I recommend Rabbi Harold Kushner’s “When Bad Things Hapen To Good People” (HarperCollins: 1981)

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from Samantha Trenoweth “The Future Of God: Personal adventures in spirituality with thirteen of today’s eminent thinkers”(Millenium Books: 1995)

[Speaking with Rabbi Harold Kushner]

Why do bad things happen to good people? …. “This is the crucial question … When it is left unanswered it festers the soul, it corrupts faith, it causes people to leave faith. When it is answered badly, it breeds cynicism and mistrust. When it works, when people are able to find consolation and solace in the teachings of their religion, at a time when they need it the most, then that religion will be a source of sustenance for the rest of their lives. How shall we understand tghe sufferings of good people? There is no more important question we can ask. … when we ask this question, we discover that most of the answers we’re given simply do not work. … ” p. 141

[Harold Kushner] set three demands on any resolution he might come to. The first was that it should help him come to terms with his son’s illness [progeria - a type of rapid ageing]. The second was that it should shed light on the holocaust. The third was that it should not lave him with a God who was “a moral monster”, that it should reveal a God who he could continue to worship and admire. … p.143

” I realised why all the conventional religious answers didn’t comfort me. You know why? Because they weren’t supposed to. They were not intended to make me feel better. They were intended to defend and justify God. …” p. 143

Harold Kushner jettisoned his belief in an all powerful God. … “We teach peopole either to hate themselves for deserving it or to hate God for doing it to them when they don’t deserve it.” … “I would rather affirm God’s goodness .. while compromising his power. I would rather believe in a God who sees thinghs happening that he does not want to happen but cannot stop them. I think goodness is of more religious value than power.” Around this central tenet, he rebuilt his faith. According to Rabbi Kushner, the primary reason why bad things happen to good people is that laws of nature do not differentiate between a good person and a bad one. … p. 147

” Dorothy Soelle … a german Lutheran theologian … asks the question, ‘Where was God at Auschwitz?’ Her answer is that Giod was at the side of the victims, suffering and grieving with them, not on the the side of the murderers. She believes that to suggest, by word or hint, that what the Nazis did to Jewish men, women and children could possibly have been the will of God is to offer us a God so cruel that no decent person should ever worship him.” …. pp. 148-149

“Instead of raising our hands to heaven saying, ‘God, why do you let these things happen?’ we applied our God-given intelligence to the problem, until we solved it, just as we will one day solve the problem of cancer and AIDS and heart disease.” p. 150

“The only response to a tragedy is to survive it.” p. 153

“Why do good people suffer in God’s world?” he asks again. “The answer is, I don’t know why and if I knew why, I wouldn’t tell you because, if I told you, I’d be making the same mistake that all those people made with me so many years ago – taking something which fundamentally doesn’t make sense and trying to make sense of it. …” p. 155

“We don’t explain our suffering, we survive it, we respond to it, we choose to go on. …” p. 156

” … the pain, the suffering, the tragedy we experienxce has no hidden meaning. It is not directed towards us by a vengeful God, nor is it, most often, the consequence of our own evil doing. The suffering we endure has no meaning until we impose one upon it and then, we are free to choose the nature of that meaning. … If we choose to become more sensitive, compassionate people – to blow on the coal of the heart – then we impose a positive meaning.” p.157

“Prayer does not mean asking God to do something. Prayer, in Judaism, means asking God to be with you.” p. 158

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