God On Trial:
Catharschwitz
I watched a movie on PBS tonight called God on Trial. It was a sucker punch of an art-film. An idea, pushed to levels of unbelievable painfulness in honor of the very idea being attacked. The film, set in Auschwitz, is primarily concerned with a literal trial conducted by three Jewish "judges", evoking the biblical Judges of the Old Testament book of the same name, who hear a suit against Yahweh, Elohim, our Lord God. The charge against Yahweh is that he broke his covenant (or rather covenants plural, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.) with the Jews when he allowed the Holocaust to happen.
Just before half of the cast is taken to the gas chambers, a man stands to speak against God as no one had been willing to do. He described the horrors visited upon Egypt and the wholesale slaughter of the original inhabitants of Israel by God and his people. Whole cities were razed and destroyed, people were lined up on the ground with the order to kill two for every one saved, the people of the least fertile tip of the fertile crescent (Israel and Palestine, the Promised land) were exterminated in a genocide exceeding the Nazi's attempts in its absolute success. The man then says, "What kind of God could allow this?"
"An evil God. An unjust God. A God that could have learned from the justice that beats in our hearts."
"When God told Abraham to kill his first born, he should have said 'No!' and showed him what humanity means."
To paraphrase, he said that the Jews had been no better than the Nazis simply because God had been on their side. God wasn't on their side any more. The german troops who arrested them had belt buckles with God is With Us written on them. Who, he said, are we to argue with him?
The verdict was passed, guilty. The covenant had been betrayed. Moments later the guards burst in and a man who had argued passionately against the very existence of God screamed "What do we do now? Now that we have found God guilty?"
The universal answer? "We pray." And pray they did. As the Germans led half their numbers to be killed, condemned and spared alike prayed so loud that the Germans could barely call out their numbers. To most, this would be a depressing moment, I suppose. To me it was the definition of cathartic.
Catharsis is not a rejection of our problems. It is non simple decision, realization, or action. Catharsis is spitting back at the rain, finding the futility, understanding the pain, mapping it's every hill and valley and memorizing its every stanza. Catharsis is knowing your pain better than you know yourself, understanding, accepting and finding the strength to go on. With understanding comes freedom.
The length of my argument, once again, guarantees this blog will go unread but in a way this proves my point. I continue to type beyond all need for recognition, and without any desire to kill time. I want, I crave sleep. Yet I write. Why?
Because I feel a pain in my chest, a fear, a vision of a life unraveled and i have been ignoring it like a campaign promise for too long now. I do not mean to say that my struggle is a holocaust but, rather, that a film set in such a horrible world making me feel better is significant. i will not run from the truth or hide my head in the sand.
I am sick. My own worst enemy, I shiver through night mares and wake with a smile pretending that all is well. I cannot, I will not, blame others for my problems. No one will ever be kind enough to take my fear away, no one will ever love purely enough to remove my doubt. The cancer grows within and not without.
I am hereby putting myself on trial. Have I broken my covenant with myself? The one I made as a child when I swore my children would grow up happier than I was? Have I broken my promises to be good, and strong, and to never make people feel as worthless as I was made to feel? I never stopped striving for those things but some where along the way I lost sight of the truth. If I am to be judge, let me judge myself and myself alone. Only I can save me, and only through my own actions will I be ruined.
I am sorry for being such a difficult, and demanding person, and I am sorry that I have lost my way. Guilt, just as it was in the film, is irrelevant. All that matters is love.
Catharschwitz
I watched a movie on PBS tonight called God on Trial. It was a sucker punch of an art-film. An idea, pushed to levels of unbelievable painfulness in honor of the very idea being attacked. The film, set in Auschwitz, is primarily concerned with a literal trial conducted by three Jewish "judges", evoking the biblical Judges of the Old Testament book of the same name, who hear a suit against Yahweh, Elohim, our Lord God. The charge against Yahweh is that he broke his covenant (or rather covenants plural, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.) with the Jews when he allowed the Holocaust to happen.
Just before half of the cast is taken to the gas chambers, a man stands to speak against God as no one had been willing to do. He described the horrors visited upon Egypt and the wholesale slaughter of the original inhabitants of Israel by God and his people. Whole cities were razed and destroyed, people were lined up on the ground with the order to kill two for every one saved, the people of the least fertile tip of the fertile crescent (Israel and Palestine, the Promised land) were exterminated in a genocide exceeding the Nazi's attempts in its absolute success. The man then says, "What kind of God could allow this?"
"An evil God. An unjust God. A God that could have learned from the justice that beats in our hearts."
"When God told Abraham to kill his first born, he should have said 'No!' and showed him what humanity means."
To paraphrase, he said that the Jews had been no better than the Nazis simply because God had been on their side. God wasn't on their side any more. The german troops who arrested them had belt buckles with God is With Us written on them. Who, he said, are we to argue with him?
The verdict was passed, guilty. The covenant had been betrayed. Moments later the guards burst in and a man who had argued passionately against the very existence of God screamed "What do we do now? Now that we have found God guilty?"
The universal answer? "We pray." And pray they did. As the Germans led half their numbers to be killed, condemned and spared alike prayed so loud that the Germans could barely call out their numbers. To most, this would be a depressing moment, I suppose. To me it was the definition of cathartic.
Catharsis is not a rejection of our problems. It is non simple decision, realization, or action. Catharsis is spitting back at the rain, finding the futility, understanding the pain, mapping it's every hill and valley and memorizing its every stanza. Catharsis is knowing your pain better than you know yourself, understanding, accepting and finding the strength to go on. With understanding comes freedom.
The length of my argument, once again, guarantees this blog will go unread but in a way this proves my point. I continue to type beyond all need for recognition, and without any desire to kill time. I want, I crave sleep. Yet I write. Why?
Because I feel a pain in my chest, a fear, a vision of a life unraveled and i have been ignoring it like a campaign promise for too long now. I do not mean to say that my struggle is a holocaust but, rather, that a film set in such a horrible world making me feel better is significant. i will not run from the truth or hide my head in the sand.
I am sick. My own worst enemy, I shiver through night mares and wake with a smile pretending that all is well. I cannot, I will not, blame others for my problems. No one will ever be kind enough to take my fear away, no one will ever love purely enough to remove my doubt. The cancer grows within and not without.
I am hereby putting myself on trial. Have I broken my covenant with myself? The one I made as a child when I swore my children would grow up happier than I was? Have I broken my promises to be good, and strong, and to never make people feel as worthless as I was made to feel? I never stopped striving for those things but some where along the way I lost sight of the truth. If I am to be judge, let me judge myself and myself alone. Only I can save me, and only through my own actions will I be ruined.
I am sorry for being such a difficult, and demanding person, and I am sorry that I have lost my way. Guilt, just as it was in the film, is irrelevant. All that matters is love.