'Mama, why does God let there be bad stuff?'

One doesn’t have to believe in a god to feel anxious about whether or not we live in a just and safe world. We imagine a just world where those who do good have good lives, and those who do harm are punished for committing injustice against others, or at least their hurtful behavior is not followed by great fortune. 

We are not guaranteed this type of justice. Charitable people can develop terrible illnesses, innocent children are abused, and corrupt business people and bankers enjoy an abundance of resources, luxury, and respect, while more than half the earth’s population lives with poverty and starvation.

So, is there any sort of regulating divine order by which our world functions? Never mind “divine” order, is there any order at all, that one can recognize and say ‘If I do right and good things, I will be safe’? We can do right and good things to increase the probability that we are safe and happy, but we cannot do anything to guarantee this security. So, what can we understand, or what can we tell ourselves, to reconcile this seemingly unfair and unreasonable aspect of life?

In The Heart of Understanding, Thich Nhat Hanh quotes the Majjhima Nikaya as follows: “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is like this, because that is like that,” (p. 28). In other words everything that exists, exists because everything else exists. Feces exist because there is sustenance. And since feces and other wastes exist and are broken down into soil, lovely smelling flowers exist. And, good exists because evil exists. Let’s look at an analogy to understand why trying to have all good without any evil is impossible, to see how each is necessary for the other to be.

Thich Naht Hahn uses the following example in The Heart of Understanding. Let’s say I have a branch, which has a left side and a right side. Suppose I only want to keep the right side, so I break off the left side of reality and toss it. My result will be a new branch that has a new right and left side. One side must be the left in order for the right side to be the right (p. 30). The left side must exist for the right side to exist. So it is with good and evil, fair and unfair, ect... So perhaps the world is not an unjust, unsafe whirlwind of chaos. Perhaps there is just chaos within the order, and perhaps chaos and order are interdependent, just like good and evil are interdependent, just like the right and left side of the stick.


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