Elie Wiesel, to my mind, has caricatured best the horrible massacre of people, of humanity, and of faith during the holocaust in his memoir, Night. (Although he might have the “best” retelling of the story, the story itself is worse than “worst.”) In a hundred pages or so, Wiesel is able to recount in vivid detail and in the simplest of language how families are separated from each other forever; how a single soldier, by merely pointing his finger to a man, woman or child can so easily decide his death; how prisoners had to do hard labor with nothing but crumbs of bread in their stomachs and in between lashings of a whip; how prisoners morph into helpless animals, and their captors into brutal beasts in a single day; how men who used to believe that God is as real as the next breathing person across the room soon find themselves echoing Nietzche: God is dead.

It is in the simplicity of the retelling that it is most haunting. But no matter how depressing the atrocities are, I know that’s all anyone who has never been in that concentration camp can ever do: be depressed, be disgusted, be enraged, take pity, vomit. Reading through the story I could feel in my bones the crushing defeat of Elie as he looked on a young boy (as young as he) suspended between heaven and earth in a rope, his tongue lolling as he desperately pants for breath, wanting to die but never quite dying yet. I could feel, but I could never have known.

And I hope I never would. I hope no one ever would.

And then I remembered the story of Job, and how he has suffered, too. How his wealth and kin disappear in a snap of a finger; how he is told the news that his properties are all gone; and how, no sooner than he learned of this, without even a chance to recover from a terrible blow, he is told again that all of his children are dead. So I am amazed when Job is able to declare: The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.

From where did this faith come? This faith that would set aside the sharp and piercing claws of suffering to focus more on praising God? This, indeed, is grace. Purely grace.

(Photo credit: Lance)