Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God's goodness.

Events do not reflect God's choices. They happen at random, and randomness is another name for chaos… And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless.

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 instinctswould 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.

God does not send the problem. God sends us the strength to deal with the problem.

It isn’t God’s job to make sick people healthy. That’s the doctors’ job. God’s job is to make sick people brave, and in my experience, that’s something God does really well. Prayer, as I understand it, is not a matter of begging or bargaining. It is the act of inviting God into our lives so that, with God’s help, we will be strong enough to resist temptation and resilient enough not to be destroyed by life’s unfairness.

God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing.

The Bible, after all, repeatedly speaks of God as the special protector of the poor, the widow, and the orphan, withoutraising the question of how it happened that they became poor, widowed, or orphaned in the first place.