Rabbi Harold Kushner lost a son to a degenerative disease—premature aging syndrome. He later wrote the bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. 

Trying to maintain his belief in God, he said that God is either not good enough, since he allowed the sickness, or not powerful enough to prevent it. He chose the latter. According to Kushner, God created the world but isn’t in complete control of it. In other words, God hopes for our good and sympathizes with us in our pain, but He’s powerless to do anything about it.