Stop and Think After You Suffer

Eliezer was a devout believer of God, he was a proud Jew. Until circumstances lead him to loose faith in God. Who wouldn’t? What he was going through was an absolute proof that God was not present, because if he were, He wouldn’t let that happen. He was absurdly tortured, discriminated, exploded and hurt, not only physically but psychological. He questions God’s existence… and whether keeping faithful would keep him alive. All his life he had been faithful and the only consequence was that he was taken to a concentration camp for being a Jew. He relates himself to Job, he understands him because Job also questions God and his power. “Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” (pg. 42) He has very similar thoughts to those of Job. He talks a lot about darkness and light and relates it to his feelings.
He refers to his days at the camp as a night, and there is no time during the unhappy moments is which he talked about light or sunny days… He only referred to the sun a hot and devastating, as a negative thing. “What are You, my God,” I thought angrily, “compared to this afflicted crowd, proclaiming to You their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does your greatness mean, Lord of the universe, in the face of all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do You still trouble their sick minds, their crippled bodies?” (pg63) This is so true! What is his greatness to all the suffering? What does it really mean? It seems ridiculous that they stilled prayed for such an egocentric God, who even when they are decaying, He instills guilt to them so that they have to pray to an invisible God. “Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How could I say to Him: “Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose ud from all races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in crematory? Praised be Thy Name, Thou Who hast chosen us to be butched on Thine altar?” (pg 64) WOW! This is so touching and so deep. I noticed that he talks a lot about “nigh and day”, he mentions it twice in this quote. Just like Job talks about it in his dialogue with his friends and God. I myself relate to him. I started doubting his absolute justice, because my family was going through very difficult times and I was very sick, and we prayed, and God was not present at all, since then I lost total faith and relied my beliefs on science and the universe’s energy .