WHY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO PEOPLE
For many, the last
obstacle in the path towards belief is the simple yet disturbing observation
that good people sometimes suffer and evil people sometimes flourish. It seems
obvious that an omnipotent, omniscient, moral God would not allow injustice.
Upon witnessing inequity, it is therefore perfectly natural to doubt God's
existence. Admittedly, this apparent injustice in the world is one of the most
difficult concepts a believer must cope with; it is not, however, a proof that
God does not exist.
I.
The first step in coming
to terms with the inequity of reward and punishment is recognizing the extent
of the problem. How much Divine injustice do we genuinely know about? We must
ask ourselves-and answer with cold, unemotional honesty-how many evil people we
have seen enjoying life, and how many righteous people we have seen suffering.
Such analysis requires access to two pieces of elusive information.
First, we must know who is
good and who is evil. But as any historian, psychologist, or businessman will
attest: The people most widely considered to be good are not necessarily good,
and the people most widely thought to be evil are not necessarily evil. Indeed,
the most evil people in history succeeded in their endeavors by maintaining a
facade of altruism. Being evil often involves lying, presenting an upright,
even saintly image. Both Hitler and Stalin, two of the most vile human beings
ever to walk the planet, were known to their followers as heroic saviors.
Goodness, in contrast, includes qualities like humility and modesty; and
humble, modest people tend to hide their righteousness. Good people also
sometimes sacrifice their personal reputation for higher values. For instance,
the English monarchy viewed Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other
framers of the American Constitution as petty outlaws interested only in
stealing land and inciting rebellion among British colonists. Yet these were
men of vision.
Although Hitler, Stalin,
Jefferson, and Washington are extreme examples, they nonetheless demonstrate
how moral stature can be misunderstood. How many people do we know intimately
enough to be certain that they do not deserve a particular reward or
punishment? Do we know with absolute certainty what people do when they are
away from us, what their motivations are, or what the outcome of their actions
will be? The point here is not to slip into paranoid suspicion or unrealistic
hero worship, but rather to recognize that in many cases we cannot definitively
say that someone received an unfair lot in life.
The second piece of
missing information is: What is reward and what is punishment? After all,
circumstances are not always what they appear to be. A man who wins an
around-the-world airline ticket has not necessarily been rewarded. His flight
might crash or be hijacked. Similarly, a woman forced to seek medical treatment
has not necessarily been punished. She might end up falling in love with and
marrying her physician. In addition, one man's punishment is another's reward.
We might pity a man who gets stuck in a crowded elevator when it breaks down;
but the man might relish the opportunity to forget about business for a few
hours and meet some new people. Or we might envy a woman whose job takes her
all around the world; but she might much rather spend time at home with friends
and family.
Even after this limited
analysis, then, we recognize how few cases there are of clear Divine injustice.
II.
The next step in coming to
terms with apparent Divine injustice involves recognizing that if God exists,
it is also possible that there is an entire non-physical world-a world unbound
by time or space-and a soul, a human essence that survives death and passes
into this eternal world. Human existence might actually be divided into two
distinct segments-finite life and infinite afterlife-separated by an event
called death.
Even most good people make
a few moral errors, and even evil people occasionally act righteously. If God
is absolutely just, He must reward every act of righteousness and punish every
moral error. But when should God reward good people and punish evil ones? This
world is finite. A physical, frail human being can experience only so much
reward and punishment. In contrast, an afterlife could be infinite. An eternal
soul could experience highs and lows that we, in our limited understanding,
could not even begin to comprehend.
Is it not possible that
God gives evil people some of their reward during the finite existence we call
life, and reserves most of their punishment for eternal, infinite afterlife?
Likewise, perhaps God lets good people experience some of their punishment in
this world, and reserves most of their reward for the eternal world to come? If
God really exists, we might expect to see good people periodically suffering
and evil people periodically flourishing, so that later, in an infinite world,
good people can receive a purer, more intense reward and evil people a purer,
more intense punishment.
The fact that good people
suffer and evil people prosper thus remains a challenge only to one who would
posit God's existence but reject the existence of a soul and an afterlife.
Whatever injustice we experience or witness is comprehensible (at least
intellectually) to one who not only posits God's existence, but has also
allowed for other spiritual potentialities.
Finally, even for someone
who would deny the existence of a soul and an afterlife, the seeming iniquity
of reward and punishment does not represent a serious argument against God's
existence. Any rational person will admit that, in theory, the ways of God
could be so complex that they defy human understanding. Man might simply be
incapable of comprehending and morally evaluating the behavior of an
omniscient, omnipotent Being. Just as appropriate actions taken by a parent can
sometimes seem unjustified to young children, God's actions might sometimes
strike us as indefensible, despite their absolute righteousness. Our occasional
inability to discern God's goodness is not a repudiation of His existence as
much as a confession of our own intellectual finitude. Because man cannot be
expected to grasp the mind of God, the fact that bad things happen to good
people need not hinder those who seek permission to believe.
