x dismiss this message
Did you know you can edit this page?
-
Sign Into Shelfari
-
Choose something to edit
-
Save your contributions
see page history
Description edit
When Harold Kushner’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease and that he would only live until his early teens, he was faced with one of life’s most difficult questions: Why, God? Years later, Rabbi Kushner wrote this straightforward, elegant contemplation of the doubts... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
-
“Schadenfreude : The embarrassing reaction of relief we feel when something bad happens to someone else instead of us.”
-
“Blaming the victim is a way of reassuring ourselves that the world is not as bad a place as we see it.It helps fortunate people believe that their good fortune is deserved , rather than being a matter of luck.It makes everyone feel better except the victim who now suffers the double abuse of social condemnation on top of his original misfortune.”
-
“If God is a God of justice and not of power,then he can still be on our side when bad things happen to us.He can know that we are good and honest people who deserve better. Our misfortunes are none of his doing,and so we can turn to him for help.Our question will not be "God,why are you doing this to me?" but rather "God,see what is happening to me.Can you help me?". We will turn to God,not to be judged or forgiven,not to be rewarded or punished,but to be strengthened and comforted.”
-
“The earth was formless and chaotic,with darkness covering everything."Then God began to work his creative magic on the chaos,sorting things out,imposing order where there had been randomness before.He separated the light from the darkness,the earth from the sky,the dry land from the sea. This is what it means to create;not to make something out of nothing,but to make order out of chaos. A creative scientist or historian does not make up facts but orders facts;he sees connections between them rater than seeing them as random data. A creative writer does not make up new words but arranges familiar words in patterns which say something fresh to us.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
-
The God I believe in does not send us the problem; He gives us the strength to cope with the problem.
Highlighted by 193 Kindle customers -
Our question will not be Job’s question “God, why are You doing this to me?” but rather “God, see what is happening to me. Can You help me?” We will turn to God, not to be judged or forgiven, not to be rewarded or punished, but to be strengthened and comforted.
Highlighted by 185 Kindle customers -
But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. They discover that they have more strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have. Where did they get it? I would like to think that their prayers helped them find that strength. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage which were not available to them before.
Highlighted by 151 Kindle customers -
And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless, because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness.
Highlighted by 149 Kindle customers -
Why, then, do bad things happen to good people? One reason is that our being human leaves us free to hurt each other, and God can’t stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human.
Highlighted by 146 Kindle customers -
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. The question we should be asking is not, “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” That is really an unanswerable, pointless question. A better question would be “Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?”
Highlighted by 138 Kindle customers -
God may not prevent the calamity, but He gives us the strength and the perseverance to overcome it.
Highlighted by 132 Kindle customers -
One of the things that constantly reassures me that God is real, and not just an idea that religious leaders made up, is the fact that people who pray for strength, hope, and courage so often find resources of strength, hope, and courage that they did not have before they prayed.
Highlighted by 121 Kindle customers -
Anguish and heart-break may not be distributed evenly throughout the world, but they are distributed very widely. Everyone gets his share. If we knew the facts, we would very rarely find someone whose life was to be envied.
Highlighted by 120 Kindle customers -
In that case, we will simply have to learn to live with it, sustained and comforted by the knowledge that the earthquake and the accident, like the murder and the robbery, are not the will of God, but represent that aspect of reality which stands independent of His will, and which angers and saddens God even as it angers and saddens us.
Highlighted by 118 Kindle customers
First Sentence edit
THIS is not an abstract book about God and theology.
Table of Contents edit
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction - Why I Wrote This Book
One - Why Do the Righteous Suffer?
Two - The Story of a Man Named Job
Three - Sometimes There Is No Reason
Four - No Exceptions for Nice People
Five - God Leaves Us Room to Be Human
Six - God Helps Those Who Stop Hurting Themselves
Seven - God Can't Do Everything, But He Can Do Some Important Things
Eight - What Good, Then, Is Religion?
Acknowledgements
About the Author
ALSO BY HAROLD S. KUSHNER
Copyright Page
Authors & Contributors edit
- Harold S. Kushner (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 296.3118
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.
