Why Bad Things Happen to Good People Social Sciences Essay (Essay Sample)

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Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican friar from Italy. He was a Catholic priest and Doctor of the Church. He is widely known as an influential theologian, philosopher, and jurist in the field of scholasticism (Aquinas 12). The Catholic church highly recognizes Thomas Aquinas as a saint due to his way of expressing fundamental reasons and speculative theology. Mencius was a Chinese Confucian philosopher. He is usually referred to as the "Second Sage" in Confucianism, which means that he is second in importance after Confucius himself (Mencius et al. 15). This essay compares, contrasts, and gives an evaluation of the responses of two thinkers, Saint Thomas Aquinas from Christianity and Mencius from Confucianism, about the concept of why bad things sometimes happen to good people.
In both Christianity and Confucianism, God is brought out as Almighty and powerful. He is also associated with all the good things that happen and therefore presumed to be a good and moral God (Budziszewski 21). However, many people wonder why God, being good and righteous, allows bad things to happen to good people. Many evils are present in the world today. They wonder why God does not get rid of all those evils, yet he is all-powerful (Aquinas 14). There is no specific answer to this question. It has been a debate topic by theologists and philosophers over the years.