{"id":2147,"date":"2024-03-06T11:18:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T15:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2024-03-12T11:28:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T15:28:06","slug":"forgiveness-and-the-absence-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/forgiveness-and-the-absence-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness and the Absence of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"(This is the second in a series of reflections on Simon Wiesenthal’s classic The Sunflower: on the possibilities and limits of forgiveness.)<\/em><\/p>\n

“I read somewhere that it is impossible to break a man’s firm belief.\u00a0 If ever I thought that were true, life in a concentration camp taught me differently.\u00a0 It is impossible to believe anything in the world that has ceased to regard man as man, which reportedly “proves” he is no longer a man.\u00a0 So one begins to doubt.\u00a0 One begins to cease to believe in a world order in which God has a definite place.\u00a0 One really begins to think that God is on leave.\u00a0\u00a0Otherwise, th<\/strong><\/em>e present state of things wouldn’t be possible.\u00a0 God must be away.\u00a0 And he has no deputy.<\/em><\/strong>” —\u00a0<\/em>Simon Wiesenthal,\u00a0The Sunflower,\u00a0<\/em>p.9<\/p>\n

Wiesenthal’s testimony echoes the Psalms: “How long, O Lord?\u00a0 Will you forget me forever?\u00a0 How long will you hide your face from me?” (13:1);\u00a0 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u00a0 Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning”\u00a0 (22:1); “Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me?” ( 51:11).\u00a0 Simon’s “Psalm” is a corporate one, on behalf of a people, not just an individual.\u00a0 Yet it is deeply personal, in spirit of Psalm 38.\u00a0 And unlike the Psalms above, which give way to assurance and praise that God will yet deliver, his words do not echo the strength of such assurance.\u00a0 \u00a0Nevertheless, he presents himself, and the testimony he embodies is powerful.<\/p>\n

Later in his story, Simon adds another awful irony to the violence of the SS man’s request:\u00a0 “Then<\/em> (Klaus) sighed and whispered, “My God, my God.”\u00a0 Was he talking about God?\u00a0 But God was absent . . . on leave, as the woman in the Ghetto had said.\u00a0 \u00a0 Yet we all needed Him; we all longed to see signs of His omnipresence\u00a0 . . . For this dying man, however, and for his like there could be no God.\u00a0 The Fuhrer had taken His place.\u00a0 And the fact that their atrocities remained unpunished merely strengthened their belief that God was a fiction, a hateful Jewish invention.\u00a0 They were never tired to trying to “prove” it.\u00a0 But now this man, who was dying here in his bed, was asking for God!”<\/em><\/p>\n

In the midst of God’s very apparent absence, it is the killer<\/em> who calls out for God in a seemingly personal way, who invokes God’s name in a manner that tests the meaning of Exodus 20:7.\u00a0 \u00a0He does so in front of a victim who has “longed to see signs of (God’s) omnipresence” in the midst of horror and mass murder, but cannot perceive them, his own prayers unanswered.\u00a0 What God is available to Klaus?\u00a0 The One who has failed to respond to the prayers of the millions who perished?\u00a0 Indeed, in the SS man’s life the Fuhrer had taken the place, the authority, of the God of Klaus’s childhood.\u00a0 Yet in his own “death chamber” he cried out for God.\u00a0 Which one would Klaus’s Psalm be?<\/p>\n

What seems remarkable to me is how Simon stayed with Klaus in spite of wanting several times to flee.\u00a0 He acknowledged that he felt sorry for the young SS officer.\u00a0 Even when Klaus vainly and horribly compared his own suffering to the Jews who had been murdered–“Look, those Jews died quickly, they did not suffer as I do”–Simon, who stood up to leave, allowed the SS man’s hand to hold him longer. (p. 52)<\/p>\n

“I cannot die without coming clean,” Klaus told him;\u00a0 ” I want to die in peace, and so I need . . . I know that what I am asking is almost too much from you, but without your answer, I cannot die in peace.”<\/p>\n

Simon acknowledges, “In his confession there was true repentance, even though he did not admit it in so many words” (p. 53).\u00a0 But he remained silent, and eventually got up and left the room without giving Klaus what he wanted.\u00a0 \u00a0Biblically, the scene reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke Chapter 16.\u00a0 Where the rich man, who feasted behind his locked door while the poor Lazarus starved to death on the porch, is shocked to discover that he is equal to Lazarus in death.\u00a0 And beyond, it is Lazarus who is comforted in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man suffers on the other side of a “great gulf” between them, one that reflects the awful distance that had defined their common life.\u00a0 \u00a0In the parable, the now-anguished rich man wants Abraham to send Lazarus across the gulf to bring water to the parched rich man.\u00a0 But Abraham will not.\u00a0 And in the scene between Klaus and Simon, the condemned Simon will not be the vehicle, the servant, who will be expected to carry the mercy and forgiveness that the SS officer now seeks for himself. “I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and to ask forgiveness from him.\u00a0 Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left.”<\/p>\n

In my next post, I will examine more deeply the questions Simon asks of himself and the reader.\u00a0 But for now I want to suggest that Simon indeed manifested a number of the qualities of for-giveness that we consider regularly on this site.\u00a0 While he did not and could not absolve Klaus nor excuse him in any way, Simon’s life gave testimony to humanity in the face of inhumanity.\u00a0 His willingness to remain and to share his own humanity –even in silence– was a grace that powerfully interfered with the depths of depravity.\u00a0 He listened carefully, as his account reveals, and acknowledged his own sensitivity to the man’s anguish.\u00a0 If there is a shred of hope for the world in this murderous wilderness, it is less in Klaus’s deathbed confession than in Simon’s struggle of conscience.\u00a0 His visiting of Klaus’s mother after the war is further manifestation, as is his fidelity to truth.\u00a0 He honored the dead by giving unflinching (if silent) testimony to Klaus’s relationship with his victims.\u00a0 And Simon Wiesenthal’s postwar role in bringing Nazis to justice is one that revered accountability over vengeance, a work that might help change the future direction of human history.<\/p>\n

All of this in the experience of God’s absence.\u00a0 Yet, as I read and re-read Simon’s story, it is the absence of those who might have confessed themselves to be “God’s people” that impacts me<\/strong> deeply:<\/p>\n

–“There assembled inside the gates of the High Schools a crowd of fraternity students wearing ribbons inscribed ‘a day without the Jews’ (p. 19).”<\/p>\n

–“The minority reigned because of the cowardice and laziness of the majority (p. 19).”<\/p>\n

–“I asked myself \u00a0if it was only the Nazis who persecuted us.\u00a0 Was it not just as wicked for the people to look on quietly and without protest at human beings enduring such shocking humiliation (p. 59)?”<\/p>\n

–“He is the type who is always on the side of the people in power . . . The Nazis need people like him.\u00a0 They would be helpless without them (p. 72).”<\/p>\n

–“Most said they had been against it, but were frightened of their neighbors (p. 91).”<\/p>\n

–Of Klaus and others on a similar path: “In their youth they received religious instruction, and none had a previous criminal record.\u00a0 Yet they became murders, expert murderers by conviction.”<\/p>\n

Yes, we ask along with Simon where God is in the midst of such horror.\u00a0 But in the manner of the biblical text itself, Simon’s story is as much or more about us as it is about God.\u00a0\u00a0To cease to “believe in a world order in which God has a definite place” seems wise in a world where God’s love is crucified. Can God be other-wise?\u00a0 Simon offers us hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wiesenthal, Simon.\u00a0 (1969; 1997).\u00a0\u00a0The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>New York: Schocken Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is the second in a series of reflections on Simon Wiesenthal’s classic The Sunflower: on the possibilities and limits of forgiveness.) “I read somewhere that it is impossible to break a man’s firm belief.\u00a0 If ever I thought that were true, life in a concentration camp taught me differently.\u00a0 It is impossible to believe[…] <\/p>\n

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