When Bad Things Happen to Good People
he recognises here that the religious temperament at its best is seeking not its own survival or glorification, but an answer to an intolerable problem – the unrequited suffering of good and innocent people.
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
"We’re seeing a huge shattering of life itself. And yet, having been with Rilke, his trust in life is still with me. And so I trust being with life, even though life — the web of life might crumble, but then I’m still with it. I’ll be with it anyway, even in the crumbling."
On Being • Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’ve got inside you.’ | The On Being Project
Judaism is the principled rejection of tragedy in the name of hope – precisely because there is no inexorable fate. Nor does hope stand alone. It belongs to a world in which not only God but also human beings, his image, are free, masters of their fate, responsible for their destiny.
Jonathan Sacks • To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
That, and because Jesus also invites us to active sympathy for those who become the casualties of the planet’s propulsive and indifferent force – those who suffer. Not in order to find an answer to the problem of suffering, but to respond to those who do the suffering. Maybe there never ever was any love behind the universe.