Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? I Keep Asking.

“The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.” --Anne Lamott, author

Why, oh why?

That’s the response I had this morning when I opened up to the sports page of the Boston Globe and read a sad story, one that just broke my heart.  Stacy Wakefield, the widow of recently deceased former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, died this week. She was just 53 and passed away from pancreatic cancer. Tim, her beloved husband, and partner of 24 years…he died last October of brain cancer. They leave behind two adult children: Trevor, 20 and Breanna, 19.

Why?!

I know why this one death saddens me so much. As a lifelong Sox fan, Tim Wakefield was one of my favorite players. Not just on the field where his infamous knuckleball kept opposing batters swinging and whiffing for 17 years. He was also class and kindness and humility personified, never had a bad word to say about anyone, and devoted most of his free time and post-retirement to charitable works like the Jimmy Fund. He actually met Stacy at a charitable event, and she too was committed to making this world a better place. 

Some days, it just feels like there is such unfairness in the deaths that take the good ones. Makes me wonder why so many of the bad ones seem too often to get a pass in this life.  Makes me wonder about the horrors of all those killed, kidnapped, and tortured in Israel and Gaza or all those Ukrainians who have been snuffed out, maimed, and made homeless, all while an evil tyrant wages an unjust and cruel war.

I know that some might say of such human wreckage, “Well, life is not supposed to be fair.” Or “Bad people doing bad things hurt the innocent.” To use the language of the faith I claim, sin and evil are a reality in creation and when these are active, the innocent sometimes become collateral damage from such awful behavior.

Still doesn’t answer why folks have to die of cancer.

So as a person of faith I don’t just ask, “Why?” I also ask, “Why, God? Why?” And in the 63 years of my faith that began the day I was baptized; through eight years of parochial school, four years of church youth group, three years of grad school studying theology, thirty-five years of doing this God stuff for a living…I’ve yet to come up with an answer for…

“Why?”

And I’ll keep on asking, even though I know an answer is not always coming, at least not at my pay grade and at least not on this side of existence. Maybe in the next life I might get some answers to the mysteries of the human condition. But now? I don’t want to use tidy but empty theology to try and explain human pain. “God needed another angel in heaven.” Or “God gives us no more than we can handle.” Or “It’s all a part of God’s plan.”

I get why folks need to believe in such explanations to the question of “why?”  The chaos and randomness of life is a very scary thing.  Yet maybe we humans are not supposed to know the answer to everything under earth and heaven.  Maybe we are supposed to stick to being human, and accept the truth that mystery is a big part of what it means to be mortal and absolutely a big part of having and claiming a faith in God.

“Why?”

I’’ll go ahead and keep on insisting it is my right, our human right, to offer that question. To God. To the universe. To push back against how cruel and hard this life can be, and how the innocent too often end up in the crosshairs of evil. Disease. Natural disasters. Injustice. So, a billionaire cries “POOR ME!” and plays the victim while blocks away in that same city, a family struggles to just put enough food on the table today. To get by.    

“Why?”

But my faith then asks me, in return, “Is it for you John, to presume to know the mind of God? To imagine that you can know all of the answers to life’s mysteries?” And I have to confess and answer back, “No.”

“Why?”

Ask away. I know I will. It’s what we humans do. I just don’t expect an answer to everything. What I do ask God is to grant me the humility and the trust, to be ok with not knowing….

“Why?”

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.