The document discusses the question "Why do bad things sometimes happen to good people?" It uses the example of a man whose son suddenly becomes ill with a terminal brain tumor. This leads to questions about God's nature as all-powerful, good, and fair. The story of Job from the Bible is presented as similarly questioning God during times of suffering. The document argues that while we seek to rationalize suffering by blaming God, we must accept that sometimes suffering is "meaningless" due to limitations in human understanding, and that God respects natural laws and human free will. God's goodness is seen in His protection of humanity through "grace" despite natural forces that could cause faster disintegration.

1. The Universal WHY
“Why do bad things sometimes happen to good people?” This question is one of the biggest
WHY’s in the whole of human history, that big universal WHY? I’ve encountered this question
long ago, but have never really given it much thought, since it had been my belief that these
kinds of questions are reserved only for the learned, the wise sages, and the philosophers. Yet
now, I again encounter this question, but this time, I am now acquainted with the workings of
philosophy, thus making me stop and really ponder this time around. Why, indeed? Let’s take a
situation for example. A man has a son about 14 years old and a wife, living quite a normal
family life in a suburban neighborhood with a stable job that pays well. This man had always
strived to attend Mass at least once a week. One particular Sunday morning, he found that the
local priest had been replaced with a new one whom he found out to be a terribly stern priest. He
stopped attending Mass altogether, and instead became preoccupied with his career and making
money. A few weeks later, his son just collapsed while walking home. He was diagnosed later
with a brain tumor that is irreplaceable and the doctor already said that his son has no more than
2 weeks to live, and the remaining days will be in terrible pain. If you’re the father, what would
you feel towards the world and God?
Though fictional, this story is actually happening all over the world every day, with more or less
variations but essentially the same. A person, neither extraordinarily good, nor extraordinarily
bad, suddenly finds himself in a circumstance where he/she feels that the world is collapsing,
brick by brick. Why? Now enters the question which I have stated on the first line of this article.
I will now try to answer it by examining the beliefs which have been confusing in for so many
years.
When we were still in our naïve, innocent youth, we Christians have been brought up with a
particular view of God, and though it may vary from person to person, basically, there are 3
notions as to what is the nature of God. They are:
1. God is all powerful.
2. God is full of goodness and mercy.
3. God is fair.
Now, when something like the situation above happens to you, these 3 notions are suddenly
brought with a tirade of questions. What’s worse is that is that those cannot be questioned. Yet if
you are the father in the story, will you still adhere to those principles? A flood of questions will
suddenly come to each of those statements. Fortunately though, there is a famous man in history
who had also been asking the very same questions, and he even had the opportunity to hear the
voice of God answering for Himself. This man’s story can be found in the most popular book of
all time: the Bible and the name of this man is Job.
The story of Job can be, in a way, interpreted symbolically, not really something that took place,
but rather a metaphor intended by the writer to comfort the one’s going through the same pain

2. during that time. The story acknowledges the presence of Satan as indeed an opponent of God,
but still subject to His power. The writer intended to answer that universal WHY through this
story.
So let us now examine the 3 notions stated above in relation with the story of Job.
1. God is all powerful
If this is true, why then did God permit Satan to do evil on Job? Why did He let Satan
inflict such suffering to this man? Why can’t He stop the devil from doing so? In the
modern world, if God is all powerful, why did the World Wars took place, which we are
sure can be, to some extent, orchestrations of the devil himself? Why is it that He let the
Holocaust happen? Why? Maybe He isn’t really all powerful after all, don’t you think?
2. God is full of mercy and goodness
If this is true, Job cried out several times and yet why did He not relent? Job absolutely
refused at first to question the goodness of God, but he is still a human after all. He
started questioning the mercy and goodness of God in the middle of the story. Why did
He take away all that Job had, everything, except His life, just to prove that Job is faithful
to Him? God plays games then, if that’s the case. Some sadistic kind of God we have,
don’t you think?
3. God is fair
The last notion and the most intense question of all: Fairness. Sure, life might be unfair,
but Job never did anything wrong to warrant such suffering. Why? Why let Job be the
play thing of Satan? Isn’t it unfair to Job that he had been faithful all his life to God, only
to be forsaken by the very same God at one point? In the story I’ve given, do you think
it’s fair to the child to make him suffer for whatever wrongdoings his father made? Isn’t
God Himself who said “Thou shalt not punish the children for the sins of their parents”?
In the modern world, why did He let racism to happen at some time in the 1950’s? Maybe
God is also a racist, and He is not really fair after all.
Thus are the questions. We human beings are so used to questioning everything that happens
around us. It is natural for us to always rationalize the circumstances in which we find ourselves
at the present moment. So the above questions are the results of the attempts to rationalize such
painful moments. Why do we rationalize? It is because it’s better to have someone to blame
when such pain arrives. It gives more despair when you have no answers to such heated
arguments, only vague hunches and mystical dogmas. It is better to blame God than to have no

3. one to blame at all. Psychologically speaking, it lessens the pain. Imagine being murdered
without anyone held accountable for such an act. The pain becomes a hundredfold. That is why
those questions emerge, why the questions above seem to be blaming God, because that’s what
they really are: blame games.
Now what if I tell you that God has nothing to do with it, and that have you have no one to blame
for your suffering? What if I told the father in the story, “God has nothing to do with your
suffering right now and that no one, not even God, willed that thing to happen”? Not a very
comforting thought, right? If I say this to the father, he might punch me and say “Fuck religion
and God. He did this.” Stated in the book of Job, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the
whirlwind, ‘Now prepare yourself like a man I will question you and you shall answer Me.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding?’”
What does God mean by this?
I said in the preceding paragraph that God has nothing to do with the sufferings of Job of the
father in the story. Why have I said this? It’s not a comforting answer, but it’s the only answer
that the Bible is giving. The questions stems out from our need to blame someone, because we
can’t bear the very painful thought of a MEANINGLESS death or suffering. But we just have to
accept that sometimes, there are really “senseless” or “meaningless” sufferings. “Meaningless”
because our knowledge of the reality of the universe is still primitive, that’s why it becomes
“senseless” because we can’t give it a meaning based on our rudimentary knowledge. It doesn’t
mean that we can’t make sense out of it that it is already “truly meaningless”. It has sense or
meaning, only that they are beyond our capability to comprehend. There are workings in nature
that are still beyond our grasp. That’s what God meant when He asked Job. He is saying, “How
dare you blame me using your primitive knowledge?” We just have to accept that there are still
“dark edges” in a supposedly “universe governed by perfect laws.” We can’t exactly call this the
workings of the devil, since in the ancient times sickness is always associated with the sphere of
demons. To answer the questions on the first notion, God is all powerful, only that He can’t
intervene with the laws of nature, having given Man freedom. If this “dark edges” of the universe
happens to bring anomalies to the child of the father in the story, God can’t go down form
Heaven in a bright light and touch that child. What about “miracles”? One dictum says,
“Miracles are not against nature. They are just against of what we know about nature.” The
concept will be explained further along. The point is, God is omnipotent, but He respects the
sanctity of His creation by not intervening in that fantastic way and altering the own laws of
Nature which He himself had created. To answer the questions about the third notions, God is
fair or just, that’s why He doesn’t intervene with the workings of nature. Doing so would show
that He has favorites, wouldn’t it? Why then did He let the World Wars and Holocaust happen?
He didn’t will that to happen, and he can’t intervene with the freewill of human beings. He
respects that, even to the point of wars and murders. Yet that topic is another matter to be
discussed. Suffice to say for now that God abides by His own laws. To the second notion, God is
full of mercy and goodness. Why have I said that? This can be explained with the concept of

4. grace. To paraphrase what M.S. Peck, psychologist, said “Grace is that mysterious force that
protects us from the natural process of disintegration.” In the natural course of things, evolution
shouldn’t occur at all. We should be eaten by bacteria by now, and there shouldn’t be a single
human being right now. Yet mysteriously, evolution still occurs, and we don’t succumb to that
force of disintegration science calls entropy. Why? Its either we’re Gods, or we’re protected
from it. We’re not Gods, so I conclude that we’re protected from entropy. We disintegrate, but
not at such a fast rate (by “disintegrate”, I mean to get sick and die). That is the “grace of God”.
It protects us, making us able to evolve into higher complexities rather than become bacteria.
That’s why I said God is full of goodness and mercy. He gave us a bit of protection from the
“dark edges” of the universe. Maybe the protection sometimes goes awry, that’s why we get sick
or we die unnatural deaths, but it’s still a miracle that we don’t succumb so easily to entropy.
Thus so far I have stated the answers. Be mindful though that I have done this subjectively.
That’s what God meant when He asked Job. We don’t know the real workings of this universe.
We weren’t there when He “laid the foundations of the earth”. We have to stop the blame game.
It is never comforting to say that sometimes things/sufferings just happen without any meaning
at all, but it is better to accept that and have a bigger picture of what’s the truth rather than limit
our ourselves with what we “know” about it. Once we’ve accepted that painful reality, we will
stop trying to blame the “incomprehensible Reality and His true nature” and we can start the
slow process of moving on. We also have to stop believing in the notion of a punishing God,
though this notion is another topic to discuss. For now, we can say that God, though He hates sin,
never hated sinners that do not do sin deliberately. He is beyond comprehension, so we have to
stop trying to tailor-fit God into our own limited views and images. Let us not “kill God” by
trying to suffocate Him in our narrow and biased percerption.