Howard Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, is a rabbi in New York, but as he notes in his introduction, his book is not intended as an abstract theological discussion or even as something confined to only one religious point of view. The author states at the outset that he "believes in god and in the goodness of the world" (1) but that he has been forced by tragedies faced in his own life "to rethink everything he had been taught about God and God's ways" (1). The issue he raises in the title is an ancient problem--since God is all-powerful, why does He allow the suffering we see all around us? Why do these things happen to people who are good, who accept God, and who follow his ways? The specific impetus for the writing of this book was the fact that the author's three-year-old son, Aaron, was diagnosed with a condition called progeria, or "rapid ageing." His response is to ask why, associating this sort of thing with the commission of some sin which he could not find:
It didn't make sense. I had been a good person. I had tried to do what was right in the sight of God. More than that, I was living a more religiously committed life than most people I knew, people who had large, healthy families . . . . (2).
He could not find a book that helped him, and as he worked through the issue and developed his ideas more fully, he decided to write a book that would help others facing a similar situation in their lives.
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