It changes things a bit, you know, having been to places like this.
Such atrocities contrived, carried out, gotten away with. I have to admit, it does challenge my faith.
Somehow, the emotive worship songs and psalms of praise seem a bit superficial; a bit detatched from this reality. I mean, its not like you’d go up to a prisoner on the way to the gas chamber and say ‘sing to the Lord a new song…His love endures forever..’ and then run off back to church. Its not that I don’t believe its true. I think it just takes a bit of thought to form convictions as to why its still true, in the face of suffering. And for that, we must get back to basics:
The existence of suffering and God are not mutually exclusive. The reason for human suffering can be traced back to the fall; a consequence of sin that is in all of us. What I can’t tell you is why God allows suffering such as Sachsenhausen. But I know I don’t know everything, so trust He has His reasons.
And its not like He doesn’t do anything about suffering. On the contrary, He gave everything to solve the problem. For God see’s things a bit differently to us – which is no surprise since, after all, He is God and we are not. Its not that He is blind to human anguish – on the contrary He is most fully aware. Its just that He knows that the worst anguish is found not in concentration camps but in Hell, separated from His goodness, under His holy wrath. But what if I don’t believe in Hell? You ask. There are those that deny the Holocaust too.
Ok,to be fair, we know the suffering of war. And sure we wont find history books or survivor stories from Hell. But the result is that we ask why God doesn’t do something about suffering on earth rather than why doesn’t He do something about the eternal suffering to come. And if we did ask the latter, we’d realise that he already has. Thus giving at least hope (if not an explanation) for the suffering on earth now.
And that changes things.
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