O1B4F5E. JOURNAL-WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN

MOMENTS IN OUR LIFE-1 2026-05-19

O1B4F5E. JOURNAL-WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN 2001

This is an exceptionally rich, deep and personal reflection. It captures a lifelong journey - from the fears of a young student in 1961 to the mature, gracious wisdom of someone who has made peace with his own storms and his own unique relationship with God.

The text beautifully weaves together how your own life experiences align with the theology of Prof. "Pienk" Piet du Plessis and the deeply comforting perspectives of Rabbi Harold Kushner.

Here is a summary and reflection on the core themes that emerge from your journal:

1. The Point of Departure: "I Believe" versus Traditional Dogma

Your journal reflects an important shift from confessional religion (where rules and peer pressure set the pace) to personal spirituality (where inner honesty and freedom are paramount).

· The New Age Conversation (2001): Your fear of criticism from people like Chris and Joanie shows how deep the scars of religious judgment can run. The "open and lively conversation" you found was a liberation - it showed that there was room for your "liberal thinking" and your focus on the interconnectedness of everything.

· The Bible as "Mind Food (Pitkos)": Your remembrance of Prof. Piet du Plessis' words - "The Bible is not God's Word, but it is to be found in it" - brought you great liberation. It allowed you to approach Scripture not as a rigid lawbook where every historical repetition must be considered literally God's Word, but as a source of character-building truths (love, compassion, empathy, courage, honesty).

2. The Scars of the Past and Christiaan's Conversion

The contrast between your own experience and that of your son, Christiaan (2004), is very striking:

· Christiaan's zeal: His radical conversion and icy baptism in Bainskloof brings a "bubbling" energy that almost want to force those around him (especially you) to experience the same.

· Your own trauma: You remember the anxiety and depression of your own student days at the Youth for Christ camps. The immense pressure to "come forward" and the fear that you are "worthless" almost drove you over the edge. You had to flee to protect your own mental health. This explains why you feel so strongly that religion should never be forced on others.

3. Harold Kushner: Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

The excerpts from Kushner's book form the philosophical anchor of your journal. Kushner helps you resolve the three irreconcilable propositions:

(A) God is all-powerful

(B) God is just

(C) Job is a good person

Kushner - and you - choose to abandon proposition A, that God is all-powerful. The conclusion of this thinking is radical but intensely liberating:

· The World Works According to Natural Laws, Not Favors

"Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience..."

God does not manipulate the direction of the wind, the brakes of a car, or cells that become cancerous to punish or test people. Chaos and randomness still exist in creation. It is not God's will that a child drown or a good person get sick; God grieves with us.

· Human Freedom Has a Price

God cannot stop the hand of the murderer or the cruelty in Auschwitz without destroying the free will that makes us human. Bad things often happen because people choose to do evil.

· The Shift in Prayer

You identify strongly with Jacob's second prayer in Genesis 32. We should not pray for transactions or to "buy" God for safety. Prayer is not about changing the laws of nature, but about asking for strength, courage, and compassion to weather the inevitable storms of life. God helps us not by taking away the problem, but by giving us the inner strength (and a caring community) to carry on.

· The Mirror of the Soul

Your own words perhaps sum it up best:

"Isn't this search for ourselves the search for God? If the world is inside our heads, then God is inside our hearts and our bones."

By stopping wrestling with "a head full of thoughts that we pick up from everywhere" and placing the "merciless searchlight" on yourself, you have moved beyond outward appearances to the authenticity of the soul. You have made peace with a God who is not a cosmic weatherman or a tough cop, but the Source of love, strength, empathy, and compassion within you.

INTRODUCTION: THE GREAT SHIFT – FROM RULES TO OPENNESS

When you are young, you often think of faith as a road map with clear signposts, rigid rules and unwavering dogmas. You believe because you want to be in tune, or perhaps because the fear of judgment drives you. But life has a way of tearing even the sturdiest road maps to pieces. When the storms come - the inevitable storms of loss, chaos and human fragility - you realise that traditional answers sometimes provide too little food for the hungry soul.

This journal entry reflects the lifelong journey of my own spirit. It begins with the anxiety and depression of my student days in 1961, when religion was heavily laden with guilt and the pressure to perform, and ends with the ripe, gracious freedom of my later years. It is a journey in which the theology of Prof. "Pienk" Piet du Plessis and the deep, human insights of Rabbi Harold Kushner helped me understand my own storms. This is not a turning away from the Divine, but a turning towards the true Source of love and compassion - a search for that pure "mind food(pitkos)" that builds character when the outer forms and boxes of tradition become too narrow for the soul.

Kushner's complete view is that no one ever promised us a life free from pain, but that religion and God give us the ability to find meaning in spite of the pain and still celebrate life. This seems to be exactly the "mind food (pitkos)" that you yourself have found over all these years in your own life's journey.

This last section of Rabbi Harold Kushner's text culminates in one of the most penetrating and striking conclusions of modern religious life. It changes the whole nature of the question: from a theoretical, philosophical confession to a practical, living reality.

It also ties in perfectly with your own philosophy of life - the search for "mind food (pitkos)" - those core truths that build character and give meaning when the outer forms and dogmas fall away.

Based on this powerful text (from Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's famous view on suffering), the answer to the question "What is the use of religion?" shifts completely. Religion is not there to explain or prevent disasters, but to give us the strength and community to survive them.

Here are the specific ways in which religion and faith are useful to humans:

· 1. It assures us that we are not alone

Life promises no one an existence free from pain or disappointment. The greatest benefit of faith is the promise that we are not alone in our pain. It connects us to a source outside ourselves and to a community of people who support each other so that no one feels abandoned or judged.

· 2. It is a source of supernatural strength and courage

When people are struck by tragedies beyond their own strength, God gives them the strength and perseverance to overcome them. The text points out that religion explains why ordinary, even selfish people, in times of need, can suddenly act selflessly, bravely, and heroically - they get those qualities from God.

· 3. It frees us from guilt and the sense of betrayal

Because God is not responsible for illness, accidents, or natural disasters (which are the result of natural laws and human freedom of choice), we do not have to feel betrayed or punished when adversity strikes. Religion enables us to turn to God for help, knowing that He is just as outraged and saddened by the injustice as we are.

· 4. It activates our moral compass and compassion

Our sense of justice, our anger at injustice, and our instinctive sympathy for strangers who are suffering, come from God. Through religion, God's compassion and wrath are lived out through people (such as doctors, nurses, and helpers), which is the surest proof of His reality.

· 5. It gives us the right "weapons" to move forward

Religion helps us stop asking, "Why did this happen?" (to which there is no answer) and change the question to, "How am I going to respond now?". It gives us the ultimate tool to forgive the world and God for not having perfected life.

FAMILY GROUP 2001-10-24

Last night we had a family group meeting at our house, and when Rinie told me about it on Sunday, I decided on the spur of the moment to talk about the previous few pages (THIS I BELIEVE), come what may. I have always felt strongly about what I believe in, but because I am liberal in my thinking, I have mostly kept what I truly believe to myself. Also, because I have received so much resistance from people like Joanie over the years, I expected to receive a lot of criticism from Chris in particular about my thinking regarding the New Age.

(“The New Age movement of the 70/80’s is a broad, decentralized spiritual and cultural phenomenon that emphasizes alternative approaches to spirituality, holistic health, and personal transformation by freely blending ancient mystical traditions with modern Western philosophies.”)

To say the least, I was surprised by their reaction. It was a very open and lively conversation, with much more understanding than criticism. Perhaps this is indicative of my approach to life. Although I feel very strongly about what I have come to believe in and of over the years, my faith if you will, I am not outspoken about it. I believe in it, but it has never been my part to force it on other people, precisely because I feel so strongly that it is every person's sacred right to decide for themselves about their life and thoughts. It was nice to feel them giving me space.

How wonderfully God made us! We speak so easily and use beautiful words about the words themselves, not about their meaning. The same argument of the cup and the water, beautiful sounding versus meaning. Back yourself into a corner, wrestle with yourself. Our thoughts are so slippery, difficult to force to be honest. What should be natural, honesty with yourself, has degenerated in our lives into a wrestling with a head full of thoughts, which we pick up from everywhere. The spotlight should fall mercilessly on this evasion of ourselves, this evasion of coming face to face with ourselves. We cannot stand ourselves. Perhaps we would rather look at reality through the mirror “because we are afraid we might be found lacking…” Is this the reason why we spend so much attention on appearance, why it is more important how we appear to others than how we really are. As long as we look good, we can live with many other things that we can hide under the blanket.

Isn’t this search for ourselves the search for God? If the world is inside our heads, then God is inside our hearts and our bones. Isn't that what He promised when He said "I will be with you, now and forever? Or in church language the Holy Spirit?

2004-08-25

Christian converted about 6 weeks or 2 months ago, and was baptized at his own request this Sunday in the river up in Bainskloof, complete immersion in the icy winter river water. His conversion brought a total revolution, for the better, and typically the intense person he is, he bubbles over and wants to tell everyone and convert them, especially me it seems.

My thoughts come a long way. I had an experience when I got up and prayed one night in Standard 4 during the Pentecostal meetings in Umtata - I went to church alone. I can't remember anything of what I said, but the feeling I had was of climbing up a steep mountain and coming out into the sunlight with that feeling of "elation".

In 1961, as a first-year student in Pretoria, I went with friends to the Youth for Christ church, and then to one of their weekend camps, where the typical call came to come forward and give your heart to the Lord. As millions of people have probably wondered whether they should heed similar calls, I also (not for the first time in my life) doubted whether I should stand up. As a result of the immense tension that my interpretation of these meetings caused in my heart, I became extremely depressed, so much so that the feeling that I was worthless and incapable of anything dominated my days, and I even began to develop suicidal thoughts. After a while I realized that I had to get away from this, because my interpretation of it was driving me over an abyss.

After this, it happened several times that I sometimes stayed late into the night in deep conversations with friends and family, including: Willem van der Merwe and his wife Marieta on their farm outside Brits, with Joanie (several times and also in long correspondence), as well as an intense conversation with Rosa when she and Basie brought Mammie and Pappie to visit us in Kraaifontein a few weeks after we got married. This culminated in a heated argument one evening (to my surprise, Mammie and Pappie just sat there in silence and listened as the conversation grew more intense). As with Willem and Marieta, my exchange with Rosa ended with her asking me if I believed the Bible was God's Word. In other words, if I answered in the affirmative, Rosa wanted to use it as a foundation, just as Mathematics is built on, among other things, the assumption that 1 + 1 = 2.

My answer harked back to an article about Prof “Pienk” Piet du Plessis. He was a professor at the Theological Faculty in Stellenbosch during Dad's student years (1926-1929), and was very enlightened, far ahead of his time. The students apparently hung on his words, but the establishment was not pleased with his views and he was later worked out. Among other things, he said "The Bible is not God's Word, but it can be found in it." (1932 in the Cape High Court) When I read this, it was as if a light had come on for me, because I had long had problems with the interpretation, based on John's words in Revelation 22:18-19, that everything in the Bible is God's Word, since there are many parts that are simply history, and then repetitive at that (including the building of the tabernacle. Ex 25-40) What is His Word to me is what I see as mind food (pitkos), and there is a lot of it. For me, life is about mind food (pitkos) - that which has meaning for me, which builds character. And I find this not only in the Bible, but in MANY books that develop character traits such as love, sincerity, compassion, courage, honesty, steadfastness, trustworthiness and many others. These traits are presented everywhere in the Bible.

In the spiritual realm, I find great resonance with Harold Kushner, a Jewish rabbi, with whose way of thinking I can relate to almost everything. Here are excerpts from his first book. (1981)

When Bad Things Happen To Good People

Harold S Kushner

1. WHY DO THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFER?

(p14) There is only one question that really matters: why do bad things happen to good people? The misfortunes of good people are not only a problem to the people who suffer and to their families. They are a problem to everyone who wants to believe in a just and fair world. And they inevitably raise questions about the goodness, the kindness, and even the existence of God.

(p18) Perhaps if we had lived before the era of mass communications, we could have believed this thesis, as many intelligent people of those centuries did. It was easier to believe then. You needed to ignore fewer cases of bad things happening to good people.

We know too much about the world to do that today. How can anyone who recognizes the names of Auschwitz and My Lai dare to answer the question of the world's suffering by quoting Isaiah: "Tell the righteous it shall be well with them"?

(p23) Helen's constant tiredness was diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. "Why should this happen to me? I've tried to be a good person. I have a husband and young children who need me. I don't deserve this. Why should God make me suffer like this?" Her husband tried to console her: "You can't talk like that. God must have His reasons for doing this, and it is not for us to question Him. You have to believe that He has a purpose with it".

(p27) my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain, because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of aesthetic value. 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?

(p32) We have all read stories of little children who were left unattended for just a moment and fell from a window or into a swimming pool and died. Why does God permit such a thing to happen to an innocent child?

Is it to make the parents more sensitive, more compassionate people, more appreciative of life and health because of their experience? The price is still too high, and the reasoning shows too little regard for the value of an individual life.

(p34) Does God never ask more of us than we can endure? My experience, alas, has been otherwise. I have seen people crack under the strain of unbearable tragedy. If God is testing us, He must know by now that many of us fail the test. If He is only giving us burdens we can bear, I have seen Him miscalculate far too often.

(p36) Since we cannot be sure of life after death, we would be well advised to take this world as seriously as we can, in case it turns out to be the only one we will ever have, and look for meaning and justice in this life.

All the responses to tragedy which we have considered have at least one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering, and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer.

Maybe it happens for some reason other than the will of God. Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us? Could it be that He does not single out which family should be struck by tragedy, but rather that He stands ready to help us cope with our pain, if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him?

2. THE STORY OF A MAN NAMED JOB

(p45) To try to understand the book Job and its answer, let us take note of three statements which everyone in the book, and most of the readers, would like to be able to believe:

A. God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the          world. Nothing happens without His willing it.

B. God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they          deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.

C. Job is a good person.

As long as Job is healthy and wealthy, we can believe all three of those statements at the same time. When Job suffers, we have a problem. We can no longer make sense of all three proposals together. We can now only affirm any two by denying the third.

The author believes in God's goodness and in Job's goodness, and is prepared to give up his belief in proposition A: that God is all-powerful. Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wants it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. We will be able to turn to God for things He can do to help us, instead of holding on to unrealistic expectations of Him which will never come about.

3. SOMETIMES THERE IS NO REASON

(p60) Suppose God didn't quite finish at closing time on the afternoon of the sixth day? Suppose that Creation, the process of replacing chaos with order, were still going on. A random shift in weather patterns causes too much or too little rain over a farming area, and a year's harvest is destroyed. A drunken driver steers his car over the center line of the highway and collides with the green Chevrolet instead of the red Ford fifty feet further away. An engine bolt breaks on flight 205 instead of on flight 209, inflicting tragedy on one random group of families rather than another. There is no message in all of that. There is no reason for those particular people to be afflicted rather than others. These events do not reflect God's choices. They happen at random, and randomness is another name for chaos.

(p63) Or it may be that God finished His work of creating eons ago, and left the rest to us. Residual chaos, chance and mischance, things happening for no reason, will continue to be with us. In that case, we will simply have to learn to live with it, sustained and comforted by the knowledge that the earthquake and the accident, like the murder and the robbery, are not the will of God.

4. NO EXCEPTIONS FOR NICE PEOPLE

(p64) We find proof of God precisely in the fact that laws of nature do not change. God has given us a wonderful, precise, orderly world. One of the things that makes the world bearable is the fact that the laws of nature are precise and reliable, and always work the same way.

(p66) Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience, neither does a malignant tumor or an automobile gone out of control. That is why good people get sick and get hurt as much as anyone. No matter what stories we were taught about Daniel or Jonah in Sunday School, God does not reach down to interrupt the workings of laws of nature to protect the righteous from harm. God does not cause bad things to happen to good people, and neither can He stop bad things from happening to them.

But in a world in which we all possess immortal spirits in fragile and vulnerable bodies, the God I believe in gives strength and courage to those who, unfairly and through no fault of their own, suffer pain and the fear of death.

All we can do is to try to rise beyond the question "Why did it happen?" and began to ask the question "What do I do now that it has happened to me?"

5. GOD LEAVES US ROOM TO BE HUMAN

(p80) One of the most important things that any religion can teach us is what it means to be human.

(p86) This is what it means to be human "in the image of God." It means being free to make choices instead of doing whatever our instincts would tell us to do. It means knowing that some choices are good, and others are bad, and it is our job to know the difference.

Why, then, do bad things happen to good people? One reason is that our being human leaves us free to hurt each other, and God can't stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human.

When people ask, "Where was God in Auschwitz? my response is that it was not God who caused it. It was caused by human beings choosing to be cruel to their fellow men.

(p91) The cornerstone of my religious outlook is the belief that human beings are free to choose the direction their lives will take. But I will insist that every adult, no matter how unfortunate a childhood he has had, is free to make choices about his life.

(p93) I would like to think that the anguish I feel when I read of the sufferings of innocent people reflects God's anguish and God's compassion, even if His way of feeling pain is different from ours. I would like to think that He is the source of my being able to feel sympathy and outrage, and that He and I are on the same side when we stand with the victim against those who would hurt him.

6. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO STOP HURTING THEMSELVES

(p109) If we want to be able to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on living, we have to get over the irrational feeling that every misfortune is our fault, the direct result of our mistakes or misbehaviour. We are really not that powerful. Not everything that happens in the world is our doing.

(p115) What do we do with our anger when we have been hurt? The goal, if we can achieve it, would be to be angry at the situation, rather than at ourselves, or at those who might have prevented it or are close to us trying to help us, or at God who let it happen.

7. GOD CAN'T DO EVERYTHING, BUT HE CAN DO SOME IMPORTANT THINGS

(p126) The primary purpose of religion at its earliest level was not to put people in touch with God, but to put them in touch with one another. Religious rituals taught people how to share with their neighbors the experiences of birth and bereavement, of children marrying and parents dying. In that way, the community would be able to share the most joyful and the most frightening moments of life. No one would have to face them alone.

I think that is still what religion does best. We need to share our joys with other people, and we need even more to share our fears and our grief.

(p129) But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. They discover that they have strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have. Where did they get it? I would like to think that their prayers helped them find that strength.

(p136) Fate, not God, sends us the problem. We find reinforcement coming from a source outside of ourselves. And with the knowledge that we are not alone, that God is on our side, we manage to go on.

8. WHAT GOOD, THEN, IS RELIGION?

(p140) I believe in God. I recognize His limitations. He is limited in what He can do by His laws of nature. I lose so much when I blame God for those things.

God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehaviour, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are.

God inspires people to help other people who have been hurt by life,

God may not prevent the calamity, but He gives us the strength and the perseverance to overcome it. Where else do we get these qualities which we did not have before? God helps us when we suffer beyond the limits of our strength.

Isn't my feeling of compassion for the afflicted just a reflection of the compassion He feels when He sees the suffering of His creatures? Our responding to life's unfairness with sympathy and with righteous indignation, is God's compassion and God's anger working through us, maybe the surest proof of all of God's reality.

(p154) There is not an answer to the question why bad things happen to good people, but our response should be to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to people around us, and to go on living despite it all. In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, and what we intend to do now that it had happened. You will be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world.

1. The Shift of Faith: From Omnipotence to Presence

Kushner confesses unequivocally: "I believe in God. But I do not believe the same things about Him that I did years ago." This is not a loss of faith, but a purification of it.

· A God with "limitations": By accepting that God voluntarily submits Himself to the laws of nature and the moral freedom of man, God is freed from the accusation that He is cruel or unjust.

· No Evil Plan: Tragedy is not the "Will of God." It is not a hidden punishment or a secret blueprint. This means that when trouble strikes, you don't have to feel that God has betrayed you. You don't have to fight Him; you can run to Him for refuge, because God is just as deeply grieved and enraged by the injustice as you are.

· 2. Where then is God? In the People

If God cannot stop disaster, where do we see Him? Kushner gives a profound answer that honors the human spirit:

· In the unexpected power: God appears at the moment when our own strength is exhausted. When ordinary people suddenly become heroic, when selfish people act selflessly in a crisis, it is the direct working of the Divine source outside ourselves.

· In our own moral compass: Where does our innate sense of right and wrong come from? Why do we feel deep sympathy for a stranger on the other side of the world who is suffering? It is God’s own compassion and righteous anger that pulses through our hearts. Our response to the world’s injustice is the best evidence of His existence.

· 3. The Final Answer: Forgiveness and Progress

On page 154, the book reaches its absolute climax. There is no intellectual answer to the why of suffering. The answer lies in our response:

· "To forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to people around us, and to go on living despite it all."

· The weapons of the spirit: Faith does not mean understanding why the world is broken. Faith is choosing to love and forgive despite the brokenness. These are the weapons we have been given to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully.

· The real question: The question is never again: "Why did this happen to me?" The only question that remains is: "Now that it has happened, what am I going to do about it? How am I going to stand up?"

CONCLUSION: THE GRACE OF AN OPEN HAND

These pages that you have saved and pondered on your computer show the deep traces of your own inner journey. They explain why you allow your children and grandchildren the space to walk their own path, and why you look at life with such compassion.

This is the ultimate "mind food (pitkos)" - a guideline that does not cling to the external "cup" of religion, but drinks the pure "water" of life itself. It indeed deserves its place as a cornerstone in your journal and the larger story of your life.

At the end of this inner journey, it is not about having found all the answers to life's big "Why" questions. Faith, as I know it today, is no longer a head full of complicated theology or a transaction with which I try to buy safety from God. It is a deep, inner knowing that the world works according to its own natural laws, that bad things happen to good people, but that God is not the source of our pain; He is the one who sits in the dust and mourns with us.

Kushner’s words became my final anchor: the true art of life is to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making it an easier world, and to choose to live on despite everything with courage, compassion, and an open heart.

For my children and grandchildren who will read these writings one day, I am not leaving a set of rigid laws. I am leaving you the capacity to walk your own path and face your own storms. When your own strength is exhausted, may you discover the divine power within yourself and in the people around you. And may you always remember that the most important question is never, “Why did this happen to me?” but rather, “Now that it has happened, how am I going to get up and continue celebrating life?” In short: The benefit of religion is that it gives us the ability to love and forgive. These are the "weapons" that God gives us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in an unjust world.