Kushner Three Main Ideas Essay

1. The three main ideas that Kushner introduces are: 1) God is in charge, God is all powerful, nothing happens unless God wants it to happen. 2) God is good, He is kind fair and just. 3) Job is a good person. He talks about each of these concepts to explain how God is not the bad person. He also talks about how he believes that bad things happen to good people. But the point of the bad things isn’t to make us hate God, because most of them are not his actions and not what he wants for us in our life on earth. There is suffering, but God is with us and on our side. Kushner talks about questions of “Where was God at Auschwitz?” to which he explains that God was walking and bearing the struggle and pain of the prisoners. God is with us each step

I think that one of Kushner’s ideas that I see frequently within my own experience is the idea of blaming the victim. In today’s society, rape and assault is a commonality among college campuses and in big cities. He touched on how we are always finding a reason to blame someone for what happens. In one situation, he is talking about a girl walking home alone at night. He refers to people's reactions such as, “You shouldn't have been walking alone late at night” or “You should not have been wearing what you were wearing because it was provocative.” Many have the mindset that things could’ve been prevented if the victim was more careful or had done something differently. But Kushner talks about how things that happen to us aren’t our fault entirely. I see this in high school and how many people are victims of their circumstances. From what I’ve learned, many people struggle with things outside of school, in sports, with friends or at home and we never see that side of their life, so when they act out at school or in some way around other people and word spreads around, people see their mistakes as entirely the victims fault. In some ways, the fault is at their hand, but many insecurities and issues that people have come from experiences outside of school. It's hard to see that when our views on their life are only one sided, so we blame the victim completely for their choices and