Kid: “Mr. Professor How are You today? Nice to see you. Did you happen to think about we spoke about the other day?”
Professor: “Yes and I think it is rubbish!”
Kid: “Really.”
Professor: “Yes. Prove to me that there is a G-d if bad things happen to good people.
Kid: “Well, the question of Why do bad things happen to good people was asked by Moses to G-d himself.”
Professor: “What did he say?”
Kid: “G-d said – paraphrasing – that during the course of one’s life a person does good and bad. At times a person is punished for the bad.
Torah Jews believe that people have a soul and it can be reincarnated into a new body, & that an afterlife exists. Transgressions done in a previous life – that a person did not repent for – are still in the account, and thus at times a person who did sins in a previous life may be cleansed from them in this life through suffering.
In any case the suffering serves as a triple purpose – one to cleanse a person from the bad they did in the past – be it in this life or a past life, it helps a person to reflect upon life in order to better himself and it is an opportunity for him or her to receive greater good in this world.
Once a man was to travel for business. He stepped on a rusty nail and the doctor said he couldn’t travel. He missed the ship he was to take – benefiting him. The ship he was to take eventually sunk. Had he not stepped on the nail – he would have been on the ship.
G-d sees the entire life span of a soul – from its inception – which was thousands of years ago. A person only sees – a span of a lifetime – at most 120 years, if he or she lives long.
If you see a building – do you assume there is an architect and a builder – because there is plan and purpose and order. When one sees the world – the plan and purpose and order – we can similarly surmise that there is a creator.”
Professor: “So what do you say about the existence of bad? Why did G-d let the Holocaust happen? Doesn’t that disprove G-d’s existence?”
Kid: “No. Not at all. From the existence of a world of order – we learn that there is a creator – just like the existence of a building testifies that there is an architect.”
“If the architect burned down one of the floors of his building – would you think that there was no architect. No. You would agree that there was an architect, but you wouldn’t understand the purpose of the architect in burning one of the floors of his building.”
“Now that you know there is an ‘architect’ in the world, you just would have to find out why he went ahead and burned the floor down.”
“Just like the holocaust or any bad thing – the bad that occured – does not disprove that there exists a world of order.”
“And to tell you the truth, there is much more good in the world than bad. Most of the people of the world survive every day. They are fed. They have clothes. They breath. They have money. They live decent lives.
Yes, we can try to understand why suffering exists, but it behooves us to recognize that there is much more good than bad in the world.”
You told me you had a rather good life. Why not look at the good that you had in your life and be thankful to G-d – rather than looking at the bad that occurs occasionally to others and think illogically that G-d doesn’t exist? You may look at the glass half empty. The Torah says to look at the Glass half- full.”