The Trial of God
The brilliant writer, Nobel peace prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wisel, wrote a play, in three acts called The Trial of God. The idea for this play came to Wisel, based upon what he had actually witnessed in a concentrate camp. The play is set in 1649, in a small village after the community experiences a pogrom. Many Jews were killed, and subsequently, these villagers put God on trial. The results may or may not be what you expect, but reading this book is provocative and mind challenging at every turn.
Many people in this world experience loss or some type of personal tragedy, ranging from death, to cancer to mental illness of a loved one (those grand scale issues) to smaller, but ones such as a loss of a job, a dream or home, etc. Here is my question: When you are faced with horror, tragedy, or unexplained difficulties in your life, do you blame God? Do you become angry at God, and if so, why?Do you change courses from a believer to a disbeliever? How, if at all do you hang on to your faith? For those non-believers, how do you deal with the emotions thrust upon you by experiencing some type of horrible event and how do you explain it?
Enough to keep everyone busy and thinking for the long weekend.
As a side note: I am humbled and grateful for all your provocative comments and statements here. Many of you I become acquainted with on another site. To some, our friendship is deepening, others, I am just getting to know, and many, who I thought would be interested in this blog, have vanished quickly out of my life. Moreover,I have met some interesting people and thinkers, and have begun to develop some new cyber-relationships here on this blog. To all of you, I send my deep thank yous.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Thank you for your minds.
Many people in this world experience loss or some type of personal tragedy, ranging from death, to cancer to mental illness of a loved one (those grand scale issues) to smaller, but ones such as a loss of a job, a dream or home, etc. Here is my question: When you are faced with horror, tragedy, or unexplained difficulties in your life, do you blame God? Do you become angry at God, and if so, why?Do you change courses from a believer to a disbeliever? How, if at all do you hang on to your faith? For those non-believers, how do you deal with the emotions thrust upon you by experiencing some type of horrible event and how do you explain it?
Enough to keep everyone busy and thinking for the long weekend.
As a side note: I am humbled and grateful for all your provocative comments and statements here. Many of you I become acquainted with on another site. To some, our friendship is deepening, others, I am just getting to know, and many, who I thought would be interested in this blog, have vanished quickly out of my life. Moreover,I have met some interesting people and thinkers, and have begun to develop some new cyber-relationships here on this blog. To all of you, I send my deep thank yous.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Thank you for your minds.
17 Comments:
B, first -- thank you for a thoughtful forum in which you have maintained civility while encouraging spirited discussion. Second, no, I don't blame God. His ways are so far beyond my limited human reason that, to me, it is foolish to even think of blaming him. In my emotional immaturity, I may question Him, though. I may ask "Why?" In the face of tremendous loss and pain, I cannot blame others for losing their faith. But in the words Jung placed on his lintel: "Bidden or Unbidden, God is Present." I believe He doesn't leave us, even when we attempt to leave Him.
B, Just want to echo M's compliment. It *is* nice to see spirited discussion without anger, as we know was not possible on the "other site".
As for your friends who you thought would be interested but have vanished, do not be too sure. Perhaps, like me, they read with great interest but do not, for whatever reason, feel comfortable leaving a comment. LOL -- see, I commented on your "side note" but not your main question...
Have a great weekend!
Three fab.women! Thank you for your comments.
R...Point well made and taken. I am glad to see that you fine ladies are still here, and it is true, sometimes people can read over something and choose not to comment for whatever the reason. Thank you for that reminder.
Stangley, when dealing with misfortune or tragedy, I find that my faith becomes stronger. Probably because I am a big fearful chicken at heart, and when I am scared, I must have faith. Otherwise, I am alone, which is not a good place to be in times of need.
Mirelle: What a beauutiful quote by Jung, one I will keep with me and remember.
I am not sure if there is a coralation between having bad things happen to you and your belief or lack of blief in god.
Yochanan,
There are many stories that I am familiar with from Holocaust survivors and/or their families who became angry with God about what happened to their families during the Holocaust. Some, as a consequence, stopped believing in God altogether, claiming that how could He have abandonmed them during such times and allowed so much evil and cruelty to prevail.
First of all, I just wanted to say that I came across your blog and am impressed by the thoughts and discussion present. Nice job!
Secondly, I will attempt to give some sort of response to your questions from my personal Christian perspective. I have been recently struggling with a lot of the issues you mention, such as tragedy, death, and unexplained difficulties. It is more than easy to be mad and blame God. I think, Why shouldn't the same God who creates all the good in the world not get credit for the bad? Sometimes as a Christian I come to expect my blessings to be handed to me on a silver plate. It's hard to accept the fact that a God who creates life can also allow death.
Not once in the Bible does God say bad things will never happen to us. Why is it that I still expect only good things, and get upset when the bad things do come my way? In serving God and living my life for him, it’s often easy to think that God will somehow reciprocate and protect me from the evil of the world. Which isn’t exactly true. I feel I deserve some sort of reward for being in tune with God and doing his will, when God never promises any such thing. God gives me rules to live by and I unconsciously assign rules to him as well.
A quote I read once in a book said, “There is a difference between being responsible and being culpable.” God is definitely in charge of everything that happens to me, but I don’t think he has to be guilty too. He can’t be culpable because he’s not doing anything wrong – it’s according to our rules and standards that we try to tell him what to do.
I do know that God has a plan, and the things that happen to me are not because God is glaring down at me from heaven saying, “There, take that!” Things just happen. It’s a part of life, whether I like it or not. Matthew 10:29 says, “Not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father knowing it.”
I’m just mad that the sparrow has to fall.
I have so many coping mechanisms, the major one being incredibly unhealthy but it's usually the first one that I cling to.
Of healthy coping mechanisms,
I look toward others who have gone through much more than myself. It is usually then that I find the strength to move on within myself.
I don't blame God for the evils and injustices in this world. God gave humans free will. What we do with our lives is our affair.
I can see why someone who has been through a horribly traumatic experience would question God's existence. I am fortunate to not have had such an experience in my life. Elie Wiesel's "Night" is on my to-read list. Frankly I haven't been able to summon the courage to read it yet. I am easily disturbed by hearing of other people's suffering. The stories of the little girls who were raped and murdered (or in the one case, buried alive and left to die) in Florida haunted me and gave me nightmares.
I do not presume to know how often God intervenes -- if at all -- in our lives. My suspicion is that God pretty much stays out of it and lets us do our thing here, whether we are doing good or evil. I'm grateful to have been given a chance to live at all. So I don't think I'm entitled to any other favors or help ... even to protection from trauma/suffering. Life itself is miracle enough.
(Barbara, in an earlier comment you asked me whether there was more than one version of the New Testament. The answer is yes...although the overall message of the NT in the different versions is not necessarily that different from the "original." Some faiths have adopted the newer texts, some have not. But this is true of the Bible as a whole -- there are many different versions. The Catholic Bible, for instance, contains more books than a Protestant version, but that's mainly in the Old Testament -- "extra" books such as Ecclesiaticus, etc. In writing this I am reminded of how long it's been since I picked up a Bible, so pleasebear with me if I'm in error.)
I've had many hard times and personal difficulties, as many others have. I find nothing wrong with questioning God, or putting Him on trial. If He can't take my questions and doubts, than He's not a very powerful God.
Even in my pain, I've still tried to stay open to Him and hope for things to get better. It is difficult especially when dealing with death or illness.
When things are out of my control, it frustrates me, but that's how life is...very frustrating. I always try and stay optimistic about the future, although I know that some things can never be changed, and I must learn to live with the reality of that.
My hope rests in the fact that when all is said and done, I will be in heaven with those loved ones I buried and all physical illness will be gone.
I also deal with painful tiimes by squeezing every ounce of joy I can out of my interactions with friends and family. People I love make my life better, and make me able to cope with the hard times.
Jamie Dawn,
What beautiful and heartfelt words you write.
May you have good health always.
barbara
Well, I don't believe in a "personal God" that I would blame for bad things. On the other hand, if I believed in the God of the Bible, I might want to put Him on trial too!
I think that the nature of the universe is that (from our point of view) bad things inevitably happen. It's all because of entropy, a law of physics and nature that you can't deny: the tendency for things to go from a state of order to a state of disorder. Storms? Entropy. Aging and disease? Entropy.
Don't blame God, blame entropy!
If I felt the need to personify things, I guess I'd call entropy the devil.
Aral:
"Don't blame God, blame enropy."
My husband is blown away by your insights, he says!
Not that I have anything insightful to add, but I agree with what Emily said in her comment. Who says God doesn't want the "blame" (wrong word) for the things that go "wrong" in our world? If I truly believe that God is in control of everything, knows everything, is an all loving and all justifying God...then why I am I worried about the things I call "problems"..when in reality they are perchance part of a plan that is too big for even my brain (sarcastic touch) to imagine.
An interesting concept comes to mind from my experiences in a John Milton class, as we read through Paradise Lost (an amazing read for those who like to analyze, btw). Over and over, Milton portrays the events in history, past and present, as happening at once, in the blink of an eye.
To me, a narrow minded, blind and wanting individual, of course things don't make sense. But to God whose thoughts are not our thoughts, perhaps everything is crystal clear.
First, I check your blog every day, even tho' I don't comment. I usually go off, thinking about what has been said.
I don't believe in a personal or Bibical God, so I don't blame such an entity for the bad things that happen.
I think that we are all very responsible for what we do to ourselves and those around us. However, when things happen that are beyond our control, then all we CAN control is our reaction to it.
Part of the Universalist faith is believing that EVERYone has some redeeming quality about them. Even Hitler's mom must've loved him at some point - right? (I confess that I don't know this fer shure, I'm guessing.) So I try to remind myself that there must be something of value in those that do harm to others. I admit that this is frequently VERY hard to do.
If I can live my life and do good things and have good relationships, then perhaps those that I interact with will respond in kind to those that they interact with. Pass it on, so to speak.
Yes, I love your blog too. Thanks to you and your husband for your flattery. ;-P
As someone who does not belong to any religion, I find it very easy to "explain" bad things.
Bad things happen. It is just the way things are. In a casino you do not always win, and in this vast, random universe the same holds true. You simply make do the best you can with what you have.
To me, it is harder to rationalize bad things and universal evil when you throw in the concept of God. If god is good, and all powerful, why would it (if there is a God I do not believe it has a gender) allow such horrible things as genocide to happen?
And to further clarify - not belonging to or identifying with any religion is not the same as being an athiest. I do not really know what the answers to the grand mysteries of the universe are. Maybe there is a god, and maybe not. I just do not expect any miracles.
Hitler's mom must've loved him at some point - right?
HITLER WAS PURE EVIL Every one does not have good in him Hitler didn't.
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