Bad Things Happen To Good People Too

I have been thinking about this murder that happened here in Layton this past weekend. A young woman met a young man on a dating app that is mostly used for hooking up for one night stands. The man was crazy, on drugs, and overtaken by all things bad. So after hooking up, he killed her. Then he called the police and turned himself in. 

I am horrified by this story. I have been struggling to make sense of it, to resolve it in my mind. Meanwhile, others are trying to resolve it in their minds too. There are some who are blaming the woman for using this hook-up app. They are saying that when you make sexually immoral decisions, this is the consequence. Thus it was her fault that she was killed. She got herself killed by her choices. That’s one way to resolve it. Say, she got what was coming to her.

But I can’t think that way. I think evil happens to people that may not be doing everything right but the level of the bad consequences certainly is not balanced with their incorrect choices. 

So I’m saying that there’s this whole world of people out there who try to resolve the revulsion they feel when things like this happen with an imbalanced way of judging. They like to blame the person who had the bad thing happen to them in a way that resolves the revulsion. They like to say this awful thing happened to her because of her sins. This way of thinking seemingly protects them. They think this awful thing won’t happen to them or their loved ones as long as they don’t do what this woman did. But we know that bad things happen to good people.

I’m so sick of the judgmental attitude some people have. Not only are there people within my church that have this attitude, but there are also people in other churches and people who don’t belong to any church that have it. When we judge like this it prevents us from having to mourn with the family of those who have suffered this grief. It prevents us from realizing that something is inherently wrong with our society in general if it's breeding an increased number of murderers.

To choose to connect up the cause (the victim's choices) with the result (the victim's consequences) in these situations doesn’t work. Jesus Christ said that even though the tower of Siloam fell on some people, it didn’t mean they were all sinners. And even though Pilate killed those other people, it didn’t mean that it was a consequences for living a bad life (Luke 13:1-5). Instead, He said that bad things can happen to good and bad people. To swing around our judgement in false ways is dangerous, not only to our community, but also to ourselves.

This is one of the reasons it is dangerous: There is another group of people that takes their cue from these judgmental people. This other group doesn’t like this unfair way of judging. They know it is wrong. So they use it as a way to justify their continuous poor choices. They say there is not any connection whatsoever between the bad things that happen and our choices. They believe they can live in any way they want and it has no connection to the general consequences in society or their specific life trials.

But we know we can’t live however we want because the murderer was following that rule. The result was that he wasn’t happy. He hated himself. He hated people. The reports say he had lived for quite some time entertaining homicidal and suicidal thoughts.

My thoughts are that everyone makes bad choices sometimes, including me. That doesn’t mean it’s a good, productive thing to do to criticize others. It does not promote compatibility in relationships to ostracize and condemn others in order to punish them. It is not correct to conclude that the bad things that happen to people are always connected to a specific choice they make. 

But we do promote compatibility in relationships and sustainable joy by generally figuring out and talking about the laws of cause and effect. Joseph Smith said, “I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.” Governing also includes that judgment of connecting up cause and effect. 

That said, in regards to bad things happening to us in general, I have learned that it is an objective fact that danger and evil exist independent of God. There are entities that act independent of him. They have their own will. We have our own will. We have been given the agency to use it. People have been given the agency to do good and and evil or a combination of both. 

If we want to increase our protection from danger and evil, we can do our best to learn more about the general rules of cause and effect and apply them to our specific choices. But that doesn’t mean bad things will never happen to us. They still do. So what is the benefit of figuring out the laws and striving to live them if bad things still happen?

In black and white judgment, there doesn’t seem to be a benefit. But in a careful analysis of the variables, we can see that many of the bad things that could happen to us because of our poor choices would not happen. We can actually reduce the number of bad things that happen by learning and keeping certain laws. In fact, many bad things don’t happen to us because of the countless people who have sacrificed their lives for us (and others who continue to do so) in establishing the physical and political freedoms we have in our country. 

Additionally, I have found it very useful to learn to differentiate between the results that are good, better, and best. To increase my ability to judge more accurately I have spent a lot of time thinking about what is most valuable to me. For example, there have been some bad things happen to me in my life. From the perspective I stand in now, I am thankful for them. Without these trials, I would never be able to have the relationships that I have now. The level of sustainable joy I live in now is directly related to the struggles I’ve had to work to endure and overcome.

I’m saying that even though we have adversity, which is usually categorized as a very bad thing, the end result, because we have it, work through it, figure things out, gain knowledge, become more than we would have, and develop relationships, is more valuable than the results we would have obtained had we never had to deal with it. 

One very obvious example of this that has been a big part of the development of my understanding is physical exercise. It is painful to lift weights, to run, or to hike up a mountain, but the long-term benefits of incrementally sacrificing in this way has built muscle and increased my cardiorespiratory health. I also experience a level of satisfaction, motivation, and spiritual intensity that I have not been able to obtain in any other way. I’ve found that this part of the sustainable joy equation can’t be obtained by eating more, giving myself more stuff, sitting around more. I actually have to sacrifice, work, face the trouble, learn, endure, and overcome. 

So what does this have to do with some of the awful, horrible things that are happening in our society today, like this senseless murder in Layton, Utah?

I think I was talking about dealing with our evaluation of someone who had bad things happen to her. I was talking about how misjudging these kinds of things can perpetuate the problem.

But how can anything good come of this awful thing? What is the purpose for it happening? What am I supposed to do with this story? How can I deal with it? I’m mourning for her family. I’m mourning for our community. I want to help prevent these kinds of things from happening. Is there some way to do that? But I also want to know if there is anything that can be done now -after the fact- for our community, for this family, for this young woman who died, and for justice and mercy to be done.

I feel like the best thing I can personally do after balancing out my own way of judging the bad things that happen, is to proactively love and support the members of my family and community. I’m realizing I can’t be neutral in the way I interact with people. I don’t want to entertain negative thoughts if I can help it. Instead, I need to fight for the good thoughts and actively use my agency to control them. Proactively love other people. Proactively allow them to figure out the cause and effect of their own choices and stop busying myself with doing that for them. I have enough of my own causes and effects to worry about. In this way, I provide them with a portion of the spiritual nourishment (love) they need, which prevents them from needing to seek it from conflicting sources that might entrap them and hurt them.

Dealing With Conflicting Views

I have been reading Farrar’s “The Life of Christ” and again am so thankful for him for writing down his thoughts and studies on the Savior’s life. I love that he doesn’t confine his opinions to exactly what’s in the scriptures. I love how he thinks through things. I don’t mind at all that his thoughts sometimes conflict with mine. I love that because he has voiced his, he has given me the chance to voice mine. I will forever appreciate him for writing this book. I hope that my own views, when they conflict with his, don’t offend him (as I believe those who have passed are aware of us when we are aware of them). I want him to know that even though they do sometimes conflict, I love him so much for writing his. 

This is because when he has taken the time to consider a point of definition when it comes to Jesus Christ and his life, my eyes are opened to consider it too. I may not have seen the point to be considered if it weren’t for his consideration of it. So for me, the value of what he has written is not diminished because our opinions sometimes conflict. For the most part, our opinions are balanced. I’m not sure if I could ever say he has supplied me with what is true about Jesus more than the scriptures have. That seems to be the task of the Holy Ghost. But he has supplied me with greater insight of the details of Christ’s life, His person, and His Process (seeing that the capital “H” comes in handy sometimes). 

And maybe it is knowing the evils of people and how they responded to Jesus that gives me the greater insights. When I read the New Testament in the past (before reading books like Farrar’s), I was not able to completely grasp the historical background of the setting. I was not able to see where the societal leaders of that day were coming from since our present society is different from theirs. Yet we have incorporated some of the same general imbalanced processes in different specific ways. Asceticism is still alive and kicking even though Hedonism is claimed by so many to be their god.

Today I was reading about the Sabbath Day and how the Jewish leaders for generations had created complicated ascetic laws to force the people to obey. And when the people did obey them, this gave honor and glory to them – to the leaders who socially enforced these pseudo laws. It took the glory and honor from God and gave it to them. They were the gods of their society. This is what they desired.

Honoring the Sabbath Day in the way they prescribed along with keeping all of their other micromanaging rules represented their Process and Causehood. They forced others to obey their Process. When the members of their society did, it fed and nourished these false leaders. It was like worshipping them. They were masquerading as gods. They were saying that they kept these laws very well and in doing so, they demonstrated their value. And if others wanted to approach the same value, they needed to keep the laws as well as they did. 

But initially, this must have begun with keeping the real laws of God, which at this time was the Law of Moses. When people make this a competition and they see that most people are keeping the laws of God, they up the stakes by complicating the law – making it even harder to obey. And when they show they can obey it, even at this higher level, they are gratified in their pride. When others follow them and strive to obey the higher law, it also gratifies their pride. But eventually, they will have to complicate it even more to continue setting themselves above others. This is an eternal evolution of this way of doing things. This is the result of Pride and Envy.

So for Jesus to attack these Pseudo Laws, was to attack their value. They were saying that goodness, righteousness, and value are dependent upon how exactly a person could obey these complicated laws. Jesus attacked this system by saying that attempting to follow these laws is superfluous, and that the motives behind this game are evil. He was saying that they are Pseudo Laws, not the laws of God. He was saying that their aim to keep these laws was blinding them to the real aim that God had for them. 

The real aim is to develop compatible relationships of sustainable love and joy with God and with each other. The purpose of God’s laws are to assist us in this effort. Working to obey laws is not a game that we play to be better than others. The practice of figuring out how to do good is not to be motivated by pride—the end-all goal to be better than our neighbor, our spouse, our brother, our sister, our friend, our son, our daughter, our community. The practice of figuring out how to do good is to be motivated by love—the end-all goal to develop sustainable, compatible relationships with our neighbor, our spouse, our brother, our sister, our friend, our son, our daughter, our community.

To be able to sacrifice more than someone else should not contribute to a superiority complex. To have the ability to sacrifice more than someone else is an objective fact. It is neither an act of pride or righteousness to acknowledge that fact. It is objective – neuter.  With any strength, knowledge, talent, ability, resource we have acquired or were born with, we choose what we will do with it. “With great power comes great responsibility.” “To whom much is given, much is required.” What we do with our resources, is what defines our Process as prideful or righteous. Do we use them to judge how much better we are than others? Or do we use them to serve others, knowing that we also need to rely on others to serve us with their resources since none of us have them all?

The Jewish leadership’s laws revolved around the Sabbath,  the ceremonial washing of hands and dishes before eating, the use of their money, prayer, fasting, and their relationships with each other -marriage, family, community.

So why were the Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, lawyers, scribes, and other judges of Jesus’ day so upset about his and his disciples lack of keeping their law? Why couldn’t they live and let live?

I believe it was because they derived their value – their sense of worth – from the keeping of their laws and from the number of people in their community who kept their laws. They were dependent upon the number of people in their community to uphold their laws. Why? Because when you’re not keeping the real laws of God, you are not supported by his validation. God’s validation enables us to feel our value quietly and completely. We don’t have to rely on other people’s validation. So if someone else disagrees with us and our way of doing things and if the way we are striving to live our lives is in alignment with God’s will for us, we will be sustained in the face of this other person’s disagreement. We don’t have to worry about the opinions and judgements of others because we are not relying upon their validation. 

This isn’t easy because we do rely upon each other for support. Ideally, our support of each other is in alignment with God’s support. But this isn’t always the case.

It is so tricky because we may be tempted to convince others who conflict with our opinion and our way of doing things that God is on our side. But this defeats the whole attempt to rely on God’s judgements. We don’t have to do any convincing for our own sake. (Don’t gotta say anything, don’t say a word at all…). Let other people have their own opinions. Let them judge us as righteous or evil. Let our focus be on God’s validation of how we are choosing to live our lives. And if we need to continue to learn, change, and grow, let it be before God and not before others who may say when we stumble, struggle, change, repent that, “We knew you were wrong all along.” 

Disregard their judgments when it comes to validating our worth. But regard their judgments when it comes to figuring out how we can serve them better in our relationships with them. And if our hearts are pure, we will seek to know how God desires us to serve them. There are times when we need to be like Westley (Dread Pirate Roberts) from William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride” and say, “As you wish.” But there are also times when we need to be like Martin Luther and say, “This is where I stand” regardless of what you do that hurts me.