Whose job is it to fix the world?
Is the world ending?
Are the bad guys winning?
Will justice ever be served?
Considering the extent of the evil being perpetrated day after day, no one can be blamed for wondering if it will ever end.
We want it all to stop, so we must ask the key question:
Who is responsible for bad things happening to good people?
It’s an age-old question.
Back in Biblical times, Moses knew the Jewish people would be asking it time and time again, as we experienced strife and turmoil. So, just before we entered the Promised Land, he laid out certain truths about how God’s world works.
In his commentary on Parashat Ha’Azinu called “The Arc of the Moral Universe,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shows how Moses delivered this lesson — and how it can still be applied today.
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/haazinu/the-arc-of-the-moral-universe/
As Rabbi Sacks explains:
“[T]he core message Moses wants to convey… is the idea known as tzidduk haDin, vindicating God’s justice.
“… This is a doctrine fundamental to Judaism and its understanding of evil and suffering in the world — a difficult but necessary doctrine. God is just.
“… God requites good with good, evil with evil. When bad things happen to us it is because we have been guilty of doing bad things ourselves. The fault lies not in our stars but ourselves.”
Moses states the idea this way (Deut. 32:4-5):
The Rock, His work is whole,
And all His ways are justice.
A God of faith who does no wrong,
Just is He, and upright.
Did He act ruinously?
No, with His children lies the fault,
A warped and twisted generation.
What is it about human nature that made it possible for the Jewish People to forget God and His ways? Rabbi Sacks explains [emphasis added]:
“Moving into the prophetic mode, Moses foresees what he has already predicted, even before they have crossed the Jordan and entered the land. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy he has been warning of the danger that, in their land, once the hardships of the desert and the struggles of battle have been forgotten, the people will become comfortable and complacent. They will attribute their achievements to themselves and they will drift from their faith.”
Moses prophesied this exact scenario (Deut. 32:15-18):
Yeshurun grew fat and kicked –
You became bloated, gross, coarse –
They abandoned God who made them
And rejected the Rock of their rescue…
You deserted the Rock that bore you;
You forgot the God who gave you birth.
Note the use of the word, “Yeshurun.” Rabbi Sacks explains its deep significance [emphasis added]:
“This, the first use of the word Yeshurun in the Torah – from the root yashar, upright – is deliberately ironic. It underlines its prophecy that Israel, who once knew what it was to be upright, will be led astray by a combination of affluence, security and assimilation to the ways of its neighbours. It will betray the terms of the covenant, and when that happens it will find that God is no longer with it. It will discover that history is a ravening wolf. Separated from the source of its strength, it will be overpowered by its enemies. All that the nation once enjoyed will be lost. It is a stark and terrifying message.”
So humanity has no one to blame but itself when bad things happen in the world. Rabbi Sacks explains:
“God, Creator of the universe, made a world that is fundamentally good: the word that echoes seven times in the first chapter of Genesis. It is humans, granted freewill as God’s image and likeness, who introduce evil into the world, and then suffer its consequences. Hence Moses’ insistence that when trouble and tragedy appear, we should search for the cause within ourselves, and not blame God. God is upright and just. The defect is in us, His children.”
That explains why bad things happen to good people. But, what about why good things happen to bad people (Jer. 12:1)?
Lord, you are always right when I dispute with You. Yet I must plead my case before You:
Why are the wicked so prosperous?
Why are evil people so happy?
As Rabbi Sacks explains, the long view of history helps us understand how God’s world works:
“The simplest, deepest interpretation is given in Psalm 92, ‘The song of the Sabbath day.’ Though ‘the wicked spring up like grass,’ (Ps. 92:7) they will eventually be destroyed. The righteous, by contrast, ‘flourish like a palm tree and grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon.’ (Ps. 92:13) Evil wins in the short term but never in the long. The wicked are like grass, the righteous like a tree. Grass grows overnight but it takes years for a tree to reach its full height.”
How might this apply to the sort of massive, global, tyrannical oppression that we see growing today? Rabbi Sacks continues:
“In the long run, tyrannies are defeated. Empires decline and fall. Goodness and rightness win the final battle. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in the spirit of the Psalm: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”
I will add this:
The principle that a People causes its own problems is really hard to accept — especially when we see so many innocents being hurt by the Technocracy.
Children should be able to trust their parents, teachers, and librarians to protect them from harmful beliefs and practices.
But innocent children are being hurt.
Patients should be able to trust their doctor to administer only safe and effective medication and procedures.
But innocent patients are being hurt.
Citizens should be able to trust their government to protect their unalienable individual rights and national sovereignty.
But innocent citizens are being hurt.
The list of betrayals goes on and on.
All this goes to show how dependent we have made ourselves on people of authority and power. In that sense, the bad things happening to us are indeed our responsibility to stop. Even today, we are still giving the perpetrators of evil the power and the authority to do so.
It is our job to not comply with them, and to demand righteousness from them. It is our responsibility. It is the way God’s world works.