer our question here, we first need to make sure we understand it. What is good? What is bad? How do these characteristics translate to things and people?

One might be tempted to say that good is simply the opposite of bad, and bad is the opposite of good. But this would be a redundant non-definition of the terms. It would only succeed in defining good and bad as opposites and nothing more. One would be able to substitute the words "up" and "down" into the statement while not changing its meaning. So we might be able to say that the state of "being good" is simply the absense of "being bad", but then we must venture to define what it means to be bad.

At this point is should be mentioned that the terms "good" and "bad" have no non-relative meaning if we are to deny the existence of some transcendant being or god that has somehow designed our universe to function in a certain way. The atheist may make claims regarding what is right, good, wrong and bad, but one would only have to ask the quesion "who says?" to see that they have no grounds on which to base their assumptions. If there is no god, there is no right or wrong, and there is not good or bad. I would argue that this flies in the face of what all mankind knows to be true. It is wrong to torture and dismember infants for enjoyment. It is wrong to say that a square is at the same time a circle. There are certain things that we must admit are wrong, that are bad. But how do we categorize such things absolutely?

Christianity of course offers a way to categorize what is bad and what is good in the Bible. Many other world religions also have their own methods of deciding what is right and wrong. There are some that are generally accepted by secular society as well, and I will strive to deal with these. Lying is generally accepted to be wrong or bad. When you are sworn in to any courtroom, you are expected to tell the truth. To lie is quantitatively and qualitatively bad. General selfishness is also seen by all mankind as something to be avoided, while selflessness is a virtue.

If we accept lying and selfishness to be objectively bad, then we can start to evaluate what it means to be a good person. Take, for example, the human body. A body is said to be healthy, or "good", if it is free from defect or illness. Once one part of the body becomes ill, the entire self is called sick, or "bad". If you have an upset stomach to the point of vomiting, you would no longer say that your bodily situation is good, but your head and your extremeties might be in good health. In fact, the vast majority of your body might be healthy, but you are still in bad health.

The same could be said about a mathematical proof. The proof might be ten pages in length, and it might generally be flawless. But if there is one statement on page five that is false, then the entire proof must be rejected. It is a bad argument. A good mathematicall or logical argument MUST be free from any bad logic. If even one bad statment exists in the larger framework, the entire argument is bad and must be thrown out.

So what does it mean to be a "good person"? We have already decided that selfishness and lying are to be considered "bad". If we are to consider good people to be those people that are entirely free of anything bad, then we must drastically reduce our pool of potentially "good" people to those that have never lied and that have never been selfish! With those two requirements alone, we must admit that it would be difficult to find such a person. I would go so far as to make the claim that such a person does not actually exist, and we don't even have to name other characteristics or actions that we might consider bad.

If it is the case then that there are no actual "good" people, then we might as well ask why bad things happen to flying pigs. We can rightfully answer that they don't. We can also answer that GOOD things don't happen to flying pigs! That is because flying pigs don't exist! So it seems also that good people do not exist, and bad things can not happen to those that do not exist.

Now there may be that subgroup of humanity that prefers to look at good and bad as relative terms, similar to tall and short. One might believe they are a good person simply because they are not Hitler. Another might try to do good things most of the time, and they think that makes them a good person. But what measuring stick are we to use to make such statements across the board? Again, a measuring stick would only exist if there is a way that the universe and mankind were created and designed to function. But if we were designed in such a way, then anything short of that design would be falling short of that measuring stick. Good and bad, in this sense, are not relative but are rather absolute terms capable of being measured. The problem is that everyone seems to fall short.

The Christian perspective:

Up until this point I have taken care to leave the Christian worldview out of the discussion. I have done this so that the argument above would sill relate effectively to all people, whether Christian or non-Christian. But there are many Biblical passages that lend support to the argument above.

When the rich young man approached Jesus and called him "good" Jesus responded by asking "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone." (Luke 18:19) God sets the precedent as to what is good. In fact, the Bible says that "God is good". The Bible also states clearly what it seems we already know, that we have all fallen short of that goodness, that we have all sinned, that we are all bad people when we come to see the true measuring stick of God's goodness and God's holiness.

It would be incorrect to say that bad things have never happened to good people. There has been one, and only one, good person ever to inhabit this planet. He was never selfish, he never lied, he never lusted, and he never fell short of the glory of God. That man was Jesus. And because he was good, he was the only man that did not deserve evil or punishment. He received both, but not for his own sins, for he had none. Rather, he willfully received the wrath of God on OUR behalf. He was the only good man that bad things happened to, and according to the Bible, he did so because of your "badness", so that you might receive the grace and goodness of God again.

In our narcissistic society, we ultimately feel as though we are entiteled to and deserve good things. Somehow we think we are genuinely entitled to all things good, while at the same time we believe we don't deserve anything bad. This is quite contrary to the truth of scripture, where we are told that, because of our sins and our "badness", we deserve all evils that befall us. It is by God's great mercy that we have anything good happen to us at all!!

In fact, I would put forth a new question. Rather than ask why bad things happen to good people (since there are no good people), I would ask why good things happen to bad people!! This question has no reasonable answer, but it does have an anwer. And that answer is God's magnificent grace and mercy. Instead of asking "why do I suffer so!?!", we might take a step back and ask... "why doesn't the entire world suffer this same fate, even though we all deserve it?!?"

The answer is God's incredible mercy, and His amazing grace.