When Bad Things Happen to Good People (ISBN 1-4000-3472-8) is a 1981 book by Harold Kushner, a Conservative rabbi.

Kushner addresses in the book one of the principal problems of theodicy, the conundrum of why, if the universe was created and is governed by a God who is of a good and loving nature, there is nonetheless so much suffering and pain in it—essentially, the evidential problem of evil.

[1] Rabbi Kushner's book was a New York Times bestseller for many months in the non-fiction category.

[3] Kushner's beliefs, which seem to question God's omnipotence, have been criticized by some conservative scholars associated with Orthodox Judaism[4] as well as evangelical Christianity.

[3] Atheist philosopher Michael Martin has disputed Kushner's finite God theodicy.