Marie and I just attended the funeral of a young wife and mother, who had tragically died in an auto accident. By all accounts, she had been a beautifully loving person, a bright point of light in our midst. Watching her family struggle with grief, I wondered, as so many times before, why does this happen? Should we be angry at God? Or does life simply suck?
My spiritual path started as a devout Christian. I was taught that God is firmly in control of all things. He causes both good things and bad to occur. The "why" questions are usually unanswerable, because we are told that God works in mysterious ways.
Many years ago, I attended a church study group that looked at the question of "When bad things happen to good people". A book and documentary had been released by that title by Rabbi Kushner, which was used as the focus for discussion. I really wanted to know if there is a rhyme or reason to it. Does one need to supplicate and try to please God in order to prevent bad things from happening? Tragedy seems to be evenly distributed between the just and the unjust, so perhaps we have no influence over this.
Rabbi Kushner had suffered his own grievous loss, when his son died of an incurable disease. Clergy of all faiths inevitably deal with the "why" question when their members suffer loss. Kushner set out to ask the difficult questions, and tried to determine whether or not God should be blamed for our suffering. After all, if God is all-powerful, he could prevent tragedy, could he not? Many tell accounts of miracles, where tragedy was averted. Was God responsible for that as well? So how is this decided?
As I recall, Kushner concluded that God is indeed all-powerful, and not capricious. Kushner's explanation was that God does not micro-manage the cosmos. Utilizing a Deistic-like theology, Kushner postulated that, quite simply, shit happens. God winds up the cosmos and lets it go, and random chance determines the outcomes.
I was not satisfied with Kushner's explanation. I had suffered serious loss on several occasions in my life. I wanted to know what the implications were on how to view God in light of this. Could God even be trusted? Should we not get our hopes up and simply prepare for the worst?
Fast forward a number of years. My spiritual evolution had taken a radical turn. I had gained insight into the nuts and bolts of spirituality, and how our own Soul is in charge of major events in our lives.
Studying a number of NDE accounts, and hypnotic exploration of the soul's journey through the afterlife conducted on many subjects, my understanding is that each soul charts out a life path before birth. Many factors go into the choice of parents, genetics, and location. Based on the desired lessons and experiences, a life script is prepared that contains major probable events. Contracts with major players are agreed upon, determining who we are likely to marry, be friends with, work for etc.
In some cases, what we would consider adversity is written into the script. It all depends on what the soul's objective is. Some experiences require extreme circumstances. It certainly can seem like a mystery to our conscious minds, but our higher selves understand what we are trying to achieve.
A great source of teaching on this is "Your Soul's Plan" by Robert Schwartz. He selected several cases of people suffering from extreme adversity, and employed various means of connecting with their souls to learn whether a deliberate plan was followed.
In the case of my friend, who lost his beautiful wife, there are no ready answers. I do strongly suspect, from what I've learned from soul insight, that people who check out early do so for a reason. We may or may not come to understand the reason, but the soul is vastly mysterious, and our ego consciousness is aware of only a tiny sliver of who we really are.
I don't think things generally happen by accident. There are many accounts of accidents having been averted by miraculous intervention of angels. There are many accounts of serious illnesses having been healed by seemingly miraculous means. When the accident occurs, or illness takes its toll, it doesn't mean our guardian angels were sleeping on the job. We can seek answers and explanations. We may not get them, but we can trust that our soul knows what it is doing. We are all here for a marvelous reason, and we may not discover the whole story until after we are done. In order to understand more, we need to understand who we truly are.
