“Don’t worry, everything is for the best, for some reason God sends you this.”

“Everything God does is for good.”

With the intention of emphasizing that really, the Creator writes everything that happens and that the misfortunes that occur are justified, there are those who usually make these comments to the mourners, hoping that it will comfort the sufferer.

Although the intentions of those who speak in this way are surely good, it is very likely that they end up causing harm. In situations of stress and vulnerability, we should try to take care of not hurting the sensitivity of the sufferer.

It is true that for the believer, the Creator is kind and seeks good. It is also true that God protects and cares for His creatures.

However, the person’s suffering is real and belittling; justifying or minimizing it does not help but rather increases their pain.

That was the mistake of Job’s three friends, who explained his suffering by trying to justify God saying that, if bad things happened to Job, “it must be for a reason.”

Job answered them: “What kind of friends are you? Do I not know that God dominates the destiny of everything and is the King of the universe? What an afflicted person needs from a friend in times of his sorrow is not that they flatter God. The bereaved needs support and comfort from his friends. God wants a sincere heart that appears before him and expresses his pain and his doubts as I do, and not that they flatter Him as you do, making your neighbor suffer more with those flattery” (see Job chapters 10-11-12 -13).

On the other hand, denying the difficulties and challenges of life with the excuse that “it’s all for the best” can be a way to avoid taking charge of the problem. If deep down this is really good, why should I bother to fix it?

Difficulties often help us grow. If we deny that there are problems, we can mistakenly think that evil does not exist and take a passive stance in the face of tragedy. However, evil is not an illusion and thus the Torah encourages action against injustice and hatred.

In fact, we are not the one to explain the tragedies that happen in the world. Recognizing that we cannot understand the reason for events is part of the maturation process of the believer. This is one of the main lessons of the Book of Job: no human being can put himself in the place of God and explain why whatever happens, happens.

The end of Job’s story is one of the most dramatic moments in the Torah: there, God reveals Himself to Job and makes him aware that the Creator is beyond human designs and that any attempt to understand Him inevitably fails.

The Torah also refers to this when it narrates the culminating dialogue between God and Moses. The great prophet asks God to understand why things happen: Moses wants to know why things go wrong for the righteous and things go well for the wicked. God replies that he cannot see His face from the front, but from behind. Metaphorically, He makes him see that not even the greatest of prophets can understand the Divine designs.

The message for us is clear: no one can afford to put himself in God’s place, or claim the ability to understand why things happen in a certain way and not another.

In short, let us not seek to explain the ways of God to justify faith in the face of tragedy, since faith consists precisely in trusting in God even without understanding his ways.

When someone suffers, let us not give them a lesson in morality and faith, let us help them and comfort them. That is our mission. God does not need us to defend Him but he asks us to be empathic with others.