“Dare You Deny That I Am Just?”
Grief and Protest in the Judeo-Christian Experience

Though he slay me, I will hope in him;
Yet I will argue my ways to his face. 

—Job 13:15 (ESV)

The most formidable bond of religion may well be to live in this world as if we didn’t. Believers are not insulated from the difficult seasons of life, and renowned authors and committed theists Elie Wiesel and C.S. Lewis speak of the clash of deeply-held faith with the reality of evil as a highly emotive—often painful—experience for which religion cannot always account. In fact, faith rarely provides satisfactory answers, as Lewis expresses so poignantly in his 1961 work A Grief Observed: “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand” (25). While it is impossible for any one writer to represent the views of an entire religious tradition, the words of Wiesel, a Jew, and Lewis, a Christian—in combination with commentary on the Bible’s Book of Job—provide an invaluable window into the spinning, spiraling mind of a faithful man during his darkest hour. Their grief and protest in the face of unimaginable suffering offer insight (if not answers) into the ways flawed people survive in a flawed world under the watchful eyes of God.

The enormous task of reconciling God’s goodness with the reality of suffering necessitates the practice of theodicy, defined by James C. Livingston in Anatomy of the Sacred as “justifying the ways of God” (235). Livingston writes further, “Theodicies derive from the fact that evil and chaos must not only be endured but also explained if a sense of fatedness, meaninglessness, and despair are to be held at bay” (236). Thus, some sort of explanation for seeming inconsistencies is essential if the integrity of belief in a God who cannot be other than good is to be maintained. The logical stakes are enormous: “If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine” (Lewis 27-28). Still, centuries—millennia—of study has done little to force these two apparent opposites into some kind of cooperation. To this day, as Elie Wiesel writes in Open Heart, “As I try to explain God’s presence in Evil, I suffer” (67). The end goal of theodicy, then, is to find some way to believe in man in spite of man’s failures, “to explain to God that I believe in Him in spite of Himself” (Wiesel 68), in spite of constant reminders that lived human experience is far from a promised peace. 

Both Open Heart and A Grief Observed, as well as Wiesel’s play The Trial of God, can be understood in a similar sense as the Book of Job. Jews and Christians share Job’s story, recorded as “...a dialogue between a man who has suffered personal losses and physical afflictions and his three friends who attempt to ‘comfort’ him by debating various philosophies of suffering” (Cook 40). Livingston notes that careful reading of the Book of Job has suggested four possible theodicies: a theodicy of retribution, a theodicy of soul-making or moral development, a theodicy of submission, and a theodicy of protest (247-52). Ancient theological understanding based on Deuteronomy argued primarily for a theodicy of retribution, “...the direct consequence of human failure or rebellion against God” (Cook 42). However, as Job’s story progresses, it becomes less and less clear that “Job’s sufferings must be the result of sin, and if he repents he will prosper again” (43). Neither does moral development seem an absolute explanation, as Job is repeatedly shown—and affirmed by God—to be a righteous man. Wiesel’s The Trial of God suggests a fifth theodicy: that of free will. The “free will defense” is presented by the character of Sam, who speaks in God’s defense. Sam argues that human freedom is the source of evil, almost entirely removing God and His responsibility from the equation (Faulstick 294-96). However, that Sam is revealed to be Satan disguised in the play’s final act seems to suggest this theodicy may be the least helpful, and least true, of all. Interestingly, within the Book of Job itself, 

From Job’s speeches it seems that he does not have an explanation himself for human suffering, and his polemical responses do not propose a new theodicy… He is innocent, yet he suffers; he is guiltless, yet he is being punished. This, he argues, is unjust and he is forced by the weight of his own argument to demand justice. But from whom? Who will speak in his defense, or right the wrongs? (Cook 53)

The authors call on us to unequivocally reject any of these theodicies as sufficient in themselves, because there are circumstances under which no justification seems to exonerate God. As Faulstick rightly puts it, “Those of us who have only suffered mildly cannot do theodicy seriously without considering the experience of those who have suffered intensely” (297). And, as both Lewis and Wiesel point out, half-baked theodicies at best comfort the one who is not suffering.

Berish, God’s accuser in The Trial, asks: “Could the killer kill without His blessing—without His complicity?” (qtd. in Faulstick 299). The omnipotence of God, fully accepted as a foundation of faith in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, seems incompatible with the belief that human action is the cause of evil. If God is truly good, why does He not intervene to prevent the suffering of innocents? Deeply traumatizing personal experience during the Holocaust left Elie Wiesel with a truly horrifying knowledge of what not just man, but God is capable of—after all, “In the Judeo-Christian tradition, humanity is created in the image of God” (Faulstick 294). Wiesel says of his groundbreaking novel Night: “To begin, I attempted to describe the time of darkness… in which every sentence, every word, reflects an experience that defies all comprehension” (qtd. in 40). He continues, “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me of all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself” (67). For a theodicy to account for such an experience as his, it must prove “...that the pain and sorrow will somehow be used by God or…be shown by God to be justified. Faith rests in that assurance” (Livingston 252). But even without admitting of a cruel or tyrannical God, “The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is… hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist” (Lewis 42-43). God’s absolute benevolence, then, is why He does not heed the cries of His people: like the surgeon who cuts deep with his sharp, cold knife, all He does is somehow for our good. Lewis’ bewildered musings seem to reluctantly support a theodicy of submission. “Such is My will,” He declares; who are we to deny it?

However, the conviction that He knows what is best for us, and that we do not, cannot account for God’s deafening silence. We are provided no prescription regimen for God’s bitter medicine. The punishing blows He seems to relish in dealing His most vulnerable creatures, and His harsh answer to Job, demands, Where is the God we know? Even if “He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers,” as Wiesel suggests (69), that God could not, would not, will such a world as this. Perhaps we do not know what is best for us, but we surely know what is wrong—and while God may not answer our summons to explain Himself, He does owe us answers. Still, for many believers, grappling with these questions is akin to trying to squeeze water from a rock. Lewis laments, “When I lay these questions before God I get no answer… as though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand’” (69). But it is precisely this not understanding, and the abject refusal to take comfort in platitudes, that breathes bold life into a radically different theodicy: a theodicy of protest. Rather than trying to explain God and His ways right out of existence, this “antitheodicy” demands God explain Himself. Speaking to a certain universality among theists, antitheodicy too seems humbler than the traditional cause-and-effect explanations always wandering into the murky waters of anthropomorphism. God, who knows no bounds, “... is guilty; God, too, must bear a large share of responsibility for evil. God must be put in the dock and interrogated, and called to account” (Livingston 252). In this way, a theodicy of protest is radically courageous. Questioning God—indeed, speaking to Him at all with anything but humility and gratitude spilling from our hearts and dripping from our lips—is dangerous, almost impossible for those who love Him. Wiesel asks bitterly, “What shall I say to God? That I was also counting on His help? Shall I have the nerve to reproach Him for His incomprehensible silence while Satan was winning his victories?” (51). Faith tries to hush these difficult conversations; to quiet this side of experiencing God. Still, angry hands can and will tear down barriers between God and self, demanding why. “But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You might as well turn away” (Lewis 6). But the theist refuses to turn away from God. He knows these things with absolute certainty: first, that there is a God; second, that this God is limitless and limitlessly good, and third, that the only world we know is a cruel experiment in grief, loss, and human depravity. The believer, then, is entirely stuck. God’s seeming inability to justify Himself legitimizes the anger of protest, as well as its undeniable violence. Lewis says of lashing out at God: “I was getting from it the only pleasure a man in anguish can get; the pleasure of hitting back” (40). But if—when the anger cools and grief is finally let to settle, the miserable beauty of the one-sided conversation offers the hopeless wonderer the consolation that we are the flawed party in this exchange. Lewis, still ignorant, nevertheless takes comfort in his own growth: “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t” (52). Only one can learn, so only one will change. 

Protest theodicy is often conflated with righteous anger, but a certain determination that warring convictions can and must be reconciled is perhaps more accurate. Livingston quotes Berish, who has put God on trial following a 1649 massacre of Russian Jews in The Trial of God: “I lived as a Jew and it is as a Jew that I shall die—and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God. And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Because the end is near, I’ll tell Him that He’s more guilty than ever!” (253). Berish’s outburst may seem hardly pious, but his break with quietude speaks to the deepest sort of love submission requires: the refusal to stop loving, even when loving hurts. And, as Livingston notes, “To contest against God is at least to take God’s reality seriously… the believing protester wants both to interrogate God and to resist despair” (252). Anger, then, is permissible, and the throwing up of hands to shouts of I don’t know. But never a loss of faith. Still, the theist struggles to understand a Shepherd at once wholly loving, merciful, cold, and cruel, and Madeleine L’Engle’s foreword to A Grief Observed expresses candid gratitude to Lewis “...for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence… It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth.” Protest theodicy is nothing if not emotionally permissive, allowing us to be confused, angry, and upset without altering the foundations of our worldview. By professing ignorance and shifting the burden of proof to God, we declare that it is not our place to understand and explain suffering, but His.