Chapter 6 sounds like it comes out of the Stephen Ministry training manual. In fact, God, in Chapter 6, sounds an awful lot like a good Stephen Minister. He is always there, He doesn’t blame, He listens and He gives us the strength to deal with our suffering. But he doesn’t take any action to relieve the suffering. Guilt is usually misdirected but God’s ability to relieve guilt is dependent upon how we present God Stephen Ministry says God is the curegiver and we are the caregivers. Isn’t God more than a Stephen Minister?
I find Chapter 7 to be equally disturbing. The conclusion that prayer is ineffectual doesn’t coincide with my experience. I have given up making specific requests because I have found God’s imagination to be better than mine, but I do feel I have witnessed many miracles associated with prayer. Certainly the strength, courage and confidence we get from our faith through prayer do affect what happens in the world and that is a big part of how I believe God works, but I also have seen evidence of more direct action by God.
I understand that if you say that God does not cause or permit bat things to happen that you have to say that He is equally not responsible for good things happening. That also leads to Kushner saying that God can’t change what has happened and cannot change “the laws of nature”. But couldn’t God have created a universe with different “laws” and does time, as we know it, trump God’s power? I do agree that the suffering and challenges of this life, including death itself, are not nearly as important as our responses to them. The Christian testament shows that death of the body is not what is important, the health of the soul is. Based on the choices we make (free will) all these challenges offer the possibility of strengthening the soul. Of course we can choose differently and create “martyrs of Satan”. But God does not intervene with our free will not because he “can’t” but because He chooses not to. Free will must be allowed because without it love, which has to be a choice, is not possible.
