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“If I were God…”

Last week we mused a bit on the search query I found on my blog post “why religion doesn’t work”. Connected to this question and connected to our doubts are both our questions about God’s administration and His seeming silence to our pleas.

While I have always enjoyed the stories in the book of Judges I had never before considered how this book relates to these questions. The book of Judges holds up to us two realities in stunning contrast, God’s interactive willingness to intervene in our bloody affairs right next to the brutal episodes of human violence and rebellion.

Accounting for the Squeemishness of Western Comfort, Security and Affluence

The book of Judges is bloody and brutal and it raises questions and issues for us in terms of God’s involvement in human brutality. While I think these are legitimate issues to raise I think we should also acknowledge our own context in raising them. For those of us who are white, sitting securely in the middle of the world’s superpower with armed police ready to respond to cries of distress we have little credibility when it comes to assessing the desperation of those whose lives are ripped apart by everyday violence and brutality. The kind of God victims of warfare and violence are looking for is one that will bring the wicked to a swift, violent end. We cheer for this from the safety of our theater seats as movie after movie depicts violent human heroes killing the bad guys. How strange our amnesia.

I think about Elie Wiesel in Night telling the story of Akiba Drummer losing his faith in the Nazi work camp.

He was old and bent, his lips constantly trembling. He was always praying, in the block, at work, in the ranks. He recited entire pages from the Talmud, arguing with himself, asking and answering himself endless questions. One day, he said to me:

“It’s over. God is no longer with us.”

And as though he regretted having uttered such words so coldly, so dryly, he added in his broken voice, “ I know. No one has the right to say things like that. I know that very well. Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways. But what can someone like myself do? I’m neither a sage nor a just man. I am not a saint. I’m a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes and I see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?”

Poor Akiba Drumer, if only he could have kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test, he would not have been swept away by the selection. But as soon as he felt the first chinks in his faith, he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death.

When the selection came, he was doomed from the start, offering his neck to the executioner, as it were. All he asked of us was:

“In three days, I’ll be gone … Say Kaddish for me.”

We promised: in three days, when we would see the smoke rising from the chimney, we would think of him. We would gather ten men and hold a special service. All his friends would say Kaddish.

Wiesel, Elie (2012-02-07). Night (pp. 76-77). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

The Jews in these camps knew their Hebrew Scriptures. They knew how Israel both rehearses the stories of the Exodus, professes the willingness and ability of God to defend the righteous while also openly asking the hard questions about when God doesn’t seem to show up leaving them to suffer and die in misery and oppression.

Gideon’s Dreamily Direct Relationship With God Continue reading →