If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?

Excerpted from
If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?
By Benjamin Blech

To find the solution to the dilemma of Job, we must turn to the ancient wisdom of the Talmud.

Posing the question-if a person suffers, must that mean he or she deserves it?-we immediately get two seemingly contradictory answers.

In the Tractate Baba Metzia, while expounding on the harm that can be inflicted with words, the Talmud explains what the Bible means when it condemns the sin of "oppressing a stranger." It offers this example: "If someone is visited by suffering, afflicted with disease or has buried his children, one must not speak to him as his companions spoke to Job: '. . . Think now, what innocent man ever perished?'"

Clearly, the Talmud condemns the friends of Job who told him he must have committed some crime to deserve his suffering. The rabbis consider their behavior in the category of those who oppress others with words.

But in the Tractate Berakhot," the Talmud teaches: "If a man sees that painful suffering visit him, let him examine his conduct, for it is said: 'For I give you good instruction; do not forsake my teaching.'" In other words, God gives us "teachings" in life that we must interpret for their message. Our suffering may well be a consequence of our sinful actions.

So what are we to make of these two seemingly contradictory Talmudic passages? Is suffering the deserved consequence of sin, or are the two totally unrelated?

In the first source, we are admonished not to jump to the same conclusion as the friends of Job that someone who is suffering is being punished for something he did wrong. Yet in the second passage we are told that if an individual is visited by tragedy, he must try to figure out what it is that he did wrong. How can we reconcile these diametrically opposite statements?

In truth, there is no real contradiction here. In both instances the suffering may or may not be the consequence of one's actions. But there is a major difference between using tragedy to find fault with others and having tragedy enlighten us with regard to our own failings.

Clearly, the Talmud is saying that no individual can judge anyone else and deduce from the mere presence of suffering that this is God's punishment for sin. It may or may not be true. Someone can suffer and still be good. Even the pious know pain, and even the saintly endure sickness. There are a whole host of reasons that might explain this, as we will discover, all of which in no way reflect on the virtue of the person who's suffering. You don't dare condemn and malign a decent human being.

But if you are that individual who is suffering, you do have an obligation to ask yourself: What might I have done to deserve this? What could I have done to bring this on? Is it possible that my suffering is a punishment from God? Or is it possible that my suffering is perhaps a message, a wake-up call to which I must respond?

Simply put, the Talmud teaches us to react to suffering in two different ways, depending on whether we are looking at others or ourselves. The proper response to the suffering of others is compassion; we are forbidden to condemn. The correct reaction to our own suffering is introspection: perhaps God is simply using a painful method to convey to us an important truth.

And how can we know whether our own suffering is divine punishment or heavenly warning? When God intervenes, when He is sending you a message, you will know it. How? There is one sure way to tell-God is very specific and leaves no doubt about His meaning if you merely give it a little thought.

Loud and Clear

I will give you some very simple examples of unmistakable messages from God involving people I know.

A young woman wanted to study in Israel, but the cost of the trip-$1,450-was beyond her parents' means. The father prayed for God's help, because he thought this was an important thing for his daughter to do. Then he got the idea to clean out some junk behind a store he owned and to hold a rummage sale. Maybe, he hoped, the proceeds would raise some of the funds. At the end of the sale, he totaled up what he took in-exactly $1,450. It was too remarkable to be a coincidence. Obviously, God approved this decision and saw to it that it could be realized.

In the family of a friend of mine, the grandfather had a tradition of financing all the bar mitzvahs of his grandsons. When my friend's son was preparing to celebrate his entry into manhood, the grandfather, of course, wanted to cover the cost, as was his custom. My friend argued with him, but the grandfather would not be dissuaded. Unfortunately, just months before the bar mitzvah took place, the grandfather died. My friend could well afford to pay for his son's bar mitzvah, but around that time he bought a lottery ticket and won. The amazing thing was that when the caterer's bill came, for a total of exactly $2,365, so did his lottery winnings, minus the taxes, for $2,365. "My grandfather's prayers have been answered after all," he said. "He paid for the bar mitzvah."

Again, the correlation was too exact to be simple chance. As you can see, there are times when God wants us to clearly recognize that He is intervening in our lives. To do so. He utilizes what I would call the "preciseness of statistical impossibility." What is too far-fetched to be coincidence must be nothing other than divine intervention. As the profound observation goes, "Coincidence is simply God's way of choosing to remain anonymous."

Although I was aware of this concept, I wasn't prepared for the moment when it so clearly happened to me.

On a trip to Eastern Europe to visit the places where my ancestors lived, as well as the concentration camps where much of my family perished, I spent one Sabbath morning in a synagogue in Warsaw. The custom is for a few people in the congregation to be given the great honor of coming up to the Torah and reciting the appropriate blessings. I didn't identify myself as a rabbi, but for some reason, of all the tourists as well as local residents, they selected me as one of the seven designated honorees.

It is also the custom for the people given this honor to publicly make a pledge of a donation for the synagogue. As I concluded my blessings and was emotionally overcome by the realization of where I was and how many great Jewish leaders must have preceded me standing at this very spot, I felt the need to make a very generous contribution. I hesitated, however, because I didn't want to appear like a rich American tourist shaming all the other honorees whose contributions were limited by their lesser means. As a compromise in my own mind between these conflicting desires, I decided that a pledge of thirty-six American dollars would be just about right-enough to be meaningful as a gift and not exorbitant as an expression of ego. No sooner was the pledge announced than there was an audible gasp from the congregants. It seems that thirty-six

American dollars was quite a fortune in the currency of Polish zlotys. The president quickly came over to me, asked where I was staying, and if it would be all right for a committee to come to my hotel immediately after the Sabbath to collect this generous donation. Of course I agreed, and within five minutes after the Sabbath ended with the appearance of three stars in the heavens, the committee appeared in the lobby and asked me to make good on my pledge. I happily gave them the money and felt very pleased that I had the merit of being able to perform a good deed, a mitzvah.