I discovered a book recently called

When bad relatives happenen to good people

Is quite a complicated title because first of all you are judging your relatives to be bad and maybe they are in some way or other.

And you adjusting yourself as being good and and that implies to you that you should be rewarded by not having any nasty relatives.

Il it is indeed complex because I have a relative by marriage who is too old to read fortunately. This person has all the attributes externally of goodness

City devoted our life to the church it’s a good works preaching sermons leading retreats..

I find when I speak to her on the phone that usually ends with something wounding or cutting or spiteful but I don’t very much whether this is deliberate

Sometimes will refer sadly to the fact that she has never been married.

She suffers from depression

No it’s quite possible that all of us do things that we’re not consciously aware of such as making sly or critical remarks to other people or about other people and we may not know what the effect of this is but sometimes when this happens s you have to withdraw unless you know them so well that you can actually point it out.

And you can tell them they should be grateful that you’re pointing out this sort of thing because it will cost a lot of money to go to a psychoanalyst and spend several years lying on the coast when I could tell you straight away some of your habits that a brought you pain

In any case even if you are a genuinely good person who never deliberately and rarely unconsciously wounds other people why should you be protected from having nasty relatives because human beings are not saints and logically it follows that nearly everybody has got relatives who hurt or angerv them in some way.

So why does someone write a book about it? It reminds me of another book which I have not read but I believe have a good reputation and it’s called something like

When bad things happened to good people.

How many times do we have to learn that being good however successful we are cannot protect us from the horrors of the world or accidenrs floods etc

Some early Protestant thinkers believed that God would reward the hard work by wealth and so being wealthy was a sign of goodness and other people believed that if you are a good God will be kind to you and protect you from evil well that is not true as if you look at the history of the Jews in Europe you see the immense suffering they endured.

I think there are not many people who are deeply good because it’s very very hard to attend such a state living in this world

I know a lot of people who do lead admirable lives and help the suffering and the sick or produce works of art and poetry and literature that help many of the human race to rise above their suffering.

There is no way that can ensure that you will never suffer in life and sadly some mental illnesses involved withdrawal from the world because of the suffering and trauma a person’s endured but being withdrawn alone and on related to others is not a happy state for most people

And yet how can we live in such a world without becoming cynical?

If you can avoid becoming bitter in cynical it will benefit you and if it’s possible I have found that I am not cynical but I still suffer.

I don’t want to be cynical I don’t want to be embittered by certain things that have happened to me. If you believe that Jesus was the son of God or even Jesus has just a very special man who was holy he certainly suffered didn’t he question mark but what he cynical what he bitter!No

Of course  he did despair at one point

Some people have found that when they are suffering it helps them to think that Jesus also suffered although not as badly as some human beings have suffered in the 20th century for example.

How many people have felt alone in the suffering like Jesus felt while in the garden of gethsemane?

What else did disciples could you not watch one hour with me?

Certainly when we are grieving we sometimes feel that way that Peter cross the road when they see 

us coming. My sister suffered a great deal in her last 18 months but she did not seem to be bitter about her lot although she was sad because she wanted to see her grandchildren

She even appeared to me in a dream apologizing to me for the fact that she had to go home because she was so ill.

And after she died for several days I could feel a strong happiness as if she was at peace I have no idea what happens after death but it’s not as simple as it seems.

So my next book will be called why everybody has bad relatives and why bad relatives are not always as bad as they are made ought to be.