In today’s reading we see an age-old idea come into the conversation - the question of “Why do bad things happen to good people?”. Fortunately, the teacher doesn’t try to answer the question so much as he aims to make the statement that this is true, and that it is silly to live without recognition that it is true.  Said, another way, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and that’s just part of the way life is.

For our purposes though, for the sake of wisdom, two things I think that are important to draw from this are as follows.

First is just to accept this truth, that no amount of living wisely can insulate us from the chaos of this world.  Look, the world is cursed and sin is in the world and sin has repercussions.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people because even good people have done bad things and sometimes it takes a while for bad choices to materialize as consequences.  Sometimes the sin of others ripples into the lives of the ones they love, or people they don’t even know; but, either way, it happens.  It isn’t God taking out his anger, it is the ripple effect of sin.  Sin has consequence...and it isn’t always localized to the person committing it.  That’s reality.  That’s life.  And that isn’t always fair, but as our mamas taught us, “life isn’t fair”.  I think we forget that as adults.

Second is the idea that while bad things happen to good people, and while good things sometimes happen to bad people, there is a natural order in which the world works.  Wisdom is leaning into that order.  Bad things happen to good people far less often than we like to pretend.  In reality, most of the people we know still do plenty of bad things...including us.  So, while it is true, it is still my belief that it is the exception to the rule.  Therefore, the only reasonable choice is to live in wisdom and assume that more times than not it will deliver us to the best results.  It is true that people win the lottery and get rich, but only a fool makes his plan for financial success based on winning the lottery.  Only a fool would shirk his responsibility like that...in fact, I think what happens more often than not is that we use the ‘bad things happen to good people’ idea of help in justifying our foolishness.  That’s an issue for another day.

Great reminders today though...great reading this morning!