Good things, good people, same headache?

The previous post, “Bad things, good people: a debate to avoid?”, discussed various problems arising from Rabbi Yannai’s teaching at Avot 4: 19 that it lies outside our power to understand either the tranquillity of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous. This post generated a lot of comments and also made me think further about Rabbi Yannai’s teaching.

It seems to me that, if we are unable to understand why it is that God can let good things happen to bad people, and vice versa, we have exactly the same problem trying to understand why good things happen even to good people. In order to do so, we have to juggle with the following propositions:

• .       We do not receive any rewards from God in this world, i.e. in our own lifetimes.
  
  
• .       There is however a list of mitzvot for which God gives a reward in both this world and the next.
  
  
• .       A person’s suffering in this world may be yissurin shel onesh (afflictions of punishment) or yissurin shel ahavah (afflictions based on God’s love) in order to improve the quality of that person’s enjoyment of the world to come (Berachot 5a).
  
  
• .       God always pays His debts and therefore rewards even the wicked for any good deeds that they have done in their lifetime in order to deprive them of an eternal reward in the world to come.

Adding this all together, since we are required to give others the benefit of the doubt when we judge them (Avot 1:6), it seems that we should be careful not to draw any negative conclusions from the fact that good things keep happening to someone in their lifetime. The moral is therefore clear: we should take care not to judge others at all, and should be even more careful not to judge God.