When Bad Things Happen To Good People Quotes
"This is a very personal book, written by someone who believes in God and in the goodness of the world."
"Like most people, my wife and I had grown up with an image of God as an all-wise, all-powerful parent figure who would treat us as our earthly parents did, or even better."
"Every year, on Aaron’s birthday, my wife and I would celebrate."
"I would write it for all those people who wanted to go on believing, but whose anger at God made it hard for them to hold on to their faith."
"There is only one question which really matters: why do bad things happen to good people?"
"Can I, in good faith, continue to teach people that the world is good, and that a kind and loving God is responsible for what happens in it?"
"The misfortunes of good people are not only a problem to the people who suffer and to their families. They are a problem to everyone who wants to believe in a just and fair and livable world."
"Time after time, I have seen families and even whole communities unite in prayer for the recovery of a sick person, only to have their hopes and prayers mocked."
"I have seen the wrong people get sick, the wrong people be hurt, the wrong people die young."
"If God is both just and powerful, then Job must be a sinner who deserves what is happening to him."
"Job’s solution is to reject proposition (B), the affirmation of God’s goodness."
"We see this psychology at work elsewhere, blaming the victim so that evil doesn’t seem quite so irrational and threatening."
"God may choose to be fair and give a person what he deserves, punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous."
"The whole story of being human is the story of rising above our animal nature, and learning to control our instincts."
"Human beings, however, are unique in the world of living creatures. The 'image of God' in us permits us to say No to instinct on moral grounds."
"Sexual relationship can mean infinitely more to us than it can to an animal... only human beings can know love, with all the pain that love sometimes involves."
"Being a human parent can never be that easy. Raising and teaching children, passing your values on to them, sharing their big and little hurts... these are the painful parts of being a parent."
"Only humans in their work have to worry about choosing a career, keeping a job, getting along with the boss."
"This knowledge that we are going to die someday changes our lives in many ways... Knowing that our time is limited gives value to the things we do."
"This is what it means to be human 'in the image of God.' It means being free to make choices instead of doing whatever our instincts would tell us to do."
"If we are bound to do good, then we are not free to choose it."
"But God has set Himself the limit that He will not intervene to take away our freedom, including our freedom to hurt ourselves and others around us."
"Our moral freedom means that, if we choose to be selfish or dishonest, we can be selfish and dishonest, and God will not stop us."
"God doesn’t owe us that, or anything. We owe our lives to Him."
"One of the worst things that happens to a person who has been hurt by life is that he tends to compound the damage by hurting himself a second time."
"Being angry at God erects a barrier between us and all the sustaining, comforting resources of religion that are there to help us at such times."
"Jealousy is too strong a feeling. It touches us too deeply, hurting us in places we care about."
"We hurt ourselves more than anyone else by feeling jealous, and we know it. But we still feel it."
"Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to drive the sorrow out of your life."
"Anguish and heartbreak may not be distributed evenly throughout the world, but they are distributed very widely. Everyone gets his share."
"God Can’t Do Everything, But He Can Do Some Important Things."
"We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end war; for we know that You have made the world in a way that man must find his own path to peace within himself and with his neighbor."
"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."
"Religion alone can affirm the afflicted person’s sense of self-worth."
"We could bear any burden if we thought there was a meaning to what we were doing."
"Now that this has happened, what am I going to do about it?"
"Blow on the coal of the heart and we’ll see by and by."