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Examples Of Theodicy In Night By Elie Wiesel

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The much debated issue of Theodicy has perplexed Christians for many centuries and nowhere does it become more prevalent than when looking at the events of the Holocaust. In this period of mass horror, many Jewish people began to question how a loving and mighty God could allow these atrocious events to play out. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, wrote about his personal experience along with his testimony to how he questioned God’s presence in all of the evil he witnessed firsthand. One of the first times Elie Wiesel begins to question God is after he and his father arrive at the Birkenau concentration camp. As they are being marched in a line they look around to see men throwing babies into a pit of fire, burning them alive. This …show more content…

However before it grows into anything substantial the SS guards discover the intentions and make an example of the leaders by hanging them in the main part of the camp for all the prisoners to see. Along with the leaders, one of the pipels, a child, also was killed alongside his master. Death of the boy struck home with many of the Jews. It was a more appalling stage of evil that made justifying a loving God that much more difficult. At one moment Elie Wiesel chooses an alternative to dealing with theodicy. After seeing the child hang, he hears an inmate cry out, wondering where God is in the mist of this. In Elie’s head he thinks, “…Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…” (page 65). This morbid thought began to bring about the reality of an approaching atheism in Elie Wiesel’s life. Not that Wiesel in the end completely accepts it but in an effort to find an alternative to theodicy, he dances around the idea that his God is dead. Another selection comes further along into Elie’s story and it continues to take a toll on all on the Jews. Many lose the majority of their faith. Instead of dealing with the immense problem of evil, which they can no longer disregard or ignore, they turn to a different alternative, athesism, which is to deny their faith all together. Like Elie, most of these

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