The occurrence of multiple, chronic health problems is often a pattern as we grow older. These debilitating conditions may make one want to re-read the Book of Job to try to get some perspective.
My UTMB colleagues and I taught a graduate course between 2006 and 2012 that was titled, Suffering: Cultural and Spiritual Perspectives. It was developed and taught by Kay Sandor, Ph.D., RN, Harold Vanderpool, Ph.D., Th.M., and myself.
One of the topics we visited was why does God allow bad things to happen. As the texts, we used two classic books by Frankle and Kushner (see below). The academic discipline of Theodicy was also relevant to this topic. Theodicy is an area of philosophy that attempts to answer the question: Why does God permit the manifestation of evil? One of the faculty, Vanderpool, is an expert on Theodicy and his section on this topic was brilliant.
In 2008, he needed to leave the course. To enable his ideas to still influence the course, we made a short movie (22 minutes) in which he condensed his views on Theodicy and it was a part of the course until 2012 when we stopped teaching it.
The movie is below.
Further, between takes the camera captured Dr. Vanderpool musing on karma and cheap grace. This is included as a bonus.
As an aside: Dr. Vanderpool has a new book out: Palliative Care: The 400-Year Quest for a Good Death, Harold Y. Vanderpool, McFarland Press.
References
- Book of Job, New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 726 Hebrew Bible.
- Frankel, V. (1959). Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Kushner, H. S. (1981). When Bad Things Happen to Good People. New York: Avon Books.
The two movies are copyright © 2008 by Harold Vanderpool and used here with his permission
Rodger Marion 
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