We aall have heard this in various occasions, when a passerby in the street is killed during a gang fight and when mourning the death of a young person from cancer. We have seen it, we have heard it and we have said it.
Let me bring another perspective on this. It is not the full picture, but another angle.
I want to examine the question itself. If we are asking the wrong question, we might be more exhausted finding the right answer.
So the question is:
“Why bad things
happen
to good people”
We see here two distinctive moral judgement that we take it for final: Bad and good. How we come to the conclusion of bad and good? Who decides for bad and good?
During war and health emergencies like this one we are experiencing now all over the word it is not bad news for everyone. Companies who produce ammunition and medical supplies are in a way happy -their business is going to flourish as the demand increases. They are never going to declare publicly it as good news, but in business it is good news. People always have profited form the bad luck or mismanagement of enterprises. There are companies that work to destroy other companies and possibly to buy them for nothing.
My point is: Who decides what is good and bad? Do we have a universal measure of goodness or everyone has one? Having #Covid19 in Wuhan have reduced the work of the factories that pollute the air. It is a fact that the pollution has been drastically decreased. That’s good news for all the Greenpeace activists and other enviromentalists, but not so good for others who make their living and profit on these production lines.
The question that is in the title we can reverse and say also: “Why good things are happening to bad people?” What we assume with that is that people who do wrongs to others by trickery or violence go unpunished, instead they have power and finances to do what they want. And the observers comment, some with lament and other tempted to do likewise.
To get rich is a good thing by default? While many want to be rich, not everyone knows the stress that position brings. Is that a good thing. How much we envy what the criminals have, is what we call good?
How evil are those criminals or corrupted officials?
Do they have similar attitudes like ours but in a greater and visible scale?
What if we say that all liars will die tomorrow by the decree of God, do we know how many will die? Are you going to die?
I propose that we change the question. Instead of throwing the responsibilities to others mainly to the Creator for not executing enough justice, we should start making statements and starting with ourselves.
God is good, there is no bad intention in God’s presence.
People although they have traces of goodness in them, they are not so good.
I’m not good, I have sins within me that call me continue to action.
So I pray: ” Oh good God, have mercy on a sinner like me”.
Brother Endrit Journey 