God is the Light of Heaven and Earth.

Why Bad Things Happens to Good People

All good things come from God, bad things happens when God is absent from our life. Very much like light, when the light is on you can see everything clearly; but when the light is gone darkness appears and in the dark one could not see and can hurt himself stepping into a big hole, therefore, when we face calamity we must run to God and God will give us strength to follow his path. God will give us wisdom to choose the right way. When you are obeying God whatever happens is your destiny, like things that happened to the prophet of God like Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad (PBUH) and their family.

A. Consequences of our own action: If we smoke and get cancer that is the consequence of our own action. If we drink alcohol and get liver cancer that is our own fault. If we gamble we may loose everything we have, these are God’s rule of nature. If you have sex outside marriage you may get sexually transmitted disease (STD) or AIDS. We must obey God’s rule to stay healthy, wealthy and wise. Like in school if a student does not study will fail the class and will not go to the higher grade and if he fails it is his fault, teachers and principals are not in fault

B. This is our Test: God will test us with loss of health, wealth and life. We must understand that and persist on our obedience to God. We must be patient until we overcome someday. Loosing our cool and hitting the bottle when we face calamity is not going to help and will only increase our problems. For example, when a pious family looses a child to cancer everyone will ask why God did not help this pious family. That is a test for the family and if they stay in the path of God they will be rewarded tremendously. The innocent child will go to paradise too.

C. Death is not punishment: We believe in life after death, therefore God may take a child from this life and takes him to heaven because he needs the child in heaven. Secular family will feel very sad and angry and will question God’s actions with anger, but a pious family will be sad but they know their child is in heaven and that is good enough for them and they will not be angry at God, but rather thank God for all other blessings that they have. While Jesus was suffering on the cross He asked God, “Please do not forget me”. Imam Hussein (RA) when all his family were murdered by Yazid said “God I am obedient to your will”, and before getting murdered by Yazid’s army he asked for time to perform his last  noon prayer. That is Piety; death is a severe punishment if you do not believe in God and the Day of Judgment. If you believe that this world is a final resident and after you die you become dust of earth that is hard to accept. God given death is not a punishment if you end up in paradise

D. How do we change our luck? God will not change anyone’s future unless the person changes himself. God can not make you rich or successful if you do not want that. Very much like in school, a school principal cannot force you to study. If you want to be on top of your class you must study hard and no one else can do it for you. Same is for communities, societies, or nations the only reason America is so successful is because of the democratic process and faith based nation. In America everyone is working so hard to maintain this system and improve it everyday and with time we can improve further. We can dream of a day that in America poverty will go away, everyone is well educated, and everyone is obeying and thanking God for their good fortune. So if there is so much starvation in Africa, we can use the opportunity to show how generous and merciful we are, so it is our test to help them out of their misery. Also if African’s work hard and educate themselves they can change their fortune as God has promised. Also God says move to other areas to change your fortune, you can not die in one location because you were born there. If you believe in God and you obey God the whole world is your home. God’s greenland is vast.

E. What about Natural Disasters? Our Globe is made up of oceans and lands. The ocean is like a big fish bowl that has been around for millions of years, has millions of fishes that live, eat, grow and procreate and die in this fish bowl; the oceans have their own system to keep the water nice and clean so we can enjoy and eat from it that is God’s miracle. This land is like a garden that has been around for millions of years. All God’s creatures live, eat, grow, procreate, and die on this garden and still is the most beautiful place. All plants in this world takes CO2 from air and produce oxygen for clean air. All humans and animals have lungs (opposite of trees) that take in the Oxygen and produces CO2. That is how all plants and animals stay alive in balance that is God’s miracle. On this earth rain falls on the ground, and various flowers with different color and different fragrances will grow. With same water and same earth orange tree gives you orange, lemon tree will give you lemons, and millions of other trees gives you millions of different kinds of fruits from the same dirt and same water. How do they choose their specific nutrient and produce fresh delicious fruits and life saving oxygen for us so we can survive, that is Gods miracle. For God to be able to maintain this natural order there must be some remodeling plan too. Therefore it is necessary to have earthquakes to balance the pressure inside the earth, or volcano, or storms, or, tsunami or any other natural events. As a result of these huge changes sometimes there is loss of human life and property. Although God may use these events to punish some people like storm at the time of the prophet Noah, or earthquake of Sodom and Gomorrah during prophet Lot’s time. Sometimes these events are necessary and God will reward those who died innocently by taking them to paradise.

Death in the path of God when you end up in paradise is not a punishment. Death or suicide when you end up in hell fire is punishment. May God’s Blessings save all of us from the hell fire.

F. Global Warming: Humans, animals, cars, and factories take oxygen and produce CO2, excess CO2 causes Global Warming, climate instability, excessive drought, tornado, storm, destruction and death.” Consequences of our Action”.

Solution: Is to reduce CO2 production by preserving the jungles & trees, planting more trees that use CO2 and produce oxygen. We must reduce CO2 production by using renewable source of energy like wind power, solar power, nuclear power plants, etc.

G. What About Sickness: if there was no sickness, we would not need nurses, hospitals, clinics, doctors, and then what would happen if anyone would get injured at work without doctors and hospitals. If there was no illness we would not know the value of our good health, then what would happen at the time of death. So either we have to accept the current system or we have to create a new world. Like a tourist that goes to a museum in Paris for one hour and wants to criticize the management before he leaves without knowing the whole picture.

H. Big Unknown:  We are trying to understand God’s action or reaction in this world. Although we can explain some of the events like consequences of our actions, God’s test, God’s punishment or God’s reward or necessity of natural events and its consequence. There are millions of other questions that we don’t know the answers because of:

1. Limitations in our senses, because our five senses we can not understand anything outside our five senses. For example a person born blind has no idea what is color, how a red rose look like and when you try to explain that to him it will be impossible, because you have to explain color in a form of something palpable so the blind person can palpate. Same is trying to explain a beautiful music to a person born deaf. You have to explain that in a form of something he can see or smell or palpate and that will change the beauty of music. So since our senses are limited we can only see limited space and hear only limited. Decibels we can not understand when the animals talk to each other or how the ants and bees build there houses. Why some bees are workers and some are leaders, why an ant cut’s off the end of the grain before taking it to his nest, so the rain will not cause the grain to grow and destroy his home.

1. Limitation in Time, a 3 year old child was asking his mom why did you take me to the doctor, why did you allow him to cut my hand, and you were holding me down while the doctor was cutting and I was crying. Mother said because I love you, you had an abscess in your hand and the doctor had to cut it open, drain the puss and give you antibiotic shots so you get better soon.  But the child is still crying and could not understand it. A few years later he understood the mom’s action and loved his mom and loved his doctor for saving his life. That is how we look at God, He knows what is good for us, we follow his commands and whatever happens is for our own good. Jesus (SA) said if we ask our father for bread would he give us stone? Never. Look at God’s action as action of some one who love you like your father or like your teacher and you will understand it.

1. Psychosomatic Factors: We know stress causes more Epinephrine secretion which may cause hypertension and rapid heart rate, stress may cause suppression of Immune system which may lead to cancer and death. People who believe in God and have faith are more relaxed, less stressful, and the calamities of this life do not bother them that much because they believe that is God will. Therefore you can guess that a person who does not have faith and under a lot of stress develops various kinds of diseases and blames God for all his problems. Most holy books advise that we should not lie or cheat or be unfaithful, so it is possible that lying and cheating may cause stress and cause various diseases. Again if we do not follow God’s command we will cause ourselves lots of grief. Next time you have any difficulty or problem please run toward God and God will help you to solve your problems or make it easier for you to tolerate it.

God Bless you and your honorable family.