When Bad Things Happen

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

In 1983, Harold Kushner published his now famous book entitled "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." Every time I open the Scriptures to the Book of Job, I think of Rabbi Kushner's popular best seller. The question of suffering in the lives of people who place their faith in God is an age old problem. Unfortunately, we tend to answer the question in the same way as Job's so-called friends who maintain throughout the book that Job needs to confess his wrong doing and repent of his sin. The problem is that Job is an upright man.

Conversely, we read a great deal from the right that natural disasters, such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, and economic collapse, are God's way of punishing us or parts of the world for sin. Relying on images from the Hebrew Scriptures, they maintain that God is revisiting our world with something akin to the ten plaques which visited Egypt when Pharaoh refused to cooperate with God's will in releasing the Israelite slaves.

Though there are many adjectives that we can use to describe God -- powerful, just, compassionate, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. -- I don't remember ever hearing of anyone who called God capricious. Yet the behavior that these people attribute to God would place God squarely in that category. God does not send suffering and illness our way to test nor to punish us. Natural disasters are simply what they are, the product of an imperfect world in which we find ourselves dwelling. Sickness and disability are simply what they are, the product of an imperfect human body which temporarily houses the immortal soul. When natural disasters or evil deeds cause suffering, they are not punishments from God. They are opportunities – opportunities to prove our love for God and our love for neighbor.

There are those who would counter my argument by saying that a God who loves us and who is omnipotent would not allow the forces of nature or the deeds of evil people to cause suffering for just people. These people seem to think that God promised us that we would always be happy. They are correct. However, that happiness will come in the next life, not in this. Right now, we, like the Israelite people of old, are spending our "forty years" in the desert waiting for the day when we will cross over Jordan into the Promised Land. Until that day, Job stands as a model for us of one who is secure in the knowledge that the evil which befalls us is not God's doing and is not a punishment for our sins.