A few weeks ago my sermon focused on why bad things happen to good people. This is the age old question in theology. If there is a good God, why do these terrible things happen? Personally, I believe God chooses genuine relationship with us which requires that we are given free will. I believe that, as a result, people have the ability to make bad choices and do things which really harm others. But in reality that is only a partially satisfying answer. I believe that the place God is when bad things are happening is with those who are suffering. But this, too, is an only partially satisfying answer.
I find myself looking at people's lives a great deal and noticing themes. There are some people who truly have what I would call a "charmed" life. Their lives seem incredibly blessed. They have an abundance of gifts, resources and opportunities, and when they share their stories I'm always amazed at what doors open to them and at what they are able to accomplish just by wishing things into existence. And then there are others who seem to never be able to catch a break. Everything they touch seems to crumble, to fall apart, to create chaos and devastation.
Most of us are somewhere in between. I tease my kids that I have two special "karmas". I have an amazing parking karma. It doesn't matter how crowded a parking area is, I always find a parking spot and usually it is in a prime location. It's something we can count on, to the point that other people ask to ride with me places because they know if I'm driving, a parking spot will be found. I also recognize that I seem to attract free gifts. Wherever I go and whatever the circumstances, gifts seem to come my way. Well over half of what I have has been a gift (and usually a very unexpected gift) from someone else. I am deeply and truly blessed by the generosity of folk around me, often and in abundance. On the other hand, I have one big negative "karma" - anything electronic that I touch breaks down. What's more than all of this, though, is that the hard stuff that has come my way is always big and painful. Hard and intense childhood. Difficult and painful situations as an adult. Big things. Catastrophes. Humiliations and losses and traumas and victimization. The threat of financial devastation, homelessness (always having a place to stay with friends and family, but without a home base of any kind for several months at a time); an extremely public, humiliating, scandalous and horrible situation that led to a painful divorce. So constant is this kind of stuff in our lives that when my daughter and I were on a small trip together and we had someone trying to break into our hotel room, pounding on the door, rattling the handle and looking under the door in the middle of the night, my daughter just took it in stride. The next day when I asked her how it was possible for her to immediately go back to sleep once the guy had left, "Well, it's just one more thing and in the scheme of what we've been through, not so bad." At some level that broke my heart: that her life has been so full of trauma that when someone is trying to break into our room in the middle of the night, it seems minor to her.
In the face of this, my "whys" sometimes deepen. Why are the lives of some people so very charmed and the lives of others so hard?
This need for life to somehow be "fair" is so ingrained in humanity that throughout history we have tried to create explanations for life's great inequities. The Bible talks about the "sins of the fathers" being carried down seven generations. So, if something was wrong with someone, and the community couldn't see an obvious reason for their suffering, it was assumed that someone in their history misbehaved, causing their pain and struggles. For many, karma described how a person's past deeds in past lives dictated how this life would be experienced: if you were born poor it was because of mistakes in your past life. If you were born rich and powerful, it must be because you did it right in your past life. We want life to be fair. And it so obviously isn't. So we've created ways to make it fair so that we can bear the injustices.
But more and more I am letting go of the searching for a way to make life fair, and I'm coming to just accept that life is what it is. It is unjust. It is unfair. Some people suffer deeply. Others don't. We can always find someone whose life is better and we can always find someone who has suffered more. But no one can say that life is fair. And the work we go through attempting to explain or justify the struggles in life for individuals have a greater potential to add damage to another person's suffering than they do of helping us to understand. If we assume that each person's suffering is somehow their fault, we add to their pain when we should be easing it with compassion and care.
But at another level, I do believe there is responsibility here. I believe that we have been given enough, as a world, for all. I believe that we have the resources, talents and abilities to ease suffering and to minimize it. But we don't do this as a people and all of us suffer as a result. That is not about God or about Karma. That is about us as flawed people who forget that we are all connected and that all are our brothers and sisters. We forget to love the other as much as we love ourselves and we act, therefore, in selfish ways that injure other people, damage our world and create immense suffering. We are greedy and want what we want for ourselves and our loved ones. We forget that others' needs are also our responsibility and that we have the ability, as the human race, to help one another. But this is where we are right now.
So what do we do with this?
First, I believe we all need to keep working for a world that is more just. We need to honor and lift up sharing and caring so that others are inspired and moved to do the same. We need to see one another with eyes of compassion and grace, to forgive often, to give more, and to love without ceasing.
Second, as I have said many times before, I do believe in a God who is there, always, to bring resurrection out of death, to bring the highest good out of the lowest low, to help us to use our experiences and even our struggles for the good of ourselves and others. It isn't an easy path to choose to bring good out of suffering. It is an uphill climb. But the views are amazing, both during the climb and on those occasional peeks.
I look at my life, the things that we have gone through. I would not have chosen any of the really hard stuff. But I am also so very aware that without those experiences I would not be who I am today, I would not have what I have today in terms of friends, community, family, work; I would not be able to address things in the way I can now address them. I am so deeply grateful for the experiences that have challenged me to see with eyes of greater compassion and less judgment. I am thankful that I am becoming more the person I want to be, with greater ability to self-reflect and to choose how I want to act when faced with difficulties.
Finally, we have to hold on to the knowledge that all things pass, everything is temporary and whatever we are experiencing now is just another step in our journeys.
Life is not fair. But we can make it more fair by bringing good out of bad, by working for justice for everyone, by appreciating and loving all that life has to offer.
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