Let’s take the worst-case scenario—a small innocent baby dies from some sickness. What injustice! What did the baby do to deserve this? Obviously, nothing. Is it the baby’s parents who deserved punishment? I think not. What would happen, after all, if the children of the righteous never died? It would become immediately obvious that nature wasn’t operating normally. Newspapers would headline stories showing that none of the millions of children of parents who either attended religious services or gave to the United Way ever became seriously ill—that in fact, even if one of the children were thrown in front of a speeding truck, he or she would always emerge unharmed. At this point people would lose their free will and just become robots, attending services and giving charity, not because it was right, but so that their kids wouldn’t die (or perhaps so they’d get rich). So G-d has to let the basically good processes of nature operate. This even means He sometimes has to let evil people do wicked things. This is their free will. Also, human nature is just as much the working of nature as is gravity, cancer, or trees blooming.

This is not to say G-d doesn’t want the universe to be good, or that G-d can’t intervene or make it so. G-d does intervene, but usually only after He has allowed the natural process to take its course. Then if humankind is headed in the wrong direction, He takes corrective action to remedy the situation. Good people are born who take the place of other good people and fill their roles, or sometimes do even better. Tyrants and genocidal killers are defeated by the forces of light. Liberty and self-determination are almost miraculously restored to those who have been exiled and oppressed. Mankind slowly but surely is steered toward a just, kind, and perfect world.

It is as if all the people in the world are in a giant ship. Aboard the ship, free will reigns. The passengers may treat each other well and live in peace, or they may attack each other. Sometimes, if they get too raucous, they may even back into the wheel and knock the ship off course. At times this may cause the ship to rock so violently it may seem like it will capsize. Often this is enough to get the passengers to calm down. Then, unseen to everyone, G-d sees that the ship is off course and sends gentle currents to put it back on course. So too G-d steers human history to its predestined goal.

Of course, this does nothing for those passengers who were killed in the disturbance along the way or drowned in the storms. If these people feel G-d owes them, maybe they’re right. I can only suppose that in some way (whether in “heaven,” through reincarnation, or something beyond human imagination) these people eventually get to share in the happiness that comes through the world’s gradual, eventual perfection. They contributed to it. And justice demands they share in it.

As an example of justice, I take the rebirth of the state of Israel after the Holocaust. Whether or not the time for the Jewish people’s redemption from exile had come, I cannot say. I can say, however, that for the first time in history, when the Jews faced extinction, no nation on earth opened its door to them, not even America. What choice, then, did G-d have if He wished to preserve us, than to give us our own land and make us masters of our own destiny?

I also note that throughout history Jews have always lived on the edge of extinction, never knowing if there would be a tomorrow. Is it not ironic that some of the very Jews Hitler sought to kill, people no nation sought to save, were responsible for producing America’s first atomic bomb? By doing so for the United States (and not for Germany), they not only guaranteed Hitler’s defeat, but created a situation in which all the world’s people have become “Jews.” In the Atomic Age, none of us knows whether there will be a tomorrow.


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