Rabbi Harold Kushner…. tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. “There’s always a fresh supply of grieving people asking, ‘Where was God when I needed him most?’ ”<\/p>\n
That’s a question Kushner himself confronted as a young father when his first-born child died, leading him to rethink his view of an omnipotent God.<\/p>\n
“It just seemed so terribly unfair and it forced me to reconsider everything I’d been taught in seminary about God’s role in the world,” Kushner says. “It was shattering.”<\/p>\n
He says people from a more traditional perspective have asked him whether he thought his son’s death was part of God’s plan. He says they said that going through the tragedy of a child’s loss prompted him to write his first book. But Kushner rejects that idea.<\/p>\n
“If that were God’s plan, it’s a bad bargain,” Kushner says. “I don’t want to have to deal with a God like that.”<\/p>\n