A View On Suffering

One of the best selling books of 1982 was Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Rabbi Kushner wrote the book out of his own personal grief experience in the loss of his young son Aaron to a rapid-aging disease. Harold Kushner felt a deep, aching sense of unfairness and he wonders out loud: “Why would God do this to me. I’m a Rabbi!” But then an even more haunting question came: “Why would He do this to Aaron? Why does this innocent, happy, outgoing little boy have to suffer so?” As Rabbi Kushner lived through this nightmare, he struggled with his own faith, studied various responses to tragedy and made a significant theological breakthrough. “Maybe God does not cause our suffering. Maybe our suffering, after all, is NOT the will of God.”

Harold Kushner said that he had before this time, grown up with the idea that we get what we deserve... that God blesses us when we are good, and punishes us when we get out of line. But then came Aaron’s undeserved illness... diagnosed when he was three years old, and then Aaron’s death two days after his 14^th birthday. And out of that came for Harold Kushner a new understanding of suffering. For, you see, deep down in his soul, he could not blame that on God. God doesn’t do cruel things to innocent children. He knew that God loved him and was suffering with him. Then he remembered that the psalmist didn’t say, “My pain comes from the Lord,” or “My tragedy comes from the Lord.” NO! He said, “My help comes from the Lord!” Rabbi Kushner came then to the conclusion that the question, “How could God do this to me?” is the wrong question to ask. The question is “God, see what’s happening to me – can you help me?”

In his suffering, Rabbi Kushner chose not to break down in self-pity. He chose not to break out with resentment. Rather, he chose to break through with trust in God! So did Moses, and Ruth and Job and Jesus... and so can we... because, you see, nothing... can separate us from God and His love. God is always with us in every circumstance of this life and indeed beyond this life. So nothing, not tragedies, not shootings, not storms, not illness, not even death, nothing can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.