The first time I went through a really difficult time in my
life, my parents bought me a copy of When
Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner. I’ve long since forgotten exactly what Rabbi
Kushner said in the book, but have never forgotten what it meant to be given a
book with that title. By giving me that
book, I learned from my parents that they believed I was a good person but that
I could still expect some bad things to happen in my life. This lesson from them was more important to
me than the contents of the book.
Whether it is the death of a loved one, a divorce, a bankruptcy,
a violent crime, a job loss, a natural disaster, a terminal illness, war, or a
special needs child, a lot of us are going to ask… why? I’ve heard a lot of
people give various answers to this conundrum.
Here are a few:
- When God closes one door, He opens another.
- There’s a silver lining in every black cloud.
- God never gives us more than we can handle.
- What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
My favorite: I beg
your pardon… I never promised you a rose garden.
This comes from the song, Rose Garden, performed by Lynn Anderson, written by Joe South,
and popular in 1970. There was also a
novel entitled I Never Promised You a
Rose Garden (1964) written by Joanne Greenberg. To my knowledge, there is no relationship
between the book and the song other than the time period when they were written. However, like the titles, they shared a
similar theme.
I think this is the question we should be asking: Why do we question the bad things that
happen? It is obviously just part of life. As the song said, “Along with the sunshine,
there’s going to be a little rain sometimes.”
We are a culture that spends a lot of time and energy trying
to prevent bad things from happening to us.
Whether it’s the newest health fad, a new safety regulation, or a sign
in a public restroom with diagrams about how to wash your hands (really?), it’s all designed to prevent
the inevitable from happening. Because
the truth is, you can wash your hands and still get sick. You can have the safest vehicle on the road
and still die in a traffic accident. You
can be a nun in a convent and still get raped!
Why do we continually try to make ourselves safe in an unsafe world? I submit this for your consideration: fear in our lives makes us want more control.
Every day when I go to work, I pass a gated community. Every day when I sit on my back porch, I see
the same gated community. If I were to
drive into this neighborhood, I would need a code at the gate. Or… I could just open the gate in my backyard
and enter it. By the mere fact that all
a person needs is a pair of feet to get into that neighborhood, the people
living there clearly are not any safer because of the gate. But they feel
safer.
The estimates of privately owned guns range from 190 million
to 300 million. There are many reasons
that people own guns but one of the most prevalent is personal protection. I know lots of people who own guns but I
don’t know any of my friends who’ve had to use one yet in order to protect
themselves. The gun itself is not a very
safe thing to own, given the number of accidental shootings there are in the US
per year. The gun owners have balanced
the risk of having a dangerous thing in their house with the risk of being unarmed
if they are threatened. The gun, though
a dangerous thing, makes them feel safer.
There are many things that we do to make ourselves feel
safer: home security systems, airbags in
vehicles, helmets, Germ-X… It’s truly an endless list and, yet, we still get
hurt, we still get sick, and we will all die.
This is not pessimistic; it is pragmatic. I have no intention of getting rid of my seat
belts or my security system, and I will still warn my husband that the floor is
wet. But in thinking about the fear of bad
things, I’ve had two separate but equal thoughts.
Thought #1:
Fear and our desire to have some control in our lives is
part of what leads to victim-blaming.
When a person is in a car accident, we want to know if they are speeding
or if they were drunk. When a woman is
raped, many want to know what she was wearing, what she was doing, who she was
with, or whether or not she was drinking.
This subconscious need to find fault on the part of the victim makes
them feel safer because then they can console themselves by believing it won’t
happen to them. Their internal dialogue
tells them that they are safe because they dress conservatively, don’t go out
at night by themselves, or drink. If
these guidelines always held true, nuns would never be raped and neither would
middle-eastern women who wear burkas.
If it is your natural inclination to want to figure out what
the victim did wrong, you might not be able to control those thoughts. However, you can control what comes out of
your mouth and what you write in your newspaper or post in social media. Try some self-control.
Thought #2:
In varying degrees, bad things will happen in everyone’s
lives. The struggle is getting through
it but on the other side, there can be a reward, not just in Heaven, but here
on Earth. The wisest, most empathetic
people we know are often the ones who have had the hardest lives. In this sense, we might think of hardships as
a blessing. A good life is not
necessarily flawless but a positive outlook on it is essential.
Look for the rainbow, not the rose garden.
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| Taken from my parents' front porch, after a storm. |
(Author's note: I posted this on the same day that the tornadoes hit Oklahoma but it was pure coincidence. However, below is a link to a blog written by Reverend Ian Punnett concerning what he believes is the underlying message to one popular platitude.)
My Take: Keep Bad Theology Out of Oklahoma
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