My Road to Unbelief
Part III: A Thought Experiment
One of the traditions of Judaism is a memorial day known as Krystalnacht, or "The Night of Broken Glass." It marks the day of a specific event in Nazi Germany where all the Jewish shops were raided and glass littered the streets. It's essentially a day of remembrance about the Holocaust. Not exactly a pleasant thing. In schul (like sunday school), we would talk about the Holocaust on this day. It often raised serious philosophical and religious questions, as you can imagine.
I've never actually read Maus (it's about a man telling his son about the days of the Holocaust, told in comic form where Jews are mice and Nazis are cats), but I heard that one of the interesting parts of it is that the father is now an Atheist because of the Holocaust. I found out that many Jews lost faith in God after the Holocaust. Some remained faithful, while others did not.
It raised a question in my mind: "Which would I be?" After all, in many ways you could see how something as terrible as the Holocaust could go either way. It could reaffirm your faith. Or it could destroy it. And so I posed myself to that Thought Experiment. It may be scary, but it's an exercise in Empathy. I find it rather depressing that other people don't try this sort of thing, and I find it absolutely ridiculous that Christians never seem to talk about genocides and what it means in terms of their religion.
I tried to put myself in that situation. Separated from my sister and mother (only to have my mother be raped and gassed and my sister to thrown into an oven), to have my father be shot randomly for some disobedience. My family murdered. Their deaths not heroic but pathetic. And then for me to survive. If I somehow survived, would I still worship the God that I prayed to for years to end the suffering? Would I pray to the Lord that allowed my family to perish for some reason only Gods-know-what?
The answer I came to was forceful, painful, and resolute:
Never.
I've never actually read Maus (it's about a man telling his son about the days of the Holocaust, told in comic form where Jews are mice and Nazis are cats), but I heard that one of the interesting parts of it is that the father is now an Atheist because of the Holocaust. I found out that many Jews lost faith in God after the Holocaust. Some remained faithful, while others did not.
It raised a question in my mind: "Which would I be?" After all, in many ways you could see how something as terrible as the Holocaust could go either way. It could reaffirm your faith. Or it could destroy it. And so I posed myself to that Thought Experiment. It may be scary, but it's an exercise in Empathy. I find it rather depressing that other people don't try this sort of thing, and I find it absolutely ridiculous that Christians never seem to talk about genocides and what it means in terms of their religion.
I tried to put myself in that situation. Separated from my sister and mother (only to have my mother be raped and gassed and my sister to thrown into an oven), to have my father be shot randomly for some disobedience. My family murdered. Their deaths not heroic but pathetic. And then for me to survive. If I somehow survived, would I still worship the God that I prayed to for years to end the suffering? Would I pray to the Lord that allowed my family to perish for some reason only Gods-know-what?
The answer I came to was forceful, painful, and resolute:
Never.
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