When Bad Things Happen to Good People
7. God can't do everything, but he can do some important
things [pages 113-131]
"Praying for a person's health, for a favorable outcome of an operation,
has implications that ought to disturb a thoughtful person. If prayer worked
the way many people think it does, no one would ever die. … If we believe
in God, but we do not hold God responsible for life's tragedies, if we
believe that God wants justice and fairness but cannot always arrange for
them, what are we doing when we pray to God for a favorable outcome to
a crisis in our life?" [pages 113-114]
Reasons people give (but Kushner rejects) for why you might not get
what you pray for:
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You didn't deserve it.
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You didn't pray hard enough.
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God knows better than you do what is best for you.
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Someone more worthy was praying for the opposite result.
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God doesn't hear prayers.
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There is no God.
Improper prayers, according to the Talmud:
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That God change what already exists. (Example: the sex of a fetus.)
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That God change the laws of nature.
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That someone else be harmed.
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That God do something within our power, so that we don't have to do it.
What's left to pray for?
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Connection with other people. "One goes to a religious service, one recites
the traditional prayers, not in order to find God (there are plenty of
other places where He can be found), but to find a congregation, to find
people with whom you can share that which means the most to you. From that
point of view, just being able to pray helps, whether your prayer changes
the world outside you or not." [pages 121-122]
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Strength of character, so that we can deal with adversity. "People who
pray for miracles usually don't get miracles. … 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." [page 125] "The God I believe in doesn't send us the
problem; He gives us the strength to cope with the problem." [page 127]
"The conventional explanation, that God sends us the burden because He
knows that we are strong enough to handle it, has it all wrong. Fate, not
God, sends us the problem. When we try to deal with it, we find out that
we are not strong. We are weak; we get tired, we get angry, overwhelmed.
We begin to wonder how we will ever make it through all the years. But
when we reach the limits of our own strength and courage, something unexpected
happens. We find reinforcement coming from a source outside ourselves.
And in the knowledge that we are not alone, that God is on our side, we
manage to go on." [page 129]
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