Why Do Bad People Exist?

Mercy in an unfair world.

Years ago, I attended Victory Church — a brick complex with an arched glass entrance and a charismatic preacher at its helm. Every Sunday he delivered long, provocative sermons from Stone Mountain, Georgia. But one particular line he preached stayed with me long after I left:

"Don't pray for what is fair. Pray for what is merciful."

At the time, it felt almost offensive. Fairness seemed like the minimum requirement for a just world. It took me nearly two decades — and a prolonged, disorienting experience with litigation — to understand what he meant.

Life is not meant to be fair.
It is meant to be merciful.

What began as a professional relationship with an investor gradually evolved into something far more complicated. He came into my life presenting as a possible friend — navigating a difficult divorce, seeking guidance, eager to invest in what I was building. I met him with openness and care.

At first, everything appeared aligned. But over time, the dynamic shifted. Business conversations blurred into personal ones. What I perceived as collaboration began to take on the texture of control. What felt like connection slowly revealed itself as entitlement.

When I asserted boundaries and redirected us toward professionalism, something in him hardened. I was no longer a collaborator. I had become an adversary.

What followed was a flurry of investor lawsuits. My attorney himself congratulated me for being initiated into what he called, “the charred sisterhood”, a group of women who have felt the fire of rage.

The litigation spread across several jurisdictions and embedded itself into every part of my life — my work, my reputation, my relationships, my sense of safety. I was served with fraud accusations the day before my wedding. Emergency legal calls consumed my honeymoon. Litigation, I learned, is not just a legal process. It becomes part of your calendar, your nervous system, your identity.

During that time, I kept asking the question so many people ask when confronted with something deeply unjust: Why is this happening to me?

Beneath it was a quieter, more unsettling question: Why do bad people like this exist at all?

There is a teaching, echoed across spiritual traditions, that offers us a frame for working with these questions. Judas is cast as the ultimate villain — and yet, in some interpretations, he is essential. Without Judas, no betrayal. Without betrayal, no crucifixion. Without the crucifixion, no resurrection.

In this reading, Judas is not simply a traitor. He is a participant in a larger unfolding — one whose role, while painful, is necessary for transformation.

This idea is uncomfortable because it disrupts our need for clean moral categories. It asks us to consider that those who cause harm may also catalyze growth. Not that their behavior is justified. Not that we abandon our own protection. But that the impact of their actions may extend far beyond what is immediately visible.

The lawsuits stripped away identities I had unconsciously relied on — being seen as competent, respected, "good." The assumption that professionalism would protect me. The belief that fairness governed outcomes.

Litigation didn't just threaten my finances. It threatened my sense of self.

Who am I if my reputation is attacked? What remains if external validation disappears?

What became clear, slowly, was this: Identities can be taken. Reputations can be distorted. But there is one thing that cannot be taken — the core of who you are. You can lose every identity, but you never lose your soul.

That realization didn't come easily. It emerged through something that felt like a prolonged burning — of shame, of fear, of the need to be seen in a certain way. I argued with God. I resisted. I wanted it to be fair.

But fairness was never what was being offered.

Eventually, the question shifted. Instead of why is this happening to me, I began asking: what is this here to teach me?

That shift didn't change the external circumstances. But it changed my relationship to them. It moved me out of victimhood and into inquiry.

It also revealed something harder to accept: at different points in our lives, we are not only the ones who are harmed. We are also the ones who cause harm. Not always intentionally. Not always with awareness. But inevitably.

In a divorce, where one person's growth becomes another's loss. In a boundary, where self-respect feels like rejection. In decisions that are right for us but destabilizing for someone else.

We do not always get to be the hero in someone else's story. Sometimes, we are cast as the villain.

Recognizing this doesn't mean collapsing into guilt or abandoning discernment. It means holding a more honest view of human experience — understanding that we are all capable of both wounding and being wounded, often simultaneously.

This is where empathy and compassion becomes something real rather than abstract.

I think of it this way: we are like worms in a cocoon. Not yet the butterfly. Not yet the final expression of what we are capable of becoming. The cocoon is not comfortable — it is constrictive, disorienting, often painful. But it is also the exact condition required for transformation.

The people we would least choose. The betrayals we would never invite. The conflicts that arrive without warning.

These are not separate from the path.
They are part of it.

The man who sued me may never understand the role he played in my life. He may never see how that experience reshaped me, refined me, or clarified what truly matters.

But I can see it.

And in a way I would not have thought possible at the beginning, I can feel gratitude — not for what happened, but for what it revealed.

What remained, in the end, was not the conflict. Not the accusations or the outcomes.

What remained was love. Love for myself, stripped of performance. Love for the people who stood with me. And eventually, a quiet release of the anger I had carried toward the person who caused so much disruption. Self forgiveness for my own humanity, and all my blind spots. All of them.

I wish that level of self forgiveness for all of you readers, may it wash over every single regret.

Not reconciliation. Not approval. Just release.

So when I return to that sentence — "Don't pray for what is fair. Pray for what is merciful" — I finally understand it.

Fairness assumes a balanced world.

Mercy acknowledges that the world is not balanced, and meets that reality with something deeper than judgment.

If we're honest, we have all fallen short. We have all caused pain. We have all acted from places of fear, limitation, or unconsciousness. Mercy is what makes growth possible in the presence of that truth. It is what allows us to see others not only for what they have done, but as fellow participants in a human experience that none of us fully control.

So perhaps the question is not simply why do bad people exist.

Perhaps the question is what role they play in our awakening — and what role we may be playing in someone else's.

And whether, in the midst of all of it, we can choose not fairness, but mercy.

In Everything We Trust,
Sylvia