I have tried to live decently my whole life and this still happened to me. Why do bad things land on people who did nothing to deserve them?

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

The Preacher writes near the end of a long life of watching how the world actually runs, and he refuses the neat arithmetic that the good prosper and the wicked suffer. He saw the swift lose races and the wise go hungry. He does not explain it away or quietly blame the sufferer. For anyone told their hardship must have been earned, here is scripture itself saying life does not work that tidily.

“And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

The disciples pass a man born blind and immediately ask whose sin caused it, his or his parents. That was the standard assumption of their day, and it is still the first question people reach for. Jesus rejects the premise before he does anything else. He will not allow a suffering man to be treated as a puzzle about guilt, and he does not allow it with you either.