Job

Can your theology survive a tragedy? Should terrible difficulties and irreversible losses come into your life, will your theology – your understanding of God – be able to withstand the existential reality of suffering and pain? Even grow stronger and fuller? Or will you abandon God, or perhaps be forced to “reinvent” God because the theology you held to previously could not now withstand the present adversity. 

Rabbi Harold Kushner is an example of the latter, one who reinvented God because of tragic suffering.  The author of the popular book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner had a son who suffered a rare disease which caused him to rapidly age, dying in his teenage years with the body of an old man. Kushner surmised that while God was indeed good, he lacked the power to prevent bad things. He wants to help us but can’t. He thus concluded: “There are some things God does not control…Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect?… Can you learn to love and forgive him despite His limitations?” In another place, Kushner writes, “faced with evil, God has his powerlessness as his excuse. He aims, intends, seeks, works and ‘tries his best’ to overcome evil: rather than blame, he deserves sympathy, even pity.” Quite obviously, Kushner’s theology could not survive a tragedy.

Another leading Jewish theologian, Richard Rubenstein, has argued that in a post-Holocaust era, Jews can no longer believe in an omnipotent, omni-benevolent Creator. Rubenstein’s theology could not survive the unforgettable tragedy of the Holocaust. And while his view does not represent the views all post-Holocaust Jewish theologians, his reinvention of God as less than all-powerful and all-good certainly fits well with the majority viewpoint.  Similar examples could be provided from Christian theologians, many of whom, on the basis of the so-called “problem of evil,” have likewise abandoned resolute belief in the classical divine attributes, such as God’s omnipotence and/or omnibenevolence.