When its asked why a loving God allows bad things to happen to good people, it implies a couple of things we may need to consider before pressing ‘Send’.
1) God is loving. 2) Everything happens for a reason. 3) People know themselves. 4) there is a subset of the population to which shit aught to be happening more than me. 5) Bad people are not already in hell.
But mostly what it implies is that suffering cannot possibly have anything of value for life, is a complete waste of time and should be banned. If possible.
Given a base line that we’re all going to die horribly along with everyone we know and love……… What is a bad thing?
There is a story about a wise man who lost his horse. The villagers commiserated, ‘Oh, what bad fortune!’
‘Maybe,’ said the wise man.
Then the horse returned with a dozen of his mates.
‘Oh, what good fortune,’ crowed the villagers.
‘Maybe,’ said the wise man.
Then his son rode off on one of the horses, fell and broke his leg.
‘Oh, what bad fortune!’ quoth the villagers.
‘Maybe,’ said the wise man.
Then the army came around and recruited all the villagers except the invalid son.
‘Oh, what good fortune,’ crowed the few that were left.
‘Maybe,’ said the wise man.
The question of why bad things happen to good people is amplified and refined in the story of Job whom God allowed to be tortured beyond belief by his mate Satan with whom he had a casual bet,
…like you do, when you’re bored on a rainy afternoon… bet you can’t stick an entire twizzler up your nose…. bet you can’t light your own fart.,, you know the drill. bored, bored, bored.
But its worse than allowing Satan to pull the wings of butterflies, because God could have consulted his Omniscience and known in advance that Job was alright, but hey, it was a rainy day… and much more fun to just see what happened.
Job does what many a child might do in the face of cruel and unusual punishment, he begins to attack himself and spends considerable papyrus wishing he had never been born. He refrains from speaking his mind, assuming God is just good and asks Him to produce proof. Which every toady MP knows he can wriggle free from at this point and lets God entirely off the hook.
Job’s Comforters seem to be a kind of watered down version of Yahweh himself, ‘you must have been bad’. Examine your conscience my son..
‘You must have been a really horrible person in a former life,’ is the modern version of this aggressive, blaming attitude: forgetting that such a version of reality presupposes vengeful gods to be eternally and conditionally appeased , or do you mean something else by ‘deserving’?
It couldn’t possibly be that shit happens in a sadisim-free Universe. Why? Because that is just toooo random. So we preserve ourselves from excesses of irrelevance and the crippling anxiety of being a speck by assuming Misfortune’s Just Deserts while we polish our golden heads.
The whole paradigm is about what you have done and must have done. Its not about who you are anymore. Your bad luck condemns you. Your good fortune exonerates you. Its cruel and utterly lacking in compassion, paling into utter insigificance what God may or may not be up to at the time.
Rulers are good, by definition.
Phew! Thats a relief.
They have power and are obviously ordained by God whereas we whelps in the gutter have clearly offended and deserve to be ruled like slaves.
Phew! I’m glad we got that sorted out.
Its not even about what you have failed to do. ‘Natural justice’, thus occludes the failure to live up to one’s potential, the sins of ommision that count every refusal to embrace life or give of one’s best…
Phew! You what in your what now?
Its all about being a good law abiding citizen.
Yay!
So many sage heads nod and puzzle, why was the book of Job ever even included in the bible?
Good law abiding citizen.
Yay!
Why didn’t they just sling it out with all the other stuff that was a bit trixy?
Good law abiding citizen.
Yay!
The good, law abiding citizen suffers, and actually more than most for their riteousness, and why?
Because not deserving it is worse than whatever it is.
Ya….