Why bad things happen to good people.

You hear it all the time: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

You think you know someone?  You think you can hear their internal dialog?  Their petty judgments of their neighbor to inflate their egos.  Their snarky secret comments to those more unfortunate then themselves.  Their condescension of the homeless beggar at the stoplight.  Their schadenfreude when their pretty classmate gets cancer.  And so if you believe in karma, or the ultimate justice of the Lord, you can be comforted that they got what they deserve.  You were just in error in judging them "good" by your own definition.

If they are "good" people as you want to define it, maybe someone who wishes only the best for everybody, truly does not judge others, and works tirelessly like the best of saints, and lives on subsistence means while giving their whole soul for the betterment of their fellow man, especially the most destitute, then they are also of a mind where they trust in the wisdom of their creator and don't judge their own situation as "bad" because their purpose is to be an instrument of God's will as God sees it, not as their little human mind might want to believe is should be, and the pain or suffering is the honest fruition of a greater grace that just happens to be invisible in the moment.

If  you want to feel a projected empathy, "My goodness, they must be totally suffering because if the same thing happened to me, I would be devastated!" then, by all means own it as your own, but its possible that they are closer to living a life more fully surrendered to their God than you are, and that, though they may feel the loss, they don't think in terms of "How could this happen to me?! I'm a good person! Alas! Why me?!"  They may grasp the concept that this world is unpredictable and multi-faceted and wondrous in its dispassion and grandeur and the full spectrum of the human experience.  They may be bringing a great deal more of life's pregnant reality into their being and opening up their soul to life's comprehensive offerings.

It's natural for humans to be limited by our own perspective, unable to entertain the breadth of circumstances that present themselves, and so lament those things that seem contrary to their limited definition of justice.  It's not even a choice, really, for how can someone possibly wrap their minds around something outside their tiny slice of universal comprehension?  It's as it should be because it's as it is.