Eventually, every life is touched by tragedy. It’s tempting to believe that such bad things are visited on us by God to punish us for our transgressions. The problem with this view is that so many innocent people get trampled in the process. A bad person may die in a plane crash that also kills hundreds of blameless people. Meanwhile, the wicked often are rewarded with wealth and satisfaction while the good may toil in ill health and poverty.

In Chapter 3, titled “Some Things Happen for No Reason,” Kushner offers several examples of tragic events that happen randomly to one person and not another: A mad gunman may shoot someone who happens to be nearby, a spark may start a fire that the wind then blows toward one set of houses and not another, a change in wind may send a hurricane toward a town, or a couple may conceive a child with crippling malformations due only to random genetic variations.

While Kushner examines the possibility God that inflicts suffering to impart lessons that can “purge his thoughts of pride and superficiality, to expand his horizons” (24), such arguments, he says, defend God more than helping the victim, and “not every painful thing that happens to us is beneficial” (28).