Rabbi Harold Kushner.... tells NPR's Renee Montagne. "There's always a fresh supply of grieving people asking, 'Where was God when I needed him most?' "

That's a question Kushner himself confronted as a young father when his first-born child died, leading him to rethink his view of an omnipotent God.

"It just seemed so terribly unfair and it forced me to reconsider everything I'd been taught in seminary about God's role in the world," Kushner says. "It was shattering."

He says people from a more traditional perspective have asked him whether he thought his son's death was part of God's plan. He says they said that going through the tragedy of a child's loss prompted him to write his first book. But Kushner rejects that idea.

"If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain," Kushner says. "I don't want to have to deal with a God like that."

Read or listen to it all (audio strongly recommended, just a little over 7 3/4 minutes)--KSH.

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