MoxSync

At the end of 1981, I lost a very dear friend to lung cancer. We were in our 20s, and there was no discernible reason for his death. He didn’t smoke; he had just married; his will to live seemed unshakable. It was my first encounter with that particular kind of anguish — I had lost my grandparents and other older family members, but never someone so close to me in age, spirit and possibilities.

“When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, had been published earlier that year, and I first read it in the context of my friend’s illness and death. It was — as so many have reiterated since Kushner died on April 28, at 88 — reassuring in its humane approach to grief and its palatable theological explanation for suffering.

Kushner’s death prompted me to read the slender volume again. Forty years later, 40 years older, I am struck not only by its enduring wisdom but by its profound demands. On a superficial level, yes, this is a comforting message about how to face the unfair vicissitudes of life by focusing not on why such things happen but on how to respond when they do.

A reassuring message, though, is not necessarily a simple one. Reading Kushner’s straightforward, empathetic prose decades later brought me up short: Its wisdom resonated with me, but I recognized how very difficult it is to actually follow its counsel.

The book’s immediate and lasting popularity is anchored in its authenticity. Kushner wrote it in response to his own tragic experience: His son, Aaron, was 3 years old when diagnosed with progeria, a rare disease in which the body ages rapidly, consigning him to a dramatically shortened life of pain and displacement, and his parents to witnessing their son’s slow death. (Aaron died in 1977, two days after his 14th birthday.)

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That experience forced Kushner to confront profound questions about God’s role in human suffering. Various faith traditions teach that suffering is part of God’s grander plans; a test of faith; a consequence of sin and misbehavior; designed to make us better people.

Kushner would have none of that. He didn’t mince words, writing that he did not and could not believe in a God that dispenses such cruelty and is somehow responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. His God would not dictate a cancer diagnosis, or cause a plane to crash, or instigate the heart-wrenching dissolution of a marriage.

Instead, he argued that God is the being to whom we look for comfort, strength, love and compassion. And it’s our role as humans to accept the randomness of the universe, not to blame God or ourselves for tragedies but to believe in God’s omnipotent goodness as a nourishing force.

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When I first encountered these ideas, they soothed. I, too, could not believe in a God who wanted my friend’s parents to stand before their son’s grave, to see his young widow bury her dreams. I resisted attempts to divine a greater meaning in his death.

In the intervening years, I’ve lost my parents and other dear ones. I’ve tried to adopt Kushner’s approach to suffering, giving voice to my grief, seeking and accepting communal support and, in my case, relying on Jewish mourning traditions to carry me through.

But even if I intellectually don’t believe in a God that intervenes in history, I can’t stop myself from praying to that God to ensure that a friend survives surgery, a loved one finds her mate or a violent conflict is resolved. As Kushner counseled, I have become more adept at reacting to bad news that affects others; I don’t offer bromides or contorted explanations or possible solutions. I just sit there and sympathize.

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Still, this is difficult. We are hard-wired to search for meaning, perhaps to invent it when it suits our purposes. With the passage of time, “When Bad Things” seems both wiser and more aspirational. It is also prescient. Four decades ago, Kushner posited that what human beings really want when they are suffering is not a theological reason for their pain but the comfort that comes from God and other human beings.

Prayer, he wrote, “redeems people from isolation. It assures them that they need not feel alone and abandoned. It lets them know that they are part of a greater reality, with more depth, more hope, more courage, and more of a future than any individual could have by himself.”

Very bad things continue to happen to very good people. Our ability to stop that is limited. Our capacity to respond is endless.

Jane Eisner is director of academic affairs at Columbia School of Journalism. She is at work on a book about Carole King.

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