When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, in which he suggested that the primary purpose of religion at its earliest level was not to put people in touch with God, but to put them in touch with one another.

At this point, religion structures what we do, forcing us to be with people and to let them into our lives.

“Why do we have to feel pain?” to “What do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?

suffering and death in someone close to us bring us to explore the limits of our capacity for strength and love and cheer-fulness, if it leads us to discover sources of consolation we never knew before, then we make the person into a witness for the affirmation of life rather than its rejection.

But the one crucial thing we can do for them after their death is to let them be witnesses for God and for life, rather than, by our despair and loss of faith, making them “the devil’s martyrs.”

When miracles occur, and people beat the odds against their survival, we would be well advised to bow our heads in thanks at the presence of a miracle, and not think that our prayers, contributions, or abstentions are what did

“God, see what is happening to me. Can You help me?”

One of the things that constantly reassures me that God is real, and not just an idea that religious leaders made up, is the fact that people who pray for strength, hope, and courage so often find resources of strength, hope, and courage that they did not have before they prayed.

There seem to be two elements involved in our readiness to feel guilt. The first is our strenuous need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens.