WHO’S WATCHING THE STORE?

A few Sundays ago, I was reading in the newspapers about one the last survivors of a concentration camp run by the Nazis. There are only two survivors left from one of the camps, and I don’t recall which except to know that it was in Poland.

He spoke about the life he led in that God-forsaken place so long ago, and even about the revolt that occurred prior to liberation, and of even watching a father remove his child’s sandals before entering the gas chamber.

The question of why God let 6,000,000 people die that way, by lethal gas was raised, and he said: “There was no God, God was on vacation!”

I thought that that statement spoke to the core of belief in God, to the truth in any religion. Is there a God and did he make these horrors happen, or allow them to occur? Was God on vacation?

I read about the madness of the crusades, the jihad, the senseless murders and beatings of wives and children, the ugly abuse, and we all ask, if there is a God, why is this happening? WHY?

Then I have to wonder if we as a race of animals, the human ones, and the ones that conquer all, that live “civilized” can cope with ourselves? Can we be the God we blame? Did God put us on this earth for a reason? What reason? We have the power to reason, yet we are unreasonable. We do the things we do to each other in the name of God.

I wonder what the point would be if God did allow, or not allow us to do what we do. If he interceded every time we made a move. How could he judge us? How could we be accountable for our selves? Do we want to have an intermediary every time we move, think, or act?

We organize ourselves into different religions, curse other religions as not being the true religion. We decide how to worship God: the right way being our way of course. We play old songs about who killed Christ, whether there is a messiah to come or not, but we forget that it is still God we argue about.

Isn’t God universal? Is his one command to live? To live by the moral standards we impose on ourselves? Then who is God?

Maybe, just maybe he is us collectively. Maybe WE allowed all these horrors. Maybe, just maybe, we are as that famous Pogo comic strip character once said: “We have met the enemy, and it is us!”