Probably the most difficult problem posed by biblical religion is what philosophers call "theodicy." On the one hand, God promises that if we do good we will prosper and if we do evil we will suffer; on the other hand, many very good people suffer greatly. In this week's reading, the issue hits us like a blunt instrument.

"If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them," we are told, "then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield its increase." And the consequences of not walking in God's statutes are no less explicit: "But if you will not hearken to Me, . . . I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and fever. . .  and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it." In this life, the rewards are as magnificent for the righteous as the curses befalling the wicked are unbearable.

The same idea is echoed across the Bible. "I was once young, now I am old," the Psalmist tells us, "and I never saw a righteous man forsaken, his child begging for bread" (37:25). But righteous people are often forsaken, and their children do beg for bread. So is all this just a grand heavenly deception? Are the Torah and the Psalmist delusional?

In fact, the question of theodicy is as old as the Bible itself. The entire book of Job is about a righteous man who suffers unjustly, who takes God to task for it, and who ultimately gets no answer that we would call satisfying. The rabbis of the Talmud speculated that the first question posed to God by Moses on Mount Sinai was tzadik v'ra lo—why do the righteous suffer? To drive the point home, they ascribed to Moses himself the authorship of the book of Job.

If there is no easy answer to the paradox of theodicy—and there isn't—it might help to read this week's passages not with the rigor of a logician but with the sensitivity of a poet. Is the Bible seriously proposing a mechanistic view whereby all we need do is to perform certain rituals and laws and the gods will be manipulated into blessing us? Such a view sounds more in keeping with the pagan ideas that the Bible was trying to uproot.

Rather, such passages point to a belief that stands at the heart of the Bible's message. Human life itself is richer and far more variegated—not to mention arduous, baffling, and sometimes tortured—than any simple plans, rules, or ideas can adequately address. But goodness is deeply connected with life, with the very possibility of life. This simple yet audacious moral claim—goodness makes human life thrive; wickedness destroys life—may be impossible to prove, but as an article of faith it is one of the most fertile notions ever introduced to mankind.

What are the alternatives? We can follow the lead of certain religious and secular ideologies, convincing ourselves to suspend our basic instincts about human decency in the face of some pure and unassailable Law. Examples include the pious person whose confidence in his next-worldly reward serves to excuse monstrous this-worldly behavior toward others and the revolutionary who sanctions murder under the banner of his exclusive access to truth. Or we can give up on goodness altogether, cultivating a sense of life's futility and absurdity and/or cynically pursuing personal gain at all costs. One and sometimes both of these alternatives can be seen embodied in the same person.

Escape from the twin traps of ideological rigidity and free-floating cynicism lies in the conviction that goodness serves humanity in the real world, and in acting on that conviction. Put that way, the assertion sounds, and perhaps even is, naïve. But as we know from personal experience, "positive thinking" can indeed lead to positive results, even though bad things happen anyway. The Bible's point is that the same is true in morals: people who act well have the satisfaction of knowing, deep down, that they are not only on the right side of life but on the side of life, period. Even if it's not true in every case.

David Hazony's first book, The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life, will be published by Scribner this coming September.