Accidental Theodicy
A highly personal meditation on the nature and meaning of suffering.
An adequate explanation of suffering is perhaps the most intractable issue in the study of religion and philosophy, and the answer to the question "Why me?" has eluded not only those who are the victims of suffering, but those who sympathize with them and try to understand and explain their suffering. In this highly personal account, Arvind Sharma shares his story of becoming the victim of a severe road accident and his gradual recovery from a fractured knee, which included a hospital stay, surgeries, unexpected setbacks, and a lengthy process of rehabilitation. In the second and most substantial part of the book, Sharma attempts to intellectually come to terms with his experience and to reflect on how the experience of suffering in one form or another is a universal condition of human existence.
Arvind Sharma is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University. He is the author of many books, including One Religion Too Many: The Religiously Comparative Reflections of a Comparatively Religious Hindu and Hinduism as a Missionary Religion, and the coeditor (with Ellen Bradshaw Aitken) of The Legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, all published by SUNY Press.