The Big Questions: Why Do Bad Things Happen?
Obijuan April 17th, 2009
delivered to the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos
7 December 2008
Time begins, as we know it, with violence, a great explosion – a massive hydrogen bomb for all intents and purposes – tossing burning elements out into the cosmos at tremendous speed. Eventually the elements cool, and the universe begins to coalesce. Stars begin to form, then galaxies. One star in particular seems conducive to the support of life under the right conditions. Roughly 40 million years ago, our planet began to take shape as we know it. This planet hurtles through space at a blinding speed of roughly 67 thousand miles per hour. It orbits the sun at a distance of roughly 91 million miles. If it orbited any slower, the distance would close and the planet would roast. Any faster, and the distance would increase and the planet would freeze. The surface of the planet itself is covered by mostly water, and the parts that are not water are made up of relatively loosely connected land masses, floating at a snails pace, casual crashing into and careening off of each other over a span of deep time. The land shakes and tears itself apart as it moves. The massive amounts of water threaten to swallow the land from time to time. And the core of the planet, a molten fire, threatens to rise up through the cracks as well.
Somehow, amidst all of this speed and danger and fragility, the planet brings forth life. Over millions of years life evolves – first single-cell organisms, then more and more complex, until at last the planet brings forth the human race, a most unique species. Humans develop creativity, imagination, and, most importantly, free will. Where other animals live off instinct, the human animal is able to make choices, and being free, the species doesn’t always make the right choices. Often, we hurt others, we mistake ourselves for the be all and end all of existence, we act in ways that reflect the violence in which the universe is given birth.
Eventually, all of this will end. The same elements that were thrown out to cosmos will begin to collapse once more. Life as we know it will disappear, and everything that is will crush itself into a dense singularity until, as the theory goes, it explodes out into the cosmos once more.
In the mean time, here we are, free creatures capable of the most extraordinary acts of love and compassion, and the most horrendous acts of violence and hatred, living on a slowly shifting planet whose natural processes drown us or swallow us whole without warning, the whole thing hurtling through the vacuum of space at mind-numbing, deadly speed, and all the while needing to maintain a constant distance of orbit, lest the sun that gives life takes it instead.
It’s a wonder, sometimes, that we have survived this long amidst what amounts to chaos.
These being our givens, the question before us this morning is, “Why do bad things happen?”
