Harold Kushner & the Mystery of Suffering

 Did you notice a couple of weeks ago that Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, died at the age of 88. The book which was dismissed by a couple of publishers went on to be a huge bestseller. Kushner worked through in a very honest way the reality of suffering which confounds us, especially when it seems undeserved and unfair,  and can undermine our trust in God. This came out of his own experience of doubt and loss. His 14-year-old son had died of a terrible disease called progeria, which accelerates aging. In his New York Times obituary Sam Roberts describes Kushner and his thesis succinctly, and quotes the author: 

Rabbi Harold Kushner, a practical public theologian whose best-selling books assured readers that bad things happen to good people because God is endowed with unlimited love and justice but exercises only finite power to prevent evil, died on Friday...

His thesis, as he wrote in the book, was straightforward: “It becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.”

Rabbi Kushner also wrote: "I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best.

I didn't agree with what seemed to be the premise of a self-limiting God, but I quoted Kushner several times through the years in sermons and study groups because he was willing to wrestle with the incomprehensible. 

From time to time someone would cite Kushner to me along the lines of "you know that book If Bad Things Happen to Good People." I would gently remind them that the title begins with "when" rather than "if." There is a sobering inevitability to sufferng which is one of the great mysteries of our existence and our faith in a loving God.

As Christians we acknowledge that "bad things happen to a good Saviour," that Jesus suffered and died, yet defeated death to bring about our resurrection promise. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus asked that he be spared the cup of suffering be taken from him and on the cross he cried out "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"Before Easter there is Good Friday.

I appreciate Harold Kushner's important contribution to this moral and ethical conundrum which we all experience. He was a good and thoughtful person. 

                                                     Harold Kushner with family in an earlier time