What about a mind boggling, provocative dialog from the TRIAL OF GOD, at Auschwitz?

When I first heard about the Auschwitz, I was listening to my daily dose of heavy-metal from one of the most renowned bands of the era, Slayer. I was only 14, and the name of the song was "Angel Of Death", from the band's third studio album, "Reign In Blood"...

Better late than never, this was my very first introduction to inhuman Josef Mengele, AKA The "Angel Of Death", who was responsible for performing barbaric experiments on prisoners of Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz alone, at least 960,000 Jews were killed along with 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies) and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war. (Source)

Can you think of a "better" place than Auschwitz, or any other genocidal concentration camp, to bring the GOD ON TRIAL?

"Where were you God, when an entirely abandoned nation went crazy", is a line from a traditional Armenian song which was written to depict the anger towards the "Almighty" who was completely abandoned the Armenian people, during the dark days of The Armenian Genocide. An entire nation exterminated systematically with the most primitive weapons like axes, swords, and, hunger...

"Where were you God?"

Looks like a valid question, isn't it?

If God is the Almighty, capable of ANYTHING... Then why does God allow such barbaric, devastating bloodshed to continue?

Herero-Namaqua Genocide, The Armenian Genocide, The Holocaust, War Crimes Of Imperial Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, And Sudan?

Ten Genocides in a century alone?

Are these massacres really necessary for the big, "good" plan God has for all of us? And if the answer is "YES", then what kind of GOD are we really dealing with here?

- Would you kill a single man for the greater good of humanity?

- Would you kill two?

- Would you kill a hundred?

- What about a million?

As HOMO SAPIENS, one of the greatest problems we have is to think that these questions can be justified by any answers, but they can't! The questions we ask are wrong in the first place, therefore it's impossible to get valid answers!

The questions we see above should have never been asked!

Because it's simply IMPOSSIBLE to create a "peaceful, perfect order" by spilling blood, whether it is an animal or human! (what about plants? One step at a time!)

_{Image Source (The Courtesy of BBC)}

What if you were a prisoner in Auschwitz... What would you think of God and of GOD's "justice"?
Does the creation of a perfect, peaceful order really need your extermination?

In the movie "GOD ON TRIAL", the prisoners decide to make a court and put GOD on trial!

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Rabbi Akiba's (played by Antony Sher in the movie "GOD ON TRIAL") anger towards GOD, and in my humble opinion one of the most extraordinary speeches in movie history!

Here comes the dialog..:

_{The Source Of The Dialog}

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Rabbi Akiba..: Who led us out of Egypt?

Judge..: God led us out of Egypt.

Rabbi Akiba..: I have a question. Why were we in Egypt to start with?

Judge..: There was a famine, so we took shelter.

Rabbi Akiba..: Who sent the famine?

Judge..: Well we don't know much about the famine...

Rabbi Akiba..: God sent the famine. So God sent us to Egypt and God took us out of Egypt.

Judge..: And later he sent us out of Babylon in order that we might...

Rabbi Akiba..: And when he brought us out of Egypt, how did he do it? By words, vision, miracle?

Judge..: Moses asked Pharaoh...

Rabbi Akiba..: And when Pharaoh said no?

Inmate..: The plagues.

Rabbi Akiba..: First Moses turned the Egyptians' water to blood. Then God sent the plague of frogs; next a plague of mosquitoes; then a plague of flies. Then he slew their livestock. Next a plague of boils. Next came the hail, which battered down the crops and even the trees and structures everywhere, except in Goshen where the Israelites lived.

Judge..: But still Pharaoh did not agree.

Rabbi Akiba..: And so a plague of locusts, and then the days of darkness, and finally what?

Judge..: God slew the firstborn of Egypt and led us out of Egypt.

Rabbi Akiba..: He struck down the firstborn, from the firstborn and heir of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the slave at the mill. He slew them all. Did he slay Pharaoh?

Judge..: No, I don't think so. It was later.

Rabbi Akiba..: It was Pharaoh that said no, but God let him live. And slew his children instead. All the children. And then the people made their escape taking with them the gold and silver and jewelry and garments of the Egyptians. And then God drowned the soldiers who pursued them. He did not close the waters up so that the soldier could not follow. He waited until they were following and then he closed the waters. And then what?

Judge..: And then the desert and ultimately the promised land.

Rabbi Akiba..: No. The promised land was empty and a new place, uncultivated.

Judge..: No. There were...

Rabbi Akiba..: When the Lord thy God shall bring you into the promised land you shall cast out many nations before you, nations much greater and mightier than you are. You shall smite them and utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

Inmate..: It shows us his favor. We are his people.

Rabbi Akiba..: And he gave us a king in Saul. Now when the people of Amalek fought Saul's people, what did the Lord God command? I'll ask the

Scholar.

Scholar..: Crush Amalek and put him under the curse of destruction.

Rabbi Akiba..: Was Saul to show any mercy to spare anyone?

Scholar..: Do not spare...

Rabbi Akiba..: Do not spare him, but kill. Kill man, woman, babe, and suckling, ox, and sheep, cattle and donkey. So Saul set out to do this and on the way he met some Kenites. Now these were not Amalek's people, he had no quarrel with them. He urged them to flee. And the Lord our God was he pleased by the mercy of Saul, by the justice of Saul?

Scholar..: No. No he wasn't.

Rabbi Akiba..: And when Saul decided not to slaughter all the livestock and to take it to feed his people, was God pleased with his prudence, his charity?

Scholar..: No.

Rabbi Akiba..: No, he was not. He said, you have rejected the word of Adonai, therefore he has rejected you as king. And then to please the Lord our God, Samuel brought forth the king Agar and hacked him to pieces before the Lord at Gilgar. After Saul there came David who took Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite to himself after arranging to have Uriah killed -- against the wishes of God. Did God strike David for this?

Scholar..: In a manner of speaking...

Rabbi Akiba..: Did he strike Bathsheba?

Scholar..: In the sense that when they had...

Rabbi Akiba..: Adonai said, since you have sinned against me, the child will die. (Turning to the

Judge) You asked earlier, who would punish a child? God does.

Rabbi Akiba..: Now did the child die suddenly, mercifully, without pain?

Scholar..: In a...

Rabbi Akiba..: Seven days. Seven days that child spent dying in pain while David wrapped himself in sack and ashes and fasted and sought to show his sorrow to God. Did God listen?

Scholar..: The child died.

Rabbi Akiba..: Did that child find that God was just? Did the Amalekites think that Adonai was just? Did the mothers of Egypt -- the mothers -- did they think that Adonai was just?

Scholar..: But Adonai is our God, surely...

Rabbi Akiba..: Oh, what? Did God not make the Egyptians? Did he not make their rivers and make their crops grow? If not him, then who? What? Some other God? But what did he make them for? To punish them? To starve, to frighten, to slaughter them? The people of Amalek, the people of Egypt, what was it like for them when Adonai turned against them? It was like this. Today there was a selection, yes? When David defeated the Moabites, what did he do?

Judge..: He made them lie on the ground in lines and he chose one to live and two to die.

Rabbi Akiba..: We have become the Moabites. We are learning how it was for the Amalekites. They faced extinction at the hand of Adonai. They died for his purpose. They fell as we are falling. They were afraid as we are afraid. And what did they learn? They learned that Adonai, the Lord our God, our God, is not good. He is not good. He was not ever good. He was only on our side. God is not good. At the beginning when he repented that he had made human beings and flooded the earth. Why? What had they done to deserve annihilation? What could they have done to deserve such wholesale slaughter? What could they have done that was so bad? God is not good. When he asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham should have said no. We should have taught our God the justice that was in our hearts. We should have stood up to him. He is not good. He has simply been strong. He has simply been on our side. When we were brought here, we were brought by train. A guard slapped my face. On their belts they had written "Got mit uns" -- God is with us. Who is to say that he is not? Perhaps he is. Is there any other explanation? What we see here..: his power, his majesty, his might, all these things that turned against us. He is still God, but not our God. He has become our enemy. That is what's happened to our covenant. He has made a new covenant with someone else.

What do you think?
Isn't it a great example of "critical thinking"?

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NOTE: I would also suggest you to listen this WONDERFUL TedX TALK. You can't miss it. This talk also inspired some of the ideas discussed here.

NOTE: This is our second post from the series "Quotes From Movie Characters ; The Protagonist, The Antagonist, and Everything In Between" - You may check the first post, quotes from Michael Corleone from here (NOT that we support any form of crime, for sure, WE HATE IT! :))