Why do bad things happen to good people?

There are very few young people or “millennials” who regularly attend mass at our local San Francisco Catholic church, a parish composed mostly of older people, of all ethnic groups. Michael Marquez stood out as that rare young man who regularly attended mass along with his parents, Ramon and Patricia. A graduate of the local parochial school attached to our parish, Michael was genuinely well loved by his fellow parishioners as he represented the bright future of our parish.

Michael Marquez

On Sunday evening, November 22, Michael had pizza with his girlfriend and a group of friends in nearby West Portal, and then, after dropping his girlfriend off at her residence, proceeded home to Henry Street in Duboce Park with two friends. As they were walking down the tree-lined street, a car stopped beside them and five men alighted from the car, one with a gun, barking instructions.

As Michael’s friend, Jairo Rivera, reported. “They told all of them to get down to your knees and empty your pockets. I guess Mike didn’t comply as well as they wanted him to, so they felt they had the need to shoot him.”

Michael was shot in the torso as the men seized his smart phone, wallet and backpack.

As Michael laid on the ground in a pool of blood, his friends called 911 and an ambulance soon brought Michael to the San Francisco General Hospital where he died.

https://abc7news.com/news/group-robs-kills-young-man-over-smartphone-in-sf/408647/

His father, Ramon, later told me that when his son’s killers open his backpack, they will have to think twice about the life they took. His backpack carried food, leftovers from the restaurant where he worked, food which he would regularly hand out to the homeless people he would meet during the day.

“They will also find a Bible in his backpack,” Ramon told me as he wept for his son.  I told Ramon that if Michael doesn’t make it to Heaven, then none of us have a chance.

My youngest son, Eric, who attended classes with Michael and who knew him since they were kids, attended a candlelight community vigil at the street where he was shot. It was overflowing with people as was the mass for Michael held at our parish a few days later. Everyone wept for Michael, for our church, for our community and for our society.

Why, God, why did you take Michael? Why not take drug addicts, the low-life scum who prey on our community? Why take the rare saint among a sea of sinners?

Mourners gather to honor Michael Marquez Monday night near Duboce Park, San Francisco. PHOTO BY JASON OVERCASH

These were the questions asked at Michael’s wake but they are also the type of questions people ask whenever seemingly senseless tragedies occur. Are we simply the random victims of fate or are the tragedies planned and controlled by a higher power?

Thorton Wilder, the novelist-playwright known most for his plays, Our Town, and The Matchmaker (which later became “Hello Dolly”), wrote his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in 1927 to address these issues.

The opening sentence of “Bridge” describes the pivotal event of the book: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”

A witness to the tragedy, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk from Italy who happened to be in Peru, reflects on what he saw: “Why did this happen to those five?’ If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.”

Brother Juniper then sets out to “inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that moment falling through the air, and to [surmise] the reason of their taking off.”

In the course of his investigation, Brother Juniper discovers that they had all completed a problematic situation in their lives and that they were now ready to transition to the next phase.

But this book was fiction and the author can always create events that conveniently fit into his premise that people die after completing one phase. This is not what happens in real life. Michael Marquez was not in transition when his life was snuffed out.

Neither were the 2,900 victims of the Twin Towers terrorist attack in 9/11, nor the 58 victims of the Ampatuan Massacre in November of 2009, nor the 6,500 victims of Super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in November of 2013. They were not in transition.

Wilder himself may have abandoned his original premise when he wrote another novel, 40 years later, that set up an alternative explanation for suffering.

In The Eight Day, a good, decent man is falsely accused of murdering his neighbor. In the course of clearing himself from the accusation of the bad guys who sought to frame him, he loses everything. The book does not end with his vindication and the villains punished.

“Instead,” Rabbi Harold Kushner explains, “Wilder offers us the image of a beautiful tapestry. Looked at from the right side, it is an intricately woven work of art, drawing together threads of different lengths and colors to make an inspiring picture. But turn the tapestry over and you will see a hodgepodge of many threads, some short, some long, some smooth and some cut and knotted, going off in different directions.”

This was Wilder’s new explanation, as Kushner explains it: “God has a pattern into which all of our lives fit….some lives are twisted, knotted or cut short, while others extend to impressive lengths, not because one thread is more deserving than the other but because the pattern requires it.”

While this “tapestry” explanation can be comforting for some, it is ultimately unsatisfactory.  How can human pain be justified just because it somehow contributes to a work of art?

Wilder’s contrasting ideas on the reasons for why people suffer center on the common view that God was/is the cause of the suffering of man. Rabbi Kushner asks us to reconsider that premise:

“Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us? Could it be that He doesn’t decide which families shall give birth to a handicapped child, that he did not single out Ron to be crippled by a bullet or Helen by a degenerative disease, but rather that He stands ready to help them and us cope with our tragedies if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him? Could it be that “How could God do this to me?” is really the wrong question to ask.”

It’s like asking: How could God allow Hitler and his Nazis to exterminate six million Jews during WWII?

There is a calming peace of mind that comes with accepting the fact that God did not intend for bad things to happen to good people. Evil acts are are beyond His intention or control.  All we can pray for is the strength to overcome our pain and suffering.

* * *

This week marks the 29^th anniversary of the death of our first child, Mariel, who died of cardiomyopathy just before reaching her first birthday. My wife, Edna, and I found this prayer below, written by Jack Riemer, which we shared with all our friends then and which we now share with you and the parents of Michael Marquez:

We cannot pray to You, O God, to banish war,

for You have filled the world with paths to peace,

if only we would take them.

We cannot pray to You to end starvation,

for there is food enough for all,

if only we would share it. 

We cannot merely pray for prejudice to cease,

for we might see the good in all that lies before our eyes,

if only we would use them. 

We cannot merely pray “Root out despair”

for the spark of hope already waits within the human heart,

for us to fan it into flame. 

We must not ask of You, O God, to take the task that You

have given us. We cannot shirk, we cannot flee away,

Avoiding obligation forever.

Therefore we pray, O God, for wisdom and will, for courage

to do and to become, not only to look on with helpless yearning

as though we had no strength.

For Your sake and ours, speedily and soon, let it be:

that our land may be safe, that our lives may be blessed.

 (Send comments to [email protected] or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francico, CA 94127 or call 415.334.7800.)