Summary and Response to When Bad Thing Happen to Good People
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's work, When Bad Things Happen to GoodPeople, was inspired by the suffering he experienced with the tragic deathof his son, Aaron. He, like many people who experience tragedy and loss,especially the loss of a child, experienced a search for meaning and acrisis of faith. This is especially interesting, considering the fact thatKushner is a Rabbi-and it shows how "bad things" can cause a struggle infaith in anyone. He writes that he composed the book for people, like him,"...who have been hurt by life," and now struggle with God as a result. Kushner begins his book with a discussion of the universal question,"Why do the righteous suffer'" He then provides a summary of the commonlyquoted "reasons," including punishment, trial (the righteous being"tested), suffering as contribution to a "grand design," as an education, Kushner then comments on the "story of Job," the archetypal Biblicaltale quoted in relation to suffering, and concludes that God is not all
In chapter four, Kushner comments on the fact that good people arenot exempt from suffering. " Reactions Suffering is, indeed, the most difficult aspect of human life,especially when one seeks to make sense of the world through religion. The fifth chapter deals with "evil," and the human ability to chooseit. "Instead it is due to "natural law," which is blind. In the end, I feel that Kushner's book does nothing to help theindividual understand the real relationship of goodness, God, andsuffering. The final chapter wraps up by asking, considering the aboverealities, what good is Religion' Here, Kushner concludes that religion iscomforting, that we can, "forgive God for not making it a better world,"and that we can "reach out to people around us," and "go on living despiteit all. In Kushner's case, he gives up on the idea of God as"all powerful. " And concludes that some things "just happen" for noreason. In fact, it seems, according to Rabbi Kushner, that the individualmust give up belief in one of those "divine attributes," in order to acceptthe reality of God. It may be a satisfactory conclusionthat God does not have the power over actual events to some, it may be fineand good for Kushner (and, as a parent who has suffered the loss of achild, he definitely is an authority on suffering), but for me, it sets upa kind of "chicken and egg" scenario, forcing me to ask myself, "if God isnot all powerful, why should I pray to him at all'" . He then answersthe logical resulting question, "then why pray to God'''" He concludesthat God can give us the strength to handle the problem, even if he cannotsolve it. doesn't send us the problem; He gives us the strength to cope with theproblem," an even greater problem follows, and that is the nature ofprayer and reliance of Divine aid.
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