How can anyone who recognizes the names Auschwitz and My Lai, or has walked the corridors of hospitals and nursing homes, dare to answer the question of the world’s suffering by quoting Isaiah: “Tell the righteous it shall be well with them”?

when bad things happen to good people, p. 11

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But everyone is our brother or sister in suffering. No one comes to us from a home which has never known sorrow. They come to help us because they too know what it feels like to be hurt by life.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 112

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Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives do not have a meaning when they happen to us. They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. But we can give them a meaning. We can redeem these tragedies from senselessness by imposing meaning on them.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 136

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Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person’s pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be?

when bad things happen to good people, p. 19

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I am offended by those who suggest that God creates retarded children so that those around them will learn compassion and gratitude. Why should God distort someone else’s life to such a degree in order to enhance my spiritual sensitivity?

when bad things happen to good people, p. 24

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Belief in a world to come where the innocent are compensated for their suffering can help people endure the unfairness of life in this world without losing faith. But it can also be an excuse for not being troubled or outraged by injustice around us, and not using our God-given intelligence to try to do something about it

when bad things happen to good people, p. 29

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Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us? Could it be that He doesn’t decide which families shall give birth to a handicapped child, that He did not single out Ron to be crippled by a bullet or Helen by a degenerative disease, but rather that He stands ready to help them and us cope with out tragedies if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him? Could it be that “How could God do this to me?” is really the wrong question for us to ask?

when bad things happen to good people, p. 30

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The Book of Job is probably the greatest, fullest, most profound discussion of the subject of good people suffering ever written.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 36

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Blaming the victim is a way of reassuring ourselves that the world is not as bad a place as it may seem, and that there are good reasons for people’s suffering. It helps fortunate people believe that their good fortune is deserved, rather than being a matter of luck.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 39

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The Creation story in Genesis is a very important one and has much to say to us, but its six-day time frame is not meant to be taken literally. Suppose that Creation, the process of replacing chaos with order, were still going on. What would that mean? In the biblical metaphor of the six days of Creation, we would find ourselves somewhere in the middle of Friday afternoon. Man was created a few “hours” ago. The world is mostly an orderly, predictable place showing ample evidence of God’s thoroughness and handiwork, but pockets of chaos remain.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 52

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[I]t may be that God finished His work of creating eons ago, and left the rest to us.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 55

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A world in which good people suffer from the same natural dangers that others do causes problems. But a world in which good people were immune to those laws would cause even more problems.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 59

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There is only one question which really matters: why do bad things happen to good people?

when bad things happen to good people, p. 6

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Pain is the price we pay for being alive?.We may not ever understand why we suffer or be able to control the forces that cause our suffering, but we can have a lot to say about what the suffering does to us, and what sort of people we become because of it.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 64

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We can’t explain it [pain] any more than we can explain life itself. We can’t control it, or sometimes even postpone it. All we can do is try to rise beyond the question “why did it happen?” and begin to ask the question “what do I do now that it has happened?”

when bad things happen to good people, p. 71

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One of the most important things that any religion can teach us is what it means to be human.

when bad things happen to good people, p. 72

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