Harold Kushner and God???

Talking about God is difficult because our language is insufficient and our senses too limited.  Traditional ways of talking about God can be helpful but are too limited. I have been open to listening to all sorts of reimagining and redefining what we mean by the word "God."  But non-traditional approaches need to be scrutinized. In that vein, I pay attention to Harold Kushner.

Rabbi Kushner asserts, “when bad things happen to good people” we should not ask why it is happening but when it happens, we should figure out how to survive it.  Rabbi Kushner believes God is not all powerful; God is kind and caring.  For Kushner, God comes to us in the guise of caring people who help us make it through the terrible things that can happen to us in this world. 

Kushner also says that God has created laws of nature, given humans free will and cannot interfere in these processes.  Kushner uses and revises the book of Job to make his points.  Some of my students find Kushner’s views appealing.  I do not and I wonder why.

The Biblical God makes covenants with the Jewish people.  Through these covenants, God promises certain things. These promises are tied to the notion that God works in human history.  How God does this is considered a puzzling mystery but God is assumed to have the power to act wherever God chooses to act, whether that be in the midst of natural or moral evil.  When God does not act commensurate with God’s promises, Biblical folk believe it is just and fair to call God into account. I am proud to be part of that long Jewish tradition that sees questioning God as a statement of faith.

Rabbi Kushner knows all of this but given the suffering and death of his son from the aging disease, Progeria, not to mention the Holocaust and all the other absurd suffering and evil that occurs in the world, he thinks we should stop asking “why” and realize “why” is the wrong question.

Rabbi Kushner’s views are appealing because he seems to get rid of the unanswerable ‘why’ question that haunts us all too often. He does this by limiting and redefining God’s power. He thinks God is at work influencing but not coercing the world.

My problem with Kushner’s God is precisely this:  If God has been influencing the world for thousands and thousands of years and this is the best that God has been able to accomplish, what does it say about God and about us?  Why would we worship such an ineffectual and apparently incompetent deity? Our question to Kushner’s God: “Is this the best you can do?”  Rabbi Kushner’s limited God may be easier and more appealing to swallow, but is that God worthy of worship? Is that God able to engage the power of evil?  And if not, why call that powerless power God?

A God who created the vast, complicated, mysterious cosmos we live in does not appear to be very limited. Think of the sheer power needed to create this universe and all the other universes. This God is responsible for what he has created. And God is either powerful enough to stop suffering and evil or he is not God. 

So, if God does exist, let’s at least be honest: let God be a God of mysterious purpose, of problematic methodology, of strange movements.  Let the “why” questions never cease to barrage this morally questionable deity. Let the mystery remain mystery.  For it is in the aggravating tenaciousness of our questions, that we express our deep trust, our hope against hope, our confusion and puzzlement.  Pray to God, not for faith or reassurance, but for the right questions. Do not flinch to pursue the truth.  Meanwhile, do what you can do each day to stop the craziness.  All the rest is commentary.