Quotes from Harold S. Kushner

Wilder offers this as his explanation of why good people have to suffer in this life. God has a pattern into which all of our lives fit. His pattern requires that some lives be twisted, knotted, or cut short, while others extend to impressive lengths, not because one thread is more deserving than another, but simply because the pattern requires it.

If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be?

when He tells Moses, "When you go to Pharaoh, I will be with you" (italics added). For me, that is God's name, the essence of what He is about. God is the one who is with us when we have to do something hard. He is the one who is with us when we are tempted to feel that the world has abandoned us. He is the one who is with us when we feel alone in the valley of the shadow.

Much of the time, we cannot control what happens to us. But we can always control how we respond to what happens to us. If we cannot choose to be lucky, to be talented, to be loved, we can choose to be grateful, to be content with who we are and what we have, and to act accordingly.

Prayer, as I understand it, is not a matter of begging or bargaining. It is the act of inviting God into our lives so that, with God's help, we will be strong enough to resist temptation and resilient enough not to be destroyed by life's unfairness.

through the lives and souls of specific individuals. The truth is, life is unfair, and we would do well to come to terms with that fact.

The task of religion is not to teach us to bow our heads and accept God's inscrutable will. It is to help us find the resources to live meaningfully and to go on believing, even in a world where people often don't get what they deserve.

God's role is to give us the vision to know what we need to do, to bless us with the qualities of soul that we will need in order to do them ourselves, no matter how hard they may be, and to accompany us on that journey.

You are not a prisoner of your past; you are the architect of your future.

A sense of our inadequacies and failings, a recognition that we could be better people than we usually are, is one of the forces for moral growth and improvement in our society. An appropriate sense of guilt makes people try to be better. But an excessive sense of guilt, a tendency to blame ourselves for things which are clearly not our fault, robs us of our self-esteem and perhaps of our capacity to grow and to act.

My friends have forgotten me, My dependents and maidservants respond to me as a stranger. Summon my servant but he does not respond¦ My odor is repulsive to my wife, I am loathsome to my children.

find God in the willingness of so many people to do the right thing, even when the right thing is difficult, expensive, or unappreciated, and to reject the wrong thing no matter how tempting or profitable.