Why do bad things happen to good people?

This question is usually asked because majority of people will never want to accept that they bear the responsibility for whatever happens to them. Some believe that time and chance determines everything. Clever religious ones will hide under the erroneous belief that the Almighty acts as He wishes, His ways being unexplainable! Easy going ones embrace such beliefs as these require nothing more but blind faith which of course is unsound and wrong.

In answering this question in the Light of Truth, we come face to face with the adamantine Law: “What a man sows he will reap many times over!” Man bears spiritually the responsibility for everything he says and does and this includes his thoughts which ordinarily no other human being can see. It is therefore an erroneous presumption to conclude that a person is good just because we see the activities he shows to the world whereas his innermost thoughts remain hidden from us.

This Law of Sowing and Reaping ensures that each person gets what he deserves without preference or prejudice and any injustice is totally ruled out. However, one of the mistakes so many people make is to believe that all happenings can be accounted for in only one earth-life. If this were true then Justice would naturally require that the combined causes, effects and reactions must occur during the span of one earth-life. When we turn away from this error, we will discover the logic and justice in everything that happens.

What we experience now can be a reaction from former debts and if we go through it with the right attitude, we are released from the debt. Apart from this, obstacles can be put in man’s way to teach and develop him in which case he adds to the means of his spiritual progress or ascent. In either case, these experiences help man to advance and works for his good. Furthermore, some can be born into families with hereditary diseases because through the Law aforementioned, they need such diseases for redemption, for purification or for advancement. In some cases a soul may have volunteered to come to this world for a specific mission to help some particular persons or to engage with some others in some beneficial work for all mankind. Out of his free will the soul accepts in advance all that will happen to it on earth, so there is no question of injustice.

Finally, since the Laws of the Almighty Creator works only in Love and Justice then the answer to this question which is often asked is this: what we see as the adversity of the obviously good people are in fact the reciprocal effects of former decisions which must now strike them!