Who knew that there were so many churches in northwest Ohio? As I watch Face the Nation and Meet the Press this Sunday morning, a bevy of church closings scroll across my screen, the day after the snowfall. Amazing number and array of names. I often say that I belong to the Second First Agnostic Church; the first was pillaged and burned to the ground by righteous Christians.
Frank Cottrell Brice of The Guardian penned a piece he called, Losing My Religion, which is written around the film, God on Trial. He begins:
People start to write because they think they can change the world for the better. In the end, you find that it's hard enough to make your writing better. Occasionally, though, you can change something, even if it's only yourself. You probably already know this story: a group of prisoners in Auschwitz convened a rabbinical court, put God himself on trial - and found him guilty. I'm pretty sure now that it's an apocryphal tale...
Further in his article, Brice says, "So God On Trial stopped being about theological arguments, and became about the fact that people might be capable of having a theological argument on the way to the gas chamber."
The dream of the Man in the Sky Above continues. If the deity does exist, why the suffering and hate? Oh, those soaked in Scripture will be quick to pull one out to cover this issue or any other related to a question raised. As if the quote actually assuages the thought and puts it to rest. "We know not the..." Exactly. That's the point of the inquiry. Folderol.
On the way to the gas chamber...
