Amazing Recovery

Why do "bad" things happen?

I feel very strongly that there are four distinct reasons why "bad" things happen. Some are natural and some are divine. Some are a little of both.

1. We make "bad" choices and have to live with the consequences. For example: A person drinks and drives and crashes their car into a telephone pole. They become paralyzed from the waist down and total the car. The accident is a consequence of your personal choice to drink and drive. There are natural laws about objects moving and meeting other objects with force etc...that this choice puts into motion and usually these natural laws cannot be broken.

2. Other people make "bad" choices and it affects our lives. For example: A person drinks and drives and crashes their car into your car. You become paralyzed from the waist down and it totals your car. The accident is a consequence of someone else's personal choice to drink and drive. There are natural laws about objects moving and meeting other objects with force etc...that this choice puts into motion and usually cannot these natural laws cannot be broken.

3. We live in a "fallen" world. A world where our bodies age, acquire illness, and die. It is a natural law. Human bodies are subject to natural laws. Our cells die and do not replace themselves. Our cells mutate and create cancer.

4. There are certain divine lessons to learn from this trial.

I don't think to act as God and determine which is which. A person may learn during their life the purpose of such things. People come to terms with things in their own reasons and in their own times. But this is something particularly important as I cope with my long term illness of bipolar. I believe my illness to be a mixture of genetics (natural law), environment during my formative years (psychological behavior), and for me to learn a small handful of divine lessons. Maybe God took the opportunity to teach me something knowing that this was part of my inevitability and part of the natural laws that would affect me. I don't believe that natural laws and divinity are separate and must be divorced from one another. I believe that God is the author of the natural laws. That they have a synergy. A human being is not just physicial and not just spiritual. What is physical is affected by the spiritual and what is spiritual is affected by the physical. That is why finding the balance is such a journey.

I am trying to remember these things as I cope with Paul's illness and its possible ramifications.