I
LIFE’S NO
“ t’s not fair!” wailed the six-year-old when he heard the verdict.“Well, life isn’t fair,” came the dispassionate reply of his mother.“The sooner you learn that the better.”The injustice of it all! Not receiving a piece of the cake remaining from the celebration of his sister’s confirmation the day before was unusually excessive punishment for not cleaning his plate— at least in his judgment.The boy’s complaint is certainly trivial next to genuine suffering. But is Mom’s observation an overreaction? Is life fair? Is justice always served? Or can bad things really happen to good people?
H I G H E R
T H I N G S __ 6
Two examples can be seen from the same day’s paper in a small western city: (1) The County Coroner today identified the six-month-old baby killed in a one-vehicle rollover accident.The baby died in what the Highway Patrol described as an alcohol-related accident. (2) A seventeenyear-old accused of causing a fatal wreck while fleeing police pleaded not guilty to negligent homicide for the death of a nurse who was almost thirty.The nurse was on her way to work when her Toyota Camry was hit broadside by a GMC driven by a teenager whose blood alcohol was twice the legal limit. Consider other real life tragedies and suffering, and you might quickly wonder: why? How can a loving God permit evil? If God is all-powerful, why can’t He prevent evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? Often suffering and tragedy prompt these big why questions. In a way, they are asking,“Who is God?” and “What does that mean for me?” Years ago, a bestseller was published by a Jewish rabbi entitled,“When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” as an answer to these big why questions. The author, Rabbi Harold Kushner, struggled to see God as simultaneously both allknowing and kind in the face of evil. He knew suffering firsthand. His young son died from a rare degenerative disease. Rabbi Kushner could not bear the thought of a God who didn’t embody love, so he concluded God’s power was limited. The best conclusion he could come to was that God probably had a handle on everything in the beginning, but as the world became more populated and
