Why do bad things happen to good people?

A life long question to ponder is the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Perhaps a theological question moreso than a philosophical question, I rhetorically ask this to you, the reader.

The theological argument is that there is a higher intelligent power that gives us limited free will. We have limited free will because the intelligent power knows what will happen to us and knows the choices we will make, therefore the argument is that we only have free will in our own minds. A rabbai once told me that a book titled Why Do Bad Things Happend to Good People discusses that bad things happen for a reason. A such example is that a person may be born blind. Seeing is something that people take for granted. If a blind person could gain their vision back for one million dollars, then chances are the money is not an issue. Furthermore, things happen for a reason and there is supposed to be something to gain from the experience. For instance, a blind person can share his or her experiences with others. That person can even support others who are blind by teaching them how to function in society. So again, things happen for a reason but there is something for an affected person or outside persons to gain.

The philosophical argument is that aside from the idea of a higher intelligent power. Perhaps this idea is more agnostic. The idea is that things happen for a reason, and there is nothing to learn from. Whatever happens, just so happens.

Personally, I'm not sure which is the correct belief. I know that I'm having a difficult time dealing with a death in the family.

My father's 2nd cousin is a man named Gary Michael. Gary just passed away. He had cerebral palsy, a developmental disorder. He was confined to a wheelchair his entire life. Gary had formal education and was a bright guy, which you would know if you were to have a conversation with him. Gary was just dealt a horrible hand of life. He has been moved from institution to institution where people care for him. There are some fabulous people in the service industry who help incapacitated people, however, there are some awful people as well. Gary has been abused before, and therefore, he has been to a few institutions.

I went to visit Gary this winter break with my father and brother. I haven't seen Gary for 7 years since. It surely was a good deed to visit him. I felt happy to connect with him again and I know for sure that he was happy that we came out to visit him. The first thing we did was pick him up some food on the road from a grocery store deli. This food, for sure, is much more appetizing than the institution food that they serve.

Upon our visit, we took a small tour of Gary's hall and met his neighbors, who were equally dealt bad hands in life. One man named Rodney suffered from seizures and had complications with medicine that prevents them. He ended up getting sucha bad seizure that he had to have a front piece of his brain removed. Now he has a bad short-term memory. He said, "God bless you," to me while I was walking in the hallway and I said, "Likewise," and began to talk with him. I could tell that not many people do, and for stopping to take the time to talk with him, I made his day. I told him about a movie called Memento that I've recently seen where the character has no short term memory and has to write down notes on small pieces of paper. Rodney lit up and said that he does that too. My brother and father were snickering behind him because they know that he would probably forget the name of the movie that I just told him.

Anyways, back to Gary, he had a terrible cough and when my dad was feeding him, sometimes he'd be wheezing to the point where his face would turn red and he would not be able to take down all his food without fruit juice to wash the food down. We commented about his coughing, yet he said that he was taking medicine to quell his respiratory ailments. Ok, we thought. However, that same cough was the works of a type of pneumonia which caused him to pass away.

During our visit, Gary wanted some money to buy snacks from the vending machines. I had some money in my wallet, so I bought him the danish he wanted and the two cans of fruit juice. I'd buy him anything he wanted to make him happy. I even bought a woman I didn't know a bag of pretzels who asked for them. I gave Gary the remaining 8 single dollars in my wallet apart from a $5 bill I keep in case of emergencies. It seemed like all this guy wanted were a few snacks here or there. I feel like I want more than that in life, and I have such higher priorities than these simple requests. However, these simple requests are what made him happy.

The things to think about are that my family and I did a good deed to visit him before he passed away. Second, could we have spoken up more to have his ailment checked out by a physician as opposed to assuming that medicine that he was taking could solve all his problems? Third, we fed Gary his last meal.

So I leave it up to you to decide why good things happen to bad people. Maybe you have a similar experience or a similar yearning for the answer to the question. There are other explanations to the question that I haven't listed above and I write this to you to think about because it is a great discussion topic. For me, it provokes me to think about my personal beliefs in answering this question. What do you think?