Karen Armstrong is no longer a stranger in the religio-literary world. Often embroiled in controversy for her writings about religions, especially in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, she is both loved and hated by the respective communities for telling histories and consequences of faiths to an already troubled world.
Armstrong, formerly a Catholic nun, has also been touted as one of the best non-Muslim apologist for Islam, yet, her writings can prick enough for Malaysian Muslims enough (or so claimed by the government) that it has banned one of her bestsellers “The Battle for God”.
In perhaps what is known as the prelude to the banned work, her other book “A History of God” tells the origins of the three dominant monotheistic religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam and how it had altered the world profoundly.
I appreciate Armstrong’s clever efforts in weaving the dogmas and cult practices of these three religions, and had to, for several times, put down the book, feeling shocked and uneasy about my dogmas and conventional belief in the Christian God.
The highlight of the book, however, is in Armstrong’s tenth chapter on the death of God. It is here where I am most tormented and despaired by, not because by her writing, but by the reality of evil that had put God in the docks, and men in their utter unbelief that God would allow wickedness to consume lives in a horrific manner.
Armstrong started the chapter by introducing her readers to an atheist called Friedrich Nietzsche who was arguably one of the most famous rejects of the personal and Christian God. He had written about the death of God in days when every act of communal living was a symbol of Western Christianity- from the church bell rings first thing in the morning, to the burial rituals of the dead in a cemetery.
Nietzsche wrote of this famous parable of the madman who ran into the market place one morning, crying: “I seek God! I seek God!” When the bystanders asked where he imagined God had gone- had He run away? Emigrated, perhaps?- the madman said: “I mean to tell you. We have killed him- you and I. We are all his murderers.”
What caught my attention of men and women that were known as “atheists” in those days, was the very fact that none of them had opposed so strongly against the existence of God, as they had because He did not save mankind from evil at all times, which either rendered God cruel or helpless.
In long and general, the benevolent and personal God of History that Christians had preached over the centuries had not seemed to be “consistent” in His mercy. It is in fact, the cruelty of God that people had rejected, and since He “allowed” people to die in the most horrific manner, the knowledge of Him is deemed useless.
For the Jews, the God of History died with His many believers in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said: “Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust,” as he watched black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium that the bodies of his mother and sister were thrown into.
Wiesel had seen more than enough. He wrote about the day when the Gestapo hanged a child in front of thousands of spectators. The child, who, Wiesel recalled, had the face of a “sad-eyed angel,” was “silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows.” Behind him, one of the prisoners asked: “Where is God? Where is He?”
The child died half an hour later, while the prisoners were forced to look at him right at the face. When the same prisoner asked again, “Where is God?” Wiesel heard his heart say, “Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows.”
Wiesel had perhaps, not known nor care that his words had in fact, rightly referred to the death of Jesus Christ, hung at the cross that Christians had fervently preached about. Nevertheless, the Christians, as Paul had put it, would have been most pitiful if Jesus died without a resurrection following thereafter.
Only when He rose from His death, is there hope and redemption for mankind. But, the painful question of why the Jews of Auschwitz had not heard of it, nor responded to, remained.
Armstrong wrote: “There is a story that one day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put god on trial. They charged him with cruelty and betrayal. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problem of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity.
They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over: it was time for the evening prayer.”
They no longer hoped this God will rescue them. The religion is there, because the Talmud and the traditional festivals still make sense.
Yet, for Nietzsche, his murder of God did not make him a happy person. Plagued by ill-health, loneliness and madness, he wrote a poem of pleading for God to return- “No! Come back, with all your torments…Oh come back my unknown God! My pain! My last- happiness.”
Nietzsche’s despair does not end with his own death. I believe many people are looking for answers and reasons that can compel them to accept the God in Auschwitz.
I do not have the answers. I am in fact, a terrible believer of Christ, and have often allowed myself to wander far away from the God I claim to love in singing and praying.
But, at times when no words can console, I can think of no other way than to hold and cry with my fellow people over the seeming absence of God in the face of evil.
And in the midst of walking with the human race, I hope I will remember lovingly, that somewhere at the back of my head, I have read and known of a man-God that had prayed and cried alone in Gethsemane, before He was sent to the gallows.
