In the beginning of the book “Night,” by Elie Wiesel, the reader finds a young Jewish boy named Eliezer (a personification of Elie Wiessel and his experience) with a strong belief in God. It even says that he studied the Talmud and other books of the Jewish faith even more than other boys the same age. It is hard to read about a boy and his father’s suffering. At first Elie Wiesel (Eliezer) keeps a strong faith in God. However, that begins to change as he sees his family and his people die and suffer along with him. The Nazi’s seem to literally beat the faith out of him and the other people around him. It gets down to the point that he questions his faith in the God that he studied and who he believed was a loving God and a God who would not let these cruelties continue. He and his father cling to one another and at least have faith in each other as they try to manage and survive each days horrors. Not only does Eliezer start to lose faith in his God but also in humanity itself. At one point Eliezer states that God has been murdered on the gallows together with the child who was caught trying to steal during an air raid. I think this reaction is reasonable considering his condition. He was faithful to God and his religion and he is “rewarded” with unspeakable torture. If I were in the same position I think that I would at least question my faith. Of course, I have not experienced any sort of pain comparable to the kind that Elie Wiesel went through. I think that I would try to survive along with everyone else and try to find a reason and purpose for what little life I would have left. Wisdom literature could help ease a suffering person though. In the book of Job, he suffers greatly but finds relief when God tells him that it was not caused because he had sinned. I sometimes wonder about all the people I hear about that have great faith yet live in the gutters with next to nothing that they can call their own. I think it is because they have hope that God will see their faith and reward them, if not on Earth then in Heaven. If I lost everything today, of course I would wonder why, but then I would try to be hopeful in something and that would be in the grace of God. I have not really suffered to the point that I would question God in this way but I have had a friend recently ask why one of her best friends died without an explanation to why she did. She claims to be agnostic and this was one of her reasoning’s or questions about her faith and God. I did refer her to Job and the Psalms but I also had to be practical as well. I did my best to consul her and I think that these wisdom scriptures helped me out and I hope that they can help her out.
