Suppose, one day, you hear about a tragic car accident.  The car was driving along the highway, hit a wet patch on the road, the driver lost control, flipped the car and then died in the resulting crash.  Suppose this driver was a 25-year-old temple-worthy returned missionary man in the prime of his life, leaving a wife and young infant without a husband and a father.

Many people struggle with 'bad' things happening to 'good' people.  In their efforts to explain such happenings, there are three primary angles they take:

(1)  Bad things DON'T happen to good people--it just seems like it because we don't know the whole story about just how 'bad' those people really are.  ("That guy *obviously* must have been driving back from buying alcohol or pornography or something when he got in that accident and we just don't know it.  God wouldn't have 'taken' him otherwise...")

(2) It was because of God's "master plan" which we can't really comprehend, but there is divine purpose behind it all.  ("Obviously, God called him to return to do some important missionary work in the spirit world or something...")

(3) There is no 'master plan' or divine purpose to the crash, because there is no 'divine'--it was due entirely to random chance and there's no higher meaning behind the accident, or anything else that happens on Earth.  ("This is just one more sign God doesn't exist, because if there WAS a God, there would be more logic and 'justice'  behind who dies and who doesn't...")

People who purport answer #1 are few (but still present).  There's no evidence that personal righteousness plays a major role in determining accidents, diseases, or other tragic circumstances (although you can see the same sort of attitude in the Book of Job, where Job's friends basically say to him, "Are you *sure* you're as righteous as you think you are?  Because, after all, if you *were* this wouldn't have happened to you, right?")

The majority of people usually divide themselves between #2 and #3--and usually along strictly religious lines.  If you believe in God at all, you generally explain tragedies by being all part of "God's will"  and "God's master plan" that we just can't understand at this time.  If you don't believe in God, then, of course, there's no reason to look for meaning or order within the chaos of the world.  Accidents and diseases just happen, and "God" has nothing to do with it.

Is there a fourth option?  Something that lies between #2 and #3--where God exists, but doesn't necessarily 'arrange' tragedies and diseases according to some master plan?  How viable you consider option "#2 1/2" depends partially on how you answer the 'micro-management' question from the previous section.  Perhaps it's God's will and master plan for us to live in a world where tragedies can occur, but not necessarily that *that* tragedy would occur to that person at that point in time.

Looking at the issue analytically, when a car accident like the hypothetical one mentioned above happens, there are a number of factors that play a part:

• How fast was the car going?
• How wet was the roadway?
• What kind of tires the car had, and in what shape were they?
• How closely was the driver paying attention to the situation?

Throw these variables into the basic laws of physics that govern the universe in terms of force, mass, acceleration, velocity, and friction, and you can almost mathematically determine that the resulting accident would have occurred.  (And, note, that physics equations care not a whit for personal righteousness).  "Random" car accidents are not actually random, in other words--they are caused by an intersection of any number of factors that resulted in (in this case) fatal results.

If this is true, we can say the accident had very little to do with any 'divine plan'--implying that God planned and purposefully caused the car to flip through divine power to fulfill it.  (Whether God foresees the accident, and/or could have prevented it, are separate issues)  Perhaps there is room for a theory where God exists...but some things just happen without any higher meaning.

(Even disease and birth defects are not entirely random--genes, pollution, and lifestyle habits are all factors in when and how disease or birth defects arise.  Again, largely according to natural laws in place since the foundation of the world that require no direct divine interference.)

Why this matters:  In many cases when a tragedy such as the one above happens, faithful members will try to console themselves and others with the thoughts from option #2--that this is all part of a divine master plan which we can't really understand.

And many times, this reasoning ultimately fails.  ("My husband was 'needed in the Spirit World'?", the young widow might think, "Out of ALL the spirits in the universe, there wasn't *anyone* else that could have done it?  And now there's no one here to be a father to his children, also an important part--I thought--of God's master plan?  I don't buy it...")

And when Church members can't bring themselves to believe in #2 wholeheartedly, they oftentimes end up--guess where?--in option #3 instead, where they no longer believe in God and the divine at all, because the 'master plan' idea just doesn't make sense given what they know.

What if they're right?  Perhaps option #2 doesn't make sense...but the answer is not to lose faith in God entirely, but rather to find that middle ground where one realizes perhaps God's plan is not nearly as micromanaged as people may make it sound.  Perhaps the accident was something that just happened, and while God has created a world where we have sadness and tragedy as experiences for spiritual growth, there's no real need to 'arrange' specific experiences because the existing laws of the universe (and the daily interaction of millions of spirits with free agency) automatically creates enough experiences for spiritual growth such that direct divine intervention and manipulation is unnecessary.

There is, and always will be, some uncertainty about the direct role of the divine in the events of the world.  Does D&C 59:21 ("And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things...") imply more of a micromanaged world, or does the context imply this section is talking more about the creation of all things, rather than the arrangement of all things.

How do we reconcile the idea that God is "in control", with the fact that He was willing to sacrifice one third of His spirit children in order to preserve true free agency for mankind...and thus would not be likely to compromise free agency from day to day arranging events in people's lives?  Perhaps He's "in control" in that all spirits are known to Him and all will have equal opportunity to achieve their full eternal potential...without promising anything about specific events and challenges that happen day to day in mortal life.

Many athletes are quick to credit God for their victory and triumph in sports...but paradoxically few blame God for their defeats.  That same sort of contradiction can be found in the LDS world as well, where we are quick to credit God for any perceived blessing (small or large) but not as certain how much to "blame" God by the same token for our tragedies and failures.  I suspect that the uncertainty of the role of the divine in our lives will always remain a mystery...