Timeless Wisdom - Why Do Good People Suffer?

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. I want to think this issue out with you as rationally as possible. First, I— we need to make two separate distinctions when asking about the problem of God and suffering. The first is the distinction— the first distinction is between suffering and injustice, or better, suffering and unjust suffering. When you ask the question, or make the statement, "I can't believe in God. Look at all the evil. Look at all the injustice. Look at all the suffering in this world," I want you to at least understand what your question or statement is. Most people emote that. It's an emotional issue, obviously. But let's try to pinpoint intellectually where there really is an issue. Therefore, number 1, and this is very important, this may in and of itself immediately help half of you, the question is not how do we reconcile God and suffering, it's how do we reconcile God and unjust suffering. I've never heard anybody say, "I can't believe in God, I have a terrible cold." It's driving me crazy. I'm suffering from this cold a week already. I can't believe in God. Now, do you suffer from colds? Of course you suffer from colds. They're aggravating. So how come no one says, doesn't that challenge God's existence that I have a bad cold and I'm suffering from it? The reason is it's not unjust suffering. Everybody gets colds. I'll give you another one. Is it, is it not cause for suffering that people die? Is death not a cause of deep suffering, both for the one who knows that he or she will die and for the loved ones? Of course. But I've never heard anybody say, I can't believe in God, people die. How come death, that massive source of suffering, Challenges nobody's faith in God because it's not unjust. Everybody dies. What you do ask about God is, how can I believe in God? Children die. Aha, that's different. Children die. You're not supposed to die that young. That's unjust because most people die later. The younger the person, the more the question about God. Baby to child to young adult to middle-aged adult. Somebody dies at 83, you don't say, where's God? You say, thank God. A person— it's a person, especially if a person's had a full life, a person's had a healthy life, relatively speaking. That's very important. The issue that bothers us is unjust suffering, not suffering. Women suffer terribly in childbirth, but most women hold that they suffer more if they never have a child. So it is suffering that most women pray for. If they didn't, they would end it after number one. Oh my God, after going through that, forget it. It is one of the most remarkable statements in life at how suffering is such an utterly relative idea that women go back a second time screaming to die. They want to die, and then a week later, hey Jerry, maybe we'll have another one. What happened? A week ago you wanted to die. It is not at all suffering. It is the suffering that is not just that causes us to ask questions. So immediately start asking yourself— don't now ask on behalf of someone you know. You can do that, but right now don't. Right now ask on behalf of yourself: have I suffered in life? Answer for all of you is yes. Now ask yourself, have I suffered unjustly? In life? And I have asked this of audiences for a decade now. Overwhelmingly, people have said no. They do not believe that they have suffered unjustly. Of course, a handful of people do, and a handful of people have. And by the way, not such a handful. When you think of the Holocaust, when you think of communist genocides, or when you think of people losing children— most people don't lose their children. My mother has always put it very well. She says, I know my two sons will die, and so long as they do after me, I don't mind. I mean, and she's hardly being cruel. She's saying that's the way life should be. Of course she knows I'm going to die. She just doesn't want to be around to see it. As I feel about my child, I'm supposed to go first. That's the way life should be. For the handful that don't see it that way, that is unjust suffering. Perhaps. Perhaps. I add perhaps because only the individual can begin to assess what is unjust. After all, you know, what are we going to have, a very interesting suffering sweepstakes? I'll trade you one child for— would you rather have three children, one of whom dies, but all three of whom have been beautiful human beings, given grandchildren, done a beautiful life, or three kids that live healthfully and have miserable lives. I mean, do you understand how this stuff can get into a ridiculous circus of misery? It's a very important point that one has to ask, therefore, what suffering exactly does raise the question of God's existence, or beneficence, or omnipotence. Okay, that's number one, and it already has removed the question, I am convinced, from half of your lives, certainly about yourselves. Second distinction: there are two types of suffering. Or two sources of suffering, this distinction is critical. The distinction is between man-made evil and natural suffering. Or if you will, a better way to put it perhaps is between evil and tragedy. If you die of an earthquake, that's a tragedy. If you die at the hand of a murderer, that's evil, not a tragedy. Okay, tragedies— do they raise questions against God? And does evil raise questions against God? The— it's clear evil much less so, perhaps not at all. Is it God's fault that a murderer murdered me? God gives people freedom of choice. I'll talk about this in a moment. Now we have left cancer, earthquakes, poisonous fish, and other natural causes of premature death. That is a question. I just want to eliminate for a moment one of the more popular questions, and I don't have the time for a whole discussion on it. I have it, uh, I have written on it and would be happy for you to get a copy of it. Many Jews say that they cannot believe in God because of the Holocaust. I've never fully understood that comment. If there were no Holocaust but there was an Armenian genocide or a Cambodian genocide, would they then believe in God? You know, it's the sort of comment outside of being made by a survivor where I have no response, but being made by a Jew born, let's say, in America, who has not lost an immediate relative, that is clearly an emotional statement. It doesn't have more than emotions to it. The Jewish response to that is very clear: Nazis had the freedom to burn Jews, and they chose to do so. People have freedom. Would you have preferred that God create people incapable of hurting people? This gentleman is nodding yes. I submit that if the case were made to you, none of you would opt for such a world. A world wherein human beings could not do anything but good. First of all, we would not know what good is. Good needs the possibility, not the inevitability, but the possibility of evil to even be understood. Colors are understood because there are other colors. If there was only red in the world, we wouldn't know what color meant. Would you really want God to have created us as robots? And then please understand, that is exactly what it would be. We would be robots with flesh. And they'll create robots with flesh one day. A computer recently defeated a world chess grandmaster at chess. Deep thought. The head, the leading chess player on Earth, defeated it. But it took the leading grandmaster in the world to defeat Deep Thought. Would you like the world to be Deep Thought? Deep Thought cannot torture anyone. It's been programmed not to torture. Would you like to go to bed with Deep Thought? Would you like to have a discussion with Deep Thought? Spend your life with deep thought. What makes us us is the ability to choose. Animals don't have that ability. And that, by the way, is why we and not animals are created in God's image. Common, common misconception is that being created in God's image means we're good. Not true. It means we have freedom as God has freedom. It means we know good and evil. Your dog doesn't know good and evil. With all respect, I love dogs, I have a dog of my own, she should live till 120. She does not know the difference between good and evil. She is a robot with dog hair. I'm sorry to say that. I love her up, I let her in bed, she licks me up, my skin is eroded from her tongue. I do, I love animals, but I don't delude myself as to their having moral choice. It's why the German Shepherd dogs that were trained to eat and bite Jews in the concentration camps were not evil. They were no more evil than the hammers that were used to build the crematoria were evil. You can train a hammer, so to speak, and you can train a dog. People can choose. That's the difference. That is why I always find it absolutely irrelevant all the testing, "Can we really teach an ape sign language?" I don't care if an ape can give the Gettysburg Address. The issue that distinguishes people from animals is not intelligence necessarily. There are a lot of people wherein I think it would be quite a test. The issue is not intelligence. Apes don't have moral reasoning. Is it right? Is it wrong? That is the difference, and that is an unbridgeable chasm between the human and the animal. God created a world where we have choice. That's what you want to live with. The best people are people who are tempted to bad and do good. And they're your favorite people. Most of you would find— did you ever hear the phrase "goody-two-shoes"? What's a goody-two-shoes? Goody-two-shoes is basically a person who just always does the right thing. They're not tempted to do anything bad. They're just Miss Purity or Mr. Purity. They bore the living daylights out of everybody else. You want people to have a yetzer hara. You want people to have the urge for the naughty and the bad. But you want them to be able to conquer it. That's when you really have a live human being. That's the most live. You don't want someone to have a bad, any bad urges and act on them. But you don't want someone to have only good urges. They're boring. They're not human. So my only question to God with regard to evil people— and it is a question, and I admit it, but that will bring me to a third distinction, even though I said there are only two— is, God, why did you create in the human being such a deep—

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Ability to do evil. When I read about torturers, that's when the question comes up. Murder, I understand. Robbery, I understand. Rape, I understand. Torture, that is a realm where the whole joy is that of inflicting the most terrible pain of all, watching a human suffer horribly. That God created that ability is a question that I would like to pose to him. Well, why did I say that brings me to my third distinction? It brings me to the third distinction because this question is a question of God. It is not a question about God's existence. And that is the third and very important distinction I would like to make here with regard to suffering. I don't believe that evil and suffering challenge the existence of God. They challenge other things about God. All the arguments I gave last week— the cosmological, the argument from who started all of this, the teleological, right, the argument from purpose and design, and all the other arguments— are in no way whatsoever invalidated by the existence of unjust suffering. No way at all. What is questionable as a result of the problem of suffering is God's goodness or God's omnipotence, but not God's existence. That's very important. That's why I've asked you to be precise on this question. The more you think about it, therefore, the less suffering really does challenge God. Remember what we've done. We've removed suffering as a problem. We've only included unjust suffering, which most of us do not experience. Number 2, we have removed man-made evil and left only natural evil to challenge God. And number 3, none of it challenges God's existence. It challenges God's goodness, or omnipotence, or if you will, uh, providence. That is why, that is why Harold Kushner wrote the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." Harold Kushner's thesis, and please note that I would like you, I think this course will cause you to want to read the very, very long interview debate I had with Harold Kushner. Which I published in my newsletter. He holds that something has to give. His son died of progeria. That's the disease of rapid aging, which is what prompted him to write the book. Though, as it turns out, when I asked him this, his thinking did not change as a result of his suffering. It was probably just reinforced because he had tendencies in this regard towards these views beforehand. At any rate, he certainly has the right to write about suffering. It is bad enough to have your child die. To have it linger for years as your child becomes an old man is torture. I just think it's torture. And, you know, that is the ultimate pain, as we all know, especially those of us who are parents. He doesn't challenge the existence of God. In fact, he made a better case than I. I challenged him. I told him that because of what happened to his son and others like his son, I find it hard to love God. He said he loves God. I asked him why. He said he has no choice. This was a very good answer. But in any event, He does not challenge God's existence. Kushner's heterodoxy— Kushner's move from an orthodox view, small o for orthodox, of the traditional omnipotent, all-good God— is this: Kushner says, look, either God is all good and just doesn't have the power to stop children from dying, or God does have the power to stop children from dying, but he's not all good. That is how Kushner frames the question. And since he is unprepared to believe that God is not good, he has developed a theology of a God who cannot do everything, who cannot, so to speak, work outside the bounds of nature as he is as he has created it. Now, he would do the most justice to his own argument, so I don't want to even endanger a misquoting of a truly, truly wonderful human being. That's why I'd like you to read this interview. But his question is an interesting one. The great thinkers about God don't negate God because of suffering. They have other questions about God, and they are the two of Kushner: omnipotence or goodness, or the third that I mentioned, providence, meaning does God intervene in life? See, there's a third possibility, as I offered to Rabbi Kushner. God is all-powerful, God is all-good, but he doesn't intervene. He has set the world in motion with certain laws, and if cells act in a certain manner in a child, the child will have cancer. I'm not saying that that's the view that I hold. I'm merely saying there is yet another possibility, and that was the one that I just offered. And by the way, let me make it even more confusing for you. You thought the problem of suffering was— you thought the answer was difficult. I'm here to tell you the answer is easier than the problem. The problem is not nearly as obvious as people make it out. Would you have liked God to create a world where children couldn't die? Ladies and gentlemen, I will do you a big favor if I can ask you to develop as an instinctive mode of thought in life: Whenever you are unhappy about something, whether it is personal or philosophical, the latter being the case now, ask yourself one question: What is the possible alternative? That is, in the other course I give on the subject of happiness, it is something that I will consistently come back to. What is the alternative? What could God have done? Create a world where disease only struck people after 60? Would you have liked that? Horrible! That would be horrible. Life would be a countdown to 60. You think people have bad views of aging now? Thank God it is possible to die young. Oh God, don't let anybody die young, but thank God it is possible, or we would go mad. We're in a no-win situation. That is why I am so totally in favor of people getting angry at God. You can say, God, I am very angry that you made a world where my only choice is We can only die after a certain age, or we can die young. I don't like either choice. I agree with you, I don't like either choice, but that's the only ones my mind can come up with. We're immortal, we cannot die unless murdered. Obviously that would be allowable. Bullets don't— couldn't deflect off children. But you couldn't get any fatal disease till a certain age. First of all, even if that could happen, aside from the fact that we'd all go crazy up to that age, let us say that you could get, you could die after 60, but it is possible to live till 90. So all we would do is defray the question a generation later. Instead, we would say, how come so-and-so died at 60 and so-and-so got to live to 90? It would just continue. They would have unjust suffering. And by the way, would everybody have to die of the exact same illness? Should God have created a world where you could only get an illness at 60, or 70, or 80, you fill in the date, and only one type? Because obviously people suffer different ways. Alzheimer's is much worse than dying in your sleep. It's a very tough question, but it is much narrower. That's the point that I am making this evening. It is much narrower, the question of suffering and God, than you would have thought earlier. So those are 3 distinctions immediately. Now let me offer responses. The best response I know is the following: Believers in God— and if you're taking notes, please write, write this sentence down— believers in God have to account for the existence of suffering. Atheists have to account for the existence of everything else. Very simple, very clear response. The believer has a problem, right? You challenge the believer with the following question: you say there's a God, okay, explain to me suffering. Fine, admitted as a believer, that is a question. To the atheist, we have the following question. Atheists say there's no God. You don't have to account for the existence of suffering, no problem. You just have to account for the existence of everything else. Get the challenge? The challenge is infinitely greater to the atheist. The believer is stymied by one— the existence of one thing, suffering. The atheist is stymied by the existence of everything else— beauty, love, the whole world, the universe— that atoms function, molecules get together, that the pancreas secretes, the computer, everything, you name it. What a big difference. So you might say, true, the atheist has a far more difficult tasked to explain things than does the believer, but it still doesn't answer the problem to the believer. Fair enough. But you have two problems: either there is a God or there isn't a God. And the problem of there isn't a God is far more difficult philosophically to deal with than the problem that there is a God. And as I said earlier, the problem with God is not God's existence and suffering, it is God's providence or omnipotence or benevolence. Now, before I offer a Jewish response— there isn't the Jewish response, though there is one that is more normative than any other— let me offer how other faiths or philosophies have dealt with the problem of suffering. One is the Buddhist response, which is a terrific one. Because it is very helpful, but it comes at a great price. The Buddhist response, in essence— and I have not only studied Buddhism under a Buddhist, I have tested this out with Buddhist guests to my radio show— the Buddhist attitude to suffering is: we suffer because we let ourselves suffer. And why do we let ourselves suffer? Because we are too wrapped up in ourselves. Therefore, the more you can depart from the self, what is known in Sanskrit as the Atta. I know no Sanskrit, and the point is not to impress you. I only raise it because it is, it is A, a very key word in Buddhism, and B, we get the English word atavistic from that word, atavistic being self- preoccupied. You deny the ata, you deny the self, and you don't suffer much. And it's true, the more attached you are to this world, the more you'll suffer. If you don't have a great link to a child, no great link to a spouse, no great link to a house, no great link to money, no great link to health, there's not much that you can suffer about. Now, by the way, ironically, in the other class I will show how Buddhism has profoundly affected my own view of happiness. It has been a very, very great help, and I will, in fact, tonight that will be one of the subjects. But in regard to this general issue of suffering, the great problem with the Buddhist response is the more you leave this world, the less you are likely to want to improve it. That is why the Western world came out, came up with medicine as we have it. And to a certain extent, the Chinese world, which was also very much this world oriented. You didn't deny yourself in Confucianism, but overwhelmingly the medicines are from the Western world. See, if you got polio in Thailand in the Middle Ages, or till very recently, the Buddhist view was things grow and things die, or if you will, get crippled. The Jewish and Christian view, though I think even more classically Jewish than Christian, has been if you get polio, that's terrible, that is absolutely horrible, we gotta fix it. Judaism particularly says, fix it if it's broken. Many Jews go further. They try to fix it even if it's not broken. It's a serious problem. Jews are always fixing. That's why Jews always develop isms. But it emanates from a very Jewish view. Hey, you shouldn't be suffering. That is why, believe me, believe me, I could spot for you on an airplane, or better, in a restaurant, 80 times out of 100 who are the Jewish patrons. And I can say this because I'm Jewish, and very, very involved Jew, very proud Jew. Probably they're the bigger complainers. Part of the reason is There are many reasons, I suspect, but one of them is—

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It's no mitzvah to suffer. That is a very deep Jewish belief. That's not true. Christians do not have that. Christians have a theology of suffering. Their God suffered terribly. We do not have a theology of suffering. Our theology of suffering is get rid of it. If you're suffering, it's a shanda. You should stop suffering. If the cantaloupe is not absolutely delicious, you tell the waiter. End of issue. It's a mitzvah to eat crappy cantaloupe? I'm dead serious. This has a very, very deep grounding in Jewish thinking. There is no theology of suffering. By Jews, suffering stinks. By Buddhists, suffering— they get rid of suffering the opposite way. They never complain about the cantaloupe. To a Buddhist, a rotten cantaloupe, oh, it's part of life. Some cantaloupes are rotten, some cantaloupes are not rotten. In a sense, therefore, the Jewish and the Buddhist worldviews on suffering are the opposite extremes. Another answer that is often given to the problem of suffering is: God is testing you. This drives me crazier, much crazier than the Buddhist view. The Buddhist view makes sense. I won't live it, but it makes sense. This view never made sense to me. Let me see, I think I'll get Jones with a little cancer today. See how he reacts. Now, that's a very unsophisticated way of doing a takeoff on that view, but whenever I have challenged people who say it, they don't have a more sophisticated response. What does it mean God is testing? Or the line God never gives, which is related: suffering that you can't handle. That's nonsense. That is absolute drivel. A lot of people have had suffering they couldn't handle and went crazy. It's just not true. One of the, one of the fun tricks of the sadistic Nazi doctors in Auschwitz was to see how quickly a Jewish mother would go crazy by having her choose which child goes to the crematorium. And they went crazy. That is not suffering you can handle. To watch your spouse wither away in Alzheimer's is not suffering that every one of us can handle. And what does it mean, can handle? That we don't kill ourselves. Oh, I, I just— these are platitudes. Platitudes drive me crazy, religious or secular platitudes. It's a religious platitude that God does never give you something you can't handle, or he's testing you. Another one is it's punishment from God. This is categorically rejected by Judaism. Categorically. You cannot infer from a person's suffering that those things are punishment. By the way, by the way, on the thing of testing, some of you who know your Bible may say, wait a minute, wait a minute, You might think immediately of two examples: God tested Abraham, and God tested Job. With regard to Abraham, the issue wasn't suffering. The issue was to test his faith because this was the founder of a religion. And even there, there are far more, I think, subtle and complex and sophisticated ideas in the whole story of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac. But that is not the same thing in any event, because first of all, he could have refused. No one can refuse cancer. So it's a totally different thing. That really was a test. Will Abraham say yes, or will Abraham say no? Well, what is the test if God theoretically throws at you cancer? Well, what is the test? Will you still believe in him? Will you go crazy soon? See, that's the difference. That's totally different tests. Now, with Job, that's the closest you can get, though it's very important to add immediately that Job is not punished. This is not a punishment. It goes out of its way, the Bible, to say he was a particularly good man. However, it is very important to understand too that the issue there is to is to teach and not to give a real story of God inflicting a test, even though that is the wording used. It's, so to speak, almost a bet with Satan, in fact. First of all, that is unique to the Hebrew Bible, and you— and like lawyers say, bad cases make bad laws. One exceptional situation doesn't teach you a thing about your life. The other thing is that in Jewish tradition, the Talmud itself Rabbi Soloveitchik says that Job never was and never existed. The entire story is an allegory to teach. And that is the normative Jewish view. And it's a brilliant, it's an unbelievable book. Unbelievably important book. But even if Job really existed literally and God made this bet literally, it still wouldn't teach you anything about you and me. It was a one-time exception, that's all. But with regard to punishment, it just isn't an issue. If you get, God forbid, a terrible disease, it is not necessarily punishment. And the obvious reason is, look at all the infinitely more evil people than you who don't get these diseases. Right? Did Mengele get a disease? Why did Mengele get a disease? The secular answer to the problem of suffering is bad luck. That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the way the ball The ball bounces, and other such aphorisms which are very helpful in time of suffering. They may be right. It may be bad luck that you or your child got terribly sick. But at least I ask of a secular individual, be honest. Admit that not having a God in your universe, not having a religion, the only response you can have to why there is such suffering is bad luck. In you, cells metastasize. In me, they don't. Now, very important, most people do not like to face the consequences of their beliefs. So what is happening to today in America is very interesting. Secular individuals do not like to believe it's bad luck that they get cancer, or for that matter, even bad luck that they are hit by a drunk driver. So we have New Age thinking, one of its components being— and it's not even always called New Age thinking, but it's a fair statement for it, either capital whether you realize it or not. It's the thinking of a new age. Everything that happens to you, you have brought upon yourself. There are almost no phone calls to my radio show that start me yelling. I have a long worked-on reputation for not losing my cool. I have instant loss of cool to this statement: whatever happens to you, you brought it on yourself. It is the most heartless and stupid idea I am aware of. To be both heartless and stupid is an achievement. Some things are heartless but very bright. This one is both. Ladies and gentlemen, if you cross your street tonight and you are hit by a drunk driver, I feel for you. You didn't bring it upon yourself. That is why it is heartless. It says the victim has caused his problem. Now, by the way, since life is rarely either extreme, sometimes it's true. Sometimes it is true. If you didn't look and cross the street with a drunk driver going going down 70 miles an hour, he is still totally at fault. But you have some of the responsibility because you didn't look. That is true. But there are times where you have none of the responsibility. I get so angry when I am told that people with cancer, for example, if they just fight it hard enough with their mind, if they will the tumor away, it'll do it. What a disgusting burden to put on someone with cancer. Will a tumor away? What— this is— it's modern form of witchcraft. You might as well go to—

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A witch and have an incantation over a boiling cauldron? What nonsense. Of course I believe the brain has an impact on health. Of course I believe that. There's no doubt in my mind. I know it in my own life. But everything like this is true to a to a degree. 10 million Ukrainians did not bring upon themselves the famine that Stalin induced. 6 million Jews did not bring Hitler on themselves. People did not bring the Black Plague upon themselves. Rats did, and they didn't know about it in those days. It's amazing to me And again, people don't think clearly. The irony is a lot of people hold people responsible for their diseases, but not for their cruelty. You got cancer? What did you do to cause it? You murdered? What did they do to make you a murderer? It's all backwards. Murderers are murderers. I do not ask about the socioeconomic conditions. But cancer victims are victims. We have, we have inverted who's a victim today. Victim status is very, very desirable in America today. But we should not deny victim status when it is deserved. So you see what's happened. Secular individuals Specifically, individuals in America outside of mainstream organized religions don't like to face the true thinking that secularism holds with regard to suffering. Bad luck. It's too painful. But that's all it is. If you don't believe in God or religion, my friends, then you just have to honestly understand that it's luck. X number of people this year will have heart disease, X number will have cancer, and so on. And try as you may, and there are many things we can do, there are still times when you can do nothing. Yes, you can fight cholesterol, my friends, but some people are born with more cholesterol than others, and that's the end of the issue. Increasingly, it is found that diet is responsible for a minimal amount of the cholesterol and that it is overwhelmingly produced by the body itself. You gonna blame somebody then? Eh, you chose the wrong cholesterol-producing body. Finally, Jewish answers. The overwhelming, the overwhelmingly normative Jewish response is, "We don't know." And I appreciate that, I respect it, I agree with it, and believe it or not, it is somewhat comforting to me. I find nothing comforting that I cannot accept rationally, and there are no rational explanations for suffering that I can— that, uh, and there are no other explanations for suffering that I hold to be rational except the secular one: bad luck. But while it is rational, it is staggeringly depressing that the only thing between me and terminal illness is luck. It may be true, but it is depressing. Judaism says there is a God. God knows what is happening, and God knows why things happen, and we don't know everything. In the meantime, we have to try to fight suffering. We— it's incumbent upon us to find a cure for diseases. At the end of the Book of Job, God speaks to Job. And, uh, if you wish to look it up, it's in the last chapters of the Book of Job. You really ought to. It reads like a novel. The middle of Job is much more difficult. The end is very easily accessible. God says to Job, Job, What does he say? It's almost in the vernacular. Get yourself up like a man, hmm? Right. And then he says, I'm going to pose a series of questions. And he does. And he says, Job, where were you when I created the world? Job, who makes sure that an eagle knows how to make a nest? Job, who was it that taught mother bears how to take care of their babies? Take care of their cubs? Job, have you ever seen beyond the gates of death? Job, do you make sure the seasons come at the right time? You get the point? There's slight overkill. It's always— I've always reflected God must be Jewish. He answered all these questions with questions. But I like it. Job, when you figure out how to create the universe, come back. Come back and see me. There's an old Hebrew saying that summarizes it in 3 words: "Lu yedativ hayitiv." If I knew him, I'd be him. If I knew God, I'd be God. You're not. There are things you can't understand. Not just about suffering. Do you understand what it means to say that there was time before creation? How much time? Does the word eternity mean anything to you? You can go crazy, literally crazy, trying to think of the beginning or the end, or no beginning and no end. Whatever scenario you pick up drives you mad. The world had a beginning, makes a lot of sense. What happened the day before? Yeah. Noel had no beginning. That really helps. Obviously, our brains are finite. We do not understand why so-and-so lost his children. We do not. Now, the question then is, does God have a hand in so-and-so losing a child, or so-and-so dying in and so on. In this regard, Judaism does not have a set theology. Most religious Jews hold that there is hashkacha pratit, that there is personal divine supervision. All of Judaism holds that God knows every one of you. That, there is no question. There is no concept of a God who does not know his creations. The question is, does God cause you to have arthritis? That's the question, and it is not answerable fully. Both answers are possible. God wills whatever happens to you. God does not will it. God lets it happen. Get the difference? God allows and God wills. In either case, God knows. But does God will it, or does God allow it? And what is interesting here is different people have different preferences. I prefer to believe God wills it. One of the ongoing debates I have with clergy and other religious people is that they prefer to believe that God allows it. Kushner prefers to believe God allows it. I prefer to believe God wills it. But it is a very interesting question for all of you to grapple with: which of those beliefs is more comforting? Forget right now rational. Either one can be rationally accepted. But which is more comforting to to you, if you were struck tomorrow with terminal illness, would you want to believe that God willed it, or that it happened but God didn't will it? To me, it is so obvious why it's preferable to believe God wills it, and yet such good, honest, religious people that I have met are repelled by the idea. I have to realize it is an emotional answer. I much rather believe God wills it. Why he wills it, I will not know, but I can know that he willed it. That to me is a source of satisfaction. To others, it is a source of depression. They rather believe that God had no hand in such an obvious degree of suffering. So how does this all conclude? The question of God and suffering exists. It is infinitely narrower than most people believe. The The question is much more about God's nature and God's actions in this world than it is at all about God's existence. That is why I have often said I have absolutely, or almost absolutely, no problem with belief in God, but I frequently have a problem with loving God. And that, incidentally, is a very Jewish answer. There is a A story told, and it is a famous one, that rabbis, Orthodox rabbis in Auschwitz, the death camp, put God on trial. And they actually gave the job to one of the Jews to be God's defense, serve as his defender, and another to be the prosecutor. And the verdict was rendered: God is guilty. And after the verdict was rendered, they say, and now they said, and now it's time to daven mincha. Now it's time for the afternoon prayers. So it is very Jewish to rail against God. What is the name of the Jewish people? Struggle with God. Israel means fight with God. It is very Jewish to fight with God about suffering. It is totally un-Jewish to deny God because of suffering. Thank you very much. Did you want to make that? Hello, I'm Dennis Prager. This lecture, God and the Problem of Suffering, was delivered at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, California on October 31st, 1989. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would like a complete listing of my lectures and/or information on the quarterly journal that I write and publish, Ultimate Issues, please write to me at Ultimate Issues, 6020 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, California 90232, or just call area code 213-558-3958. The list of lectures is constantly incorporating new titles. Thank you, and I look forward to any reactions that you may have. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.