...People may often come across situations where a question regarding the suffering of good people becomes unavoidable. The Bible provides examples of the question through the suffering of Jesus Christ in his crucifixion, written in the book of John, as well as the trials placed on Job, where God tests his righteousness in the Old Testament. Although most of their losses are relatively the same, the purpose behind their stories are distinctly different from each other. Job, who unexpectedly witnesses his possessions being stripped from him, approaches his situation much differently than Jesus who acts more accepting of his situation. The idea of suffering may easily become intolerable, though these two major stories of Job and Jesus teaches individuals to have a deeper insight on how to deal with unbearable conditions. The suffering that both Job and Jesus face easily allows them to question their faith towards God for watching their pain to progress. The character of Job is introduced as a wealthy man with many possessions and described as “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:8). Job is tested as he is stripped of his herd of animals, and his numerous children, causing him to grieve and still says, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” (Job 1:20) In the second chapter, he is inflicted with physical pain from “the soles of his feet to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). In comparison, Jesus’ suffering begins...
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...The problem of evil; if God is all good how could he allow his people to suffer? This has been a controversial topic many people have questioned over the centuries. The first record of this question is dated back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. If God is a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God, how could he allow such horrible things to happen to good people? "Western religion has always held that there is a deep problem about why there is pain and other suffering—which there would not be if God were not supposed to be morally good" Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil pg.7 1998. It is only natural for people to question why God would seemingly do nothing to prevent the bad things that happen everyday. Some of the...
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...When Bad Things Happen to Good People Man’s search for understanding why bad things happen to people have raised many issues and challenges resulting to some questioning their faith. When tragedy occurs many are quick to ask why, and begin to question God for allowing those things to happen. We often blame others, ourselves, or even God, resulting to bitterness, hatred, and even loneliness. How tragic the news is when we hear something very distressing or how awful it is when it hits so close to home. Why do we react in that manner? Why must we blame God? Why do bad things happen to good people? Harold Kushner’s, When Bad Things Happen to Good People allows one to better understand why he wrote the book and his positive insight bringing light to a seemingly dark matter. Kushner is a Rabbi, a man of God, whom “spent most of his life trying to help other people believe, and was compelled by a personal tragedy to rethink everything he had been taught about God and God’s ways (p.3)”. Hence, it was difficult for Kushner to fathom why or how this could happen to him, his son, and his family. It is easy to sympathize with Kushner because we would probably have reacted in the same way if we were in his shoes. True, it seems unfair how bad things can happen to some, more than others, especially if one attempts to live a life led by God and believes in the goodness of the world, we ask, "how can God let this happen? Kushner contends that the main reason...
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...Since the beginning of times, the problem of evil has been in our planet. In a matter of a natural catastrophe, spiritually or intentionally hurtful actions by people, evil has been causing pain, damage and drastic negative changes in nature and human lives. If we consider these facts, a question arises:- “Why bad things happen to good people? Or why bad things happen in the world?.” There has been a lot of investigations from all type of people that practice different religions in reference to these questions, also psychologists and philosophers have been part of this big interesting research. Some of them have found that evil is located in the self, that means that we people have the free will to do right or do wrong, and if we choose...
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...When Bad Things Happen to Good People By: Harold Kushner Pablo Falcon Spring 2010 When Bad Things Happen to Good People Written by: H. Kushner “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” is a very personal book. The author talks about his belief in God and how people perceive the situations they get in as an act of God himself. The author explains that when unfortunate happenings occur people tend to blame it on God or the simple fact that the unfortunate happened because “the person must have deserved it”. The author also reflects upon the feelings that many people have when something bad happens to them or a loved one. They begin to question their faith. Why didn’t God answer my prayers? Is God real? What is God her for anyway? The main point the author illustrates is that the things that happen are not God’s doing. There is one point in the book that Kushner makes about how flight 205 crashed instead of flight 209. The plane crash caused people to die. God did not choose what families to afflict tragedy and pain on. If it was God’s choice he wouldn’t have had any of the planes crash. God gave flight 205’s families the courage to live on and look forward to the future. He did not cause the plane crash. Kushner says that, “Adam and Eve ate from the ‘forbidden tree’, also known as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. Adam and Eve were given a test to see if they were going to be human or animal. Humans face choices. Animals have instincts. Adam and Eve became...
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...Michael DiNofa Mr. Stewart Fundamentals of Catholicism 24 March 2015 When Bad Things Happen to Good People The speech “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Harold S. Kushner discusses God’s role in tragedy and how humans should respond. Kushner states that a common response to tragedy is, “Why would God allow this to happen?” He says that there is no answer to this question and that he does not know why bad things happen to good people. However, he says that it is not God who is causing the tragedy. He states that we live in an imperfect world where things will happen that are beyond our control. Kushner says that the best way to deal with tragedy is to understand that God did not cause the tragedy and that he is weeping with us. He also states that we must ask ourselves what we can do to get over it and prevent it from happening to anybody else instead of asking ourselves why God would allow it to happen. In the speech, Kushner references the story of Job. The...
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...Man’s search for understanding why bad things happen to people have raised many issues and challenges resulting to some questioning their faith. When tragedy occurs many are quick to ask why, and begin to question God for allowing those things to happen. We often blame others, ourselves, or even God, resulting to bitterness, hatred, and even loneliness. How tragic the news is when we hear something very distressing or how awful it is when it hits so close to home. Why do we react in that manner? Why must we blame God? Why do bad things happen to good people? Harold Kushner’s, When Bad Things Happen to Good People allows one to better understand why he wrote the book and his positive insight bringing light to a seemingly dark matter. Kushner is a Rabbi, a man of God, whom “spent most of his life trying to help other people believe, and was compelled by a personal tragedy to rethink everything he had been taught about God and God’s ways (p.3)”. Hence, it was difficult for Kushner to fathom why or how this could happen to him, his son, and his family. It is easy to sympathize with Kushner because we would probably have reacted in the same way if we were in his shoes. True, it seems unfair how bad things can happen to some, more than others, especially if one attempts to live a life led by God and believes in the goodness of the world, we ask, "how can God let this happen? Kushner contends that the main reason he wrote this book was to “affirm life”...
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...Have you ever wondered why football teams keep switching to turf instead of natural grass? Well, there are many good reason why they do but there are also many why they shouldn’t. Money is a huge factor of it and I think that is why teams keep switching to turf. Why are teams actually going to turf? Well, money is a big factor of it. It is almost 10,000 dollars to put in turf but after that you don’t have to use much more money. You don’t have to water it, you don’t have to replant seed every two years, and you don’t have keep cutting it like regular grass. An average turf field lasts for about five years while a grass field only lasts for two. Another big reason why people are switching to turf is because there are less injuries that occur. When it is raining and there are a lot of people running around, mud pits form. People will slip in the mud pits and pull a muscle or roll their ankle. On turf, rain doesn’t make it muddy therefore, there are less injuries. On a regular field, the grass gets hard and brittle when the temperature drops. It hurts when you fall on hard grass. (Believe me, i’ve done it.) Turf fields don’t get hard and brittle, they stay pretty soft...
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...Why Death Isn’t So Bad For You When it comes to death, many people are often afraid of the unknown. Because everyone may have their own beliefs about what occurs after death, the thought of death can be scary. Nobody, except for perhaps God (if He exists), knows what happens after death. But if death is defined as total, permanent annihilation, then it really is not bad for the person who dies. I do not mean for this statement to be confused with the attitude that there are no bad aspects of death. Death is not bad for the person who dies because they no longer exist, and therefore anything that happens in any world no longer affects them in any way. Also, one does not need to be afraid of death, because in the state of permanent annihilation, they will not be aware of their loss of life. Before discussing why death is not a bad thing for the person who dies, it should first be noted why total, permanent annihilation is not a bad thing. Permanent annihilation means just that; everything is completely destroyed and non-existent forever. In regards to the asymmetry problem, if pre-natal non-existence is not viewed as something bad, why should post-mortem non-existence be viewed as something bad? Non-existence is not bad thing. There is an infinite list of people, objects, and events that have and will never exist. Is it bad for these people and things that they are non-existent? Many argue that the asymmetry problem does not work because pre-natal non-existence...
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...society questions the actions of the victim instead of the attacker. Hartnell (2016) stated that the idea of victim-blaming has rooted from the book called “The key in the starry night” back in the 1830s. The people realized that the villain’s method of destroying the hero’s soul, which is the method of victim-blaming, can help them escape their insecurities. I despise the idea of using another person just to reduce my fears and increase my fantasies. Because of victim-blaming, victims are afraid to report the immoral deeds done to them in fear of being judged. This issue results to mistrust and misanthropic view of others. They blame other people, even the innocent ones, that they are the reason why they are disgruntled and make foolish mistakes. “Perpetrators especially sex offenders will try to intimidate the victims to avoid getting caught”, explained by Ms. Barry to the ABC News (Hartnell, 2016). Shame is the abuser’s best insurance against detection. Victim-blaming changes the morality of people for it is also about avoiding vulnerability (Breines,2016). “Victims threaten our thinking that the world is a safe place where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. If bad things happen to good people, it implies that no one is safe. People will turn their fears into the victim, thinking that he/she brought this danger to them”, explained Armstrong ( 2016). A perfect example for this is the issue about Jonathan Martin from Miami Dolphins. Martin...
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...Select one or two specific Instances in terrible things are happening to innocent people. Use the events and ideas about why and how it happened to answer this question Does Evil exist in the world? Is everyone black and white? Is someone all bad or all good? Can evil be overcome What do you believe about evil? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_massacre Since the beginning of time, there has always been the age old question, why do bad things happen to good people? First the apple with Adam and Eve, Jesus being crusifide for our sins, not his, and the Native Americans loosing their land and their lives. If you look up “Indian massacre” on Wikipedia it states “a specific incident wherein a group of people (military, mob or other) deliberately kill a significant number of relatively defenseless or innocent people”. Defenseless or innocent people.... If that is not the true meaning of bad things happening to good people, than I do not know what is. As far back as 1325 records show there was Crow Creek Massacre where 486 people, native american people, were killed in South Dakota. In 1783 it is estemiated that there were approxiametly 600,000 indians controlling most lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. By 1890 only 250,000 remained, they were relocated to lands west of the Missippi River, living on reservations, which were just a fraction of the amount of land they once controlled. Those numbers indicate that 350,000 native americans were dead in less that...
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...Suffering and Compassion No one anticipates whether something good or something bad will happen to them. People hope to find the answers to these questions and to relinquish their heart ache that has been given to them, so people look for answers where they cannot be found. Some believe that it is a simple act of nature, luck, and even the power of God that causes pain even though the reason of these occurrences that happen to us cannot be known. When Bad Things Happen to Good People is a book in which the author Harold S. Kushner asks the question: why God? When his son is diagnosed with a degenerative disease Kushner cannot understand why such an act of pain is happening to him and his family: “People try to make sense of the world suffering by assuming that we deserve what we get. That our misfortunes come as punishment for our sins” (Kushner, 1995, 12) can this statement make sense? How can it? Kusher is a rabbi, and helps others through their difficult times, listening to people confess the pain that they are feeling. Kusher is one of God's holy followers, so how can this statement explain the loss of his son and the feeling of emptiness in his heart that may never be filled. Spiritually, one would like to believe that religion can be a form of comfort in a situation of suffering, but questions emerge, such as how can there be a kind and loving God who is responsible for the bad things that happen to people. This forces us to question the power of God. (Kushner 1995, 34)...
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...ideology of a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. But, the biggest issue with this is whether or not he really exist due to the problem that there is evil in the world. A philosopher who argued this was Simon Blackburn. I argue Blackburn is right to claim that the existence of evil strongly suggests that a God who is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful doesn't exist. Blackburn claimed that the existence of evil strongly suggests that there does not exist a God who is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful. He wrote the book entitled “God” and in chapter five under on the section entitled “Problem of Evil”, he spoke about how in religion that God created everything meaning the good and the bad. He supported...
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...Christianity, discovering America, going to the moon, or the Denver Broncos winning the Super Bowl. All of these moments can be categorized as good moments, an all-time high feeling. On the flip side of that coin, there have been numerous disasters throughout the course of time as well to balance the good such as: the Holocaust, the numerous World Wars, September 11th and countless others. This begs the question that if there is an all-knowing and all-powerful God, then why would he or her allow for this to transpire? Why would God allow bad things to happen to good people?...
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...“But what lies upo’ your mind-it’s this, Master Marner: as,if them above had done the right thing by you, They’d never ha’let you b turned out for a wicked thief when you was innocent. Chapter 16. -Dolly was talking to Silas how this and she was wondering why do bad things happen to good people. -in the novel we see how a lot of bad things happened to Silas on top of each of other but a good thing came along as well -molly Answers her question about evil by saying that we must trust in the Lord and everything happens for a reason…we can’t really ask God why certain things happen to us in our lives. -if slias didn’t get blamed….. - I agree with Dolly and I have always wondered why Christians suffer more than non-Christians -we see this in the World today everywhere- All the disciples suffered painful deaths. -In the Middle East we see how they are killing many Christians. In Africa we see how Christians are being attacked, kidnapped by their non-Christians neighbours. -but we see how people who curse God everyday live a prosper life. Why does this happen!!!? 1 john 1:13 (don’t be surprised if the World hates you) A roman 8 – For the suffering of this present time is not even worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. Why me?? What is God doing? We can’t ask God why! We are the clay and the lord is the...
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