When Bad Things Happen To Good People

When Bad Things Happen To Good People explains why even the best of people sometimes suffer from adversity, and how we can turn our pain into something meaningful instead of lamenting it.

Rabbi Kushner knows it all too well that bad things can happen to perfectly innocent people. His son Aaron was diagnosed with an incurable disease as a toddler. The boy suffered from the effects of premature aging for a decade and died at just 14 years old.

Why didn’t the devastating loss of his child destroy Rabbi Kushner’s faith? He realized that God just can’t step in all the time to bend the laws of nature and protect individuals from harm.

Our bodies break, sometimes in unpredictable ways, but they also give us life. Flowing water can sweep away a house, but it also carries hydration all around the world. Gravity can cause a rock to fall on your head, but it also keeps your feet on the ground. Humans wouldn’t be able to get around, build things, or make plans for the future if our physical habitat displayed no regularity.

Maybe an all-powerful God really does loves us. Maybe these earthly realities force him to not intervene all the time in human affairs. And if there’s no God at all, then it’s obvious that laws of nature apply to the good and bad equally.

It’s deeply comforting that God, karma, or natural laws deliver each person what he or she really deserves. Plenty of non-religious people believe this, on some level.

Maybe you’re ready to swallow this bitter pill about life. But just because you accept that there’s no comforting connection between deservingness and outcomes doesn’t mean that everyone else will.

Bystanders often say things to a person in pain like “everything happens for a reason” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” They usually mean well, but these expressions can hurt more than they help. What’s the “reason” for your pain, then? What if you didn’t want to be stronger, you would prefer to have your loved one back?

Try to understand that everyone’s grappling with life’s difficulties in her own way and at her own pace. When others thoughtlessly imply with cliches that you’re to blame for all your own problems or that they have some deep meaning, you don’t have to believe it!

If bad things happen due to bad luck, not by God or karma, then what are we supposed to do about it? Instead of raging at God, are we just supposed to dwell on our unluckiness? It’s tempting to wonder about and even research the causes of our misfortunes. But answers don’t take the pain away and they aren’t always…