Theology—the knowledge of God—that’s what I do as a student. I’m consistently asked questions about God, the Bible, Christianity, the human condition as it pertains to God, etc., and I’m required to figure out the answer, or rather, an answer. Sometimes, the answers are pretty easy, whether it’s because the answer is straightforward or a copout. Other times, the answers are difficult and require either great diligence and/or great faith to attain. Then, there are those dreadful occasions where I’m posed a question, either by myself or another, that I must, against every fiber of my being, wholeheartedly and humbly admit: “I don’t know.”

It’s something that I don’t say often. Not because I usually have the answer, but because I simply don’t like saying it. It bothers me not to know something. Greatly. So, instead, many times I’ll offer a loophole answer that sounds intelligible enough to give the impression that I know what I’m talking about. But so often, when the question is profound, so profound that the answer to it at least in part, if not wholly defines your entire belief system, those round-about answers fall far short.

Just recently, I finished reading Elie Wiesel’s Night for the second time. The first, years ago, I’ve never forgotten. The details maybe, but not the impact. This time, I daresay I will never forget even the details. It easily has propelled its way into my top five favorite books. I had to write a brief report on it for a World Religions class, picking one religious aspect from the work and discussing Wiesel’s relationship to and perspective on it. I chose, quite simply, the concept of God, specifically, how Wiesel’s experiences made him think about and feel towards the God that he had grown up loving.

What follows is the book report. It is not meant to draw any theological conclusions, but rather it is merely a response to a specific prompt given by a professor: “You should include a brief synopsis of the book. Then, you should select one of the characteristics of Jewish religion and demonstrate how the author uses it to guide, shape, or give meaning to the events and outcomes of the book.”

Admittedly, I’m not even entirely sure how well I answered the prompt. I simply wrote about my painfully honest interpretation of Wiesel’s experience.

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Night by Elie Wiesel

Synopsis

The best description attributed to Elie Wiesel’s Night I have encountered is “mouth-shutting.” This man’s account of his journey alongside his father through the Nazi concentration camps completely rids the reader of any ability to articulate thoughts and reflections. Elie’s story begins when his mentor, Moishe the Beadle, returns from a deportation and tells his community about the horrors of the systematic extermination that is looming on the horizon for the Jewish people. Dismissed as a lunacy, the old man’s warnings fall on closed ears, for how could such an atrocity be a reality in the twentieth century? Unfortunately, the rumors become a haunting reality, and thus begins the rest of Elie’s story as he and his father, separated from the rest of his family, are ruthlessly transferred between several concentration camps, encountering unspeakable sights and experiences.

Among such atrocities are the burning alive of those too weak to effectively work, the hanging and shooting of children for “crimes” so trivial it is illogical, ridiculous even, to even refer to them as crimes, and the starvation, freezing, and steady decay of countless of innocent Jews. Throughout all these horrendous events, Wiesel, along with the rest of the Jewish people experiencing them, struggle with the question: how can a merciful God who promised to protect us allow such terror? Some renounce the idea of God all together, while others cling to their faith as the only hope of survival. Wiesel’s physical and mental journey is girded by the spiritual questions, doubts, and pains of his situation, eventually leaving him with a soul more focused on his next piece of bread than the survival of his own father.

Concept of God

The concept of God, specifically in relation to His relationship, or apparent lack thereof, with His people, is frequently noted and commented on in a number of ways throughout the book. The aforementioned question of how can God allow this to happen begs many more questions throughout Elie’s journey: Why would God let this happen? Where is God? Is there even a God anymore, was there ever? At one point in the story, Elie closes a chapter with a chilling scene that essentially sums up the sentiments towards the merciful God that so many sought hope in yet could not find. As a young child, too light to die quickly by hanging, dangles with a noose around his neck in front of the concentration camp, someone shouts out, “For God’s sake, where is God?” And Wiesel tells the reader of the voice inside him that answered, “Where He is? This is where—hanging here from the gallows.”

At the beginning of the story, Wiesel’s relationship with the Lord is strong, even to the point of him wanting to be a Kabbalist—a Jewish mystic. In his conversations with Moishe, the relationship between God and man is described as one in which “man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him.” How ironic this statement quickly becomes. It seems from that point on, the questions that Wiesel and the others ask about or directly to God only take them them further away from a recognition of His existence, much less His presence.

Wiesel’s telling of the story through a lens of feeling abandonment by God makes the reader question every event that is recounted. Even though the events of the book have long passed, I found myself wondering at every murder, every mass killing, every natural (if they can even be called natural) death: is that enough, God? Is that enough suffering to complete whatever part of Your plan this is? I’m sure the unsettling questions could only reflect a fraction of the magnitude with which the Jewish victims asked the same thing.

As a teenager, it makes sense that the horrendous sights, smells, emotions, and thoughts he experienced could all but eradicate Wiesel’s faith in God forever. At one point, remembering his teenage self, after the first time he witnessed the use of the crematorium, he writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.” Such words evoke the question in the reader: could I maintain any amount of faith in the face of such unspeakable horror? Could I find God in the flames that consumed those in my community, my friends, those whom I loved?

As the story went on, I had a soul-crushing realization. Death became a desire for these men. For many, the idea of staying alive only meant prolonging the torturous process of a fate that was guaranteed regardless. Death, what used to be that which caused a lack of faith in God’s mercy, soon became precisely that which they appealed to God’s mercy for.

Wiesel’s story becomes a struggle between an innate desire to survive and an unexplained longing for the outlet of death to make the suffering cease. Where does God fit into that struggle? Where does God fit into the entire situation at all? Wiesel’s account of his thoughts provide an answer, or rather, show that there really is no palpable answer. At times, he tells of the bitterness he felt towards God, the resentment that led to the reluctancy with which he sang God’s praises and the enjoyment he got from even the most trivial rebellion against religious duties. Other times, if only by instinct, he prays to God, asking for things such as the strength to not abandon his father.

Soon, for most, faith in God becomes a ridiculous notion. So ridiculous even, that one man, Wiesel remembers, uttered what are, in my opinion, the most chilling words of the novel: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”

I think Wiesel boldly and honestly captures the sentiments that we all face at one time or another regarding the questions about God, specifically in times of hardship. He uses his own story to discuss the confusion and hurt that God’s silence can bring. The details in the book are terribly painful, gut-wrenching at times, and throughout it all, God’s absence looms over these victims—a dark cloud shielding them from any glimpse of hope that lies ahead.

Within the work itself, there is no mention of a restoration of faith in the Divine. There remains no answer to the questions posed by so many, articulated at one point by those of Akiba Drumer, “Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?” Wiesel, at the end of the story, even after being freed and restored to health, stands in front of a mirror, and says he sees nothing but a corpse staring back, a corpse that still has no answers.

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Elie Wiesel

Like Wiesel, I have no answers. This is, if there’s ever been one, a situation where I must say “I don’t know.” John Piper’s description of Night as “mouth-shutting,” as I said in the report, could not be more accurate. The accounts Wiesel gives, those accounts that I read, robbed me of any right to even attempt to offer some sort of theological rationalization for them.

As I often do, I looked to those much wiser than I am for any semblance of an answer, reason, consoling thought. And, like I so often do, I found one in the wise words of Tim Keller:

As a Calvinist, sometimes it’s easy for me to deal with (i.e., explain) tragedy. God is sovereign. Period. Everything that happens happens for a reason and that reason is perfect, always magnifying God’s namesake and glory. But such an answer, no matter how true, seems to fall short in the face of something like the Holocaust, where finding a “reason” for it seems far more terrifying than comforting. Do I know that God will ultimately be glorified through the Holocaust as a whole? Yes. Did I see God’s glory in the events Wiesel spares no details of in his book? I don’t know.

There is, clearly, so much that we do not know, so much that we cannot and will not know. But, as Keller eloquently explains, there are great comforts that we can cling to. Renouncing a belief in God does not make dealing with tragedy any easier. Also, just because we can’t see the reason, that does not mean that one does not exist. And lastly, the greatest comfort, with regards to the Holocaust and any other tragedy, whatever the reason is, we can be assured of at least one thing the reason is not. It is not a matter of God’s indifference.

So, I don’t know. I don’t know the reasons for God’s allowing of the Holocaust. I’m confident I never will. But I know this: in some small sense, knowing what the reason isn’t can at least, in part, quell the agonizing absence of a recognizable reason. And I know this: The Cross of Jesus Christ utterly eliminates any possibility of apathy on God’s part towards the hardships of His Creation.

With a heavy and hopeful heart, I say again,

Soli Deo Gloria.