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The Trial 111
swine—to be penned tight and bleeding by barbed wire, frozen by cutting, icy winds with nothing for protection but a worn layer of cloth on our bare skin? Oh, our Protector, what have our innocent children done to deserve starvation and brutal beatings—to be maimed, crushed, split open and gassed—to be made a mockery and a plaything for the fury of the devil?
“Oh Lord, why must I see my baby, innocent and without guilt, picked up by the heels, swung and crushed into a headless bloody pulp? Why do you allow the young girls to be raped, and men beaten until all their bones are broken beyond healing? Why do you permit the severing of limbs, the puncturing of eyes, the grotesque experimentation with human flesh? Why don’t you respond to the murders, the laughter and sadism of the torturers, the gruesome thud of thousands falling at once in the gas chambers?
“Why must I hear the screams of my mothers and fathers burning to death in open pits of fire, or buried alive before receiving even the mercy of a bullet between the eyes? All the time cursing, You, oh God, day in and day out. For what purpose this infernal exercise in hopelessness and suffering without end—and consciousness filled with constant condemnations of Your name?”
At last they decided to put God on trial, accusing Him of allowing unforgivable crimes and of neglecting His people in time of their most urgent and terrible need. “He must be tried as a criminal for the guilt of unimaginable and inexcusable cruelty!” they cried out. “And we must do it with the utmost deliberation and care, for those who live on will look back at this day. They must understand and take us seriously. We are intelligent, wise, good God-loving and God-fearing people and aware of exactly what we are doing. Yes, this must be carried out with diligent, patient care—deliberately, objectively and with as honest a search for justice as possible.”
So they held court for three days and three nights. The wisest men in the Jewish community willingly took sides for the contest. There were those who considered God’s inscrutability beyond man’s comprehension, and who were willing to assume the atrocities to be, in some strange twisted way, an expression of His love.
And on the other side, the opposition: those who could only weep in pain and defiance. “No, no, no! No loving God, no God at all, could accept or allow such evil.” Arguments were presented and


































































































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