His Terrible Justice
May 5, 2008 at 7:10 pm (Uncategorized)
I just can’t get away from this theme of worshipping God’s holiness, the perfect harmony of all of His virtues — particularly as expressed in the seeming contradiction of mercy/love & His terrible justice/judgment. The last 5 years of my life have been about the rod of His chastening & discipline as the highest expression of His love in just judgment. Though my sin is surely forgiven He has not allowed me to get away with not experiencing the outworkings & consequences of it.
Art Katz has written a piece called “The Holocaust: Where Was God?”, subtitling it “An Appeal For Jewish Consideration”. This is what one reviewer wrote about it:
“In a daring hypothesis - turning to ancient Hebrew scriptures as a key of interpretation to the most modern of all events, the Holocaust, - the author brings a challenge both to the agnostic secularist as to the religiously-minded that compels a searching reappraisal of one’s deepest convictions.”
The appeal He presents in it for Jewish consideration (and of the nations) is this: that “the sufferings that we have experienced as Jews, in all of the calamities of our history and including the Holocaust, are the fulfillment of God’s judgments forewarned prophetically in the concluding chapters of the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy”.
Having tasted His chastening I do not find this unlikely but rather highly likely. Furthermore, I see the direct correlation between this question & our witness. How does this appeal for consideration strike you?
Excerpt: “I had the privilege once to meet Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew and winner of a Nobel prize for peace. He himself is a survivor of the Holocaust and is probably one of the greatest authorities on the subject of the Holocaust. He is the most beautifully eloquent man and if there was no God, then he is a picture of Jewish nobility and ethical and moral sensitivity that would be the admiration of anyone. If there is a God, however, that very thing that we would otherwise be impressed by becomes questionable in the light of God’s indictment on the condition of mankind.
“I asked him privately: ‘Mr. Wiesel, to what degree would you be willing to acknowledge that the sufferings that we have experienced as Jews, in all of the calamities of our history and including the Holocaust, are the fulfillment of God’s judgments forewarned prophetically in the concluding chapters of the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy?’ He looked at me for a moment in that kind of stunned silence and then answered: ‘I refuse to consider that.’”
