When Bad Things Happen to Good People is Harold S. Kushner's response to the theological problem of suffering, written after his son Aaron's death from progeria at age fourteen. Kushner, a Conservative rabbi, reframes the question not as 'why did God allow this?' but 'what do we do now?' He argues that God is not all-powerful: some suffering follows natural law blindly, some from human evil, some is purely random. God is fully good but cannot always prevent tragedy — what God offers is presence, strength, and the courage to continue.
The book examines traditional Jewish and Christian explanations for suffering — punishment, divine testing, divine mystery — and finds each inadequate. The central chapters draw on the Book of Job, rabbinic literature, and Kushner's pastoral experience. The final chapters argue that the proper response to tragedy is not to understand why but to accept help, to pray for strength rather than rescue, and to find in community and continued living a practical answer to what theology cannot supply. Published in 1981 by Schocken Books, it has been translated into dozens of languages and remains one of the most widely read books of pastoral theology of the twentieth century.
Pain is the price we pay for being alive.
p. 64 · Chapter 4, "No exceptions for nice people"
First lines
I am the rabbi of a congregation of six hundred families, or about twenty-five hundred people. I visit them in the hospital, I officiate at their funerals, I try to help them through the wrenching pain of their divorces, their business failures, their unhappiness with their children.
Contents
Introduction: Why I wrote this book
Why do the righteous suffer?
The story of a man named Job
Sometimes there is no reason
No exceptions for nice people
God leaves us room to be human
God helps those who stop hurting themselves
God can't do everything, but he can do some important things
What good, then, is religion?
Reception
When Bad Things Happen to Good People was a New York Times bestseller and has sold over four million copies in the United States. It has been translated into more than twenty languages and is widely assigned in seminaries, hospital chaplaincy programs, and grief-counseling training. Pastoral practitioners have noted its exceptional usefulness with bereaved families because it refuses false comfort and meets readers in their actual experience of loss. Academic theologians have criticised Kushner's limitation of divine omnipotence as departing from mainstream Jewish and Christian monotheism; process theologians have noted significant overlap with the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne without direct acknowledgment.
Frequently asked
What is When Bad Things Happen to Good People about?
It is Harold Kushner's response to the problem of theodicy — why suffering befalls people who seem to deserve it least. Drawing on his son Aaron's death from progeria, Kushner argues that God is loving but not all-powerful, and that the proper response to tragedy is not to explain suffering away but to find strength and meaning in community, prayer, and the continuation of life.
What is Harold Kushner's main argument?
Kushner rejects the view that God causes suffering as punishment or test. He argues that some suffering is random, some follows natural law blindly, and some results from human evil. God is good but cannot always prevent these; what God offers is presence, strength, and courage to go on.
Is this book religious or secular?
It is written by a Conservative rabbi from a Jewish perspective but draws on the Book of Job and plain-language reasoning accessible to readers of any background. Its central argument does not require faith to follow, and it has been widely read by both religious and secular readers seeking consolation.