Why do bad things happen to good people? Topaz: I just keep coming back to this question again and again, and my answers are incomplete or flawed.
Growing up in New England, I was influenced by Calvinism/Puritanism, which essentially states you're either saved or you're damned, God has already decided, and there's not much you can do about it. That logic (or lack thereof) always bugged me when I was younger - how can God decide those things? What kind of capricious, trickster God are we up against, anyway?
Then when I was about 19, I went to India, and the 2nd or 3rd day that I was there, I saw a man on a bike get hit by a bus. His head was literally squashed like a melon on the pavement. I was sitting on another bus directly behind the first bus, and an older man in the bus stated, "It is karma" and the other people on the bus murmured in assent; karma not in the sense of "instant karma" as is often discussed here, but karma as the consequence of many lifetimes. And that made a little more sense than the capricious trickster God, and I suppose those 2 belief systems of mine have been more or less keeping company ever since, but I am still frustrated by this question, and by the flaws in my own beliefs.
Re: Why do bad things happen to good people? whatnext: I saw an excellent South Park episode about this last night.
Stan gets a hernia that he almost dies of, while Cartman gets his own theme park. Stan questions his faith, and loses it. He almost dies, but then Cartman loses it all, and his suffering has no end. At that moment, Stan finds his faith, and is saved.
Personally my divide is between karma and "shit happens".
Re: Why do bad things happen to good people? pluscachange: Free will.
And no, not just the free will of those who are good, but also those who are bad. A million minute choices are made everyday, most without a moral quality (neutral choices, like how many cups of coffee to drink, etc). The sum of these choices work not only for you the choser, but affect others on the periphery of your life as well, who then make choices of their own, which affect those on the circle edge of their life, and so on and so on. So while a good person can do good and make good (or at worst neutral) choices, the roundabout effect is others are making choices too, which sometimes affect you through no fault of your own.
That's a fun way of saying "shit happens". :)
