Bad Things Happen to Good People

Harold S. Kushner wrote a bad book with a brilliant title: When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Kushner's theology is very disappointing. For him, God is just like us. He pictures God as stuck with us in the world and who therefore has no pwer to protect His children from evil. His "God" is no God at all. Cutting God down to our size is typical of the Modernists.

The simple-minded or triumphalistic view of some believers is that those who trust in God should be protected from all harm. Good people deserve good things; bad people deserve bad things. For such people, the experience that innocent people suffer and wicked people prosper often causes them to lose their "faith" in God. They have built their house on sand and it is no wonder that it collapses when the first storm strikes it.

"Studies in traumatic events suggest a possible link between suffering, anger toward God, and doubts about God’s existence. According to Cook and Wimberly (1983), 33% of parents who suffered the death of a child reported doubts about God in the first year of bereavement. In another study, 90% of mothers who had given birth to a profoundly retarded child voiced doubts about the existence of God (Childs, 1985). Our survey research with undergraduates has focused directly on the association between anger at God and self-reported drops in belief (Exline et al., 2004). In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God’s existence."[1]

As I see it, the Book of Job was written precisely to demolish the idea that innocent suffering is inconsistent with God's goodness.

Theodicy is the branch of theology that addresses these kinds questions.

The story of the Thorn in Paul's Side teaches us that a vigorous, active, and apostolic faith cannot protect us from suffering. "When I am weak, then I am strong. God's grace is at its best in my weakness."

Jesus' death on the Cross, His resurrection from the dead, and His future Advent in Glory is God's final and definitive answer to the problem of evil. All innocent suffering will be redressed; all evil will be annihilated.

I blame God for the presence of evil in the universe. If it is not He who allows His creatures freedom to do evil, then who does? It is He who created a universe within which innocent children suffer, the good die young, and the evil get away with murder. And it is He who loved us so much that He gave His only-begotten son to be our savior, so that "whosoever believeth in Him may not die but may live forever" (Jn 3:16).

Suffering with Jesus

The closing oration of the Feast of the Sorrows of Mary reads: "may we make up in our own lives, whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the good of the Church."

This prayer is derived from Paul's letter to the Colossians: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body, which is the church" (Col 1:24).

What is "lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body" is our participation in His priestly action.

Our sufferings are real.

By entering into Jesus' priestly offering of Himself, we are empowered to act "on behalf of His Body, which is the Church."

The Body is blessed and grows when we are willing to pick up our cross and follow Jesus through suffering into glory.

Jesus is the Rock and the cornerstone on which the whole Body is built; but He is not the whole building. We are living stones placed upon the foundation of Jesus and the apostles. Without us, there is something "lacking" in the Body of Christ.

τα υστερηματα

υστερημα: "a deficit; specially, poverty:--that which is behind, (that which was) lack(-ing), penury, want."[2]