Our Faith In Its Teenage Years

We were asked to read Night along with the book of Job so that we could observe the power of our faith, and what it takes to be broken. In Job, he was falsely punished, the thing that destroyed his faith, questioning his prayers and his loyalty to an all-powerful God who was all-demanding. He thought that, if God was unsatisfied with the perfect loyalty of Job, what was he satisfied with? He concluded that God could never be satisfied. Job’s perception of God can also be observed in many parents of present day. For instance, one father may never be satisfied with his son’s athletic or academic performance, while a mother may never be pleased by her daughter’s appearances. This is something that causes the child to lose faith in their parent’s judgment, but after a while of struggles and disappointments. In Night, Elie’s god died within him when he experienced God’s indifference towards the events of the Holocaust. He was shocked at how cruel God can be when standing there, watching the horrors from the outside. In this way, I believe these texts try to show us that God can often display adolescent traits, like mood swings. He can defend someone he favors, or punish whoever he dislikes, simply because of a whim. God’s inconsistency is demonstrated when he doesn’t act during the mass murder of his people, but does help his people to expand. In other words, God chooses to enable expansion as well as suppression of his people. His helping-hand is picky on where it chooses to aid.

The texts we read are chosen to show us during which conditions are people’s faith for God maintained. It is wrong to believe in God only when he helps you. Like a friend, you must not only be someone’s companion when it works to your favor, but vice-versa as well. In other words, you shouldn’t be someone’s friend only when they let you copy off their notebook, but when you let him copy of yours too. In the same way, we shouldn’t have faith in God only when God aids us financially, socially, etc… In the same way that we trust God when he helps us, we should also trust him when he doesn’t.

Faith, in turn, can be limp when being evoked in different circumstances. We should be consistent with it as we are with our daily lives (unless one is a teenager). The inconsistency of one’s faith can be compared to the inconsistency of the emotions one feels as a teenager:

The reality is that, people who don’t often pray choose to do so in a moment where their life is at risk. For instance, people choose to pray while the bank they’re in is being robbed, but never rely on God when his presence is not desperately needed. It shouldn’t take a desperate situation for one to believe and to ask for God’s help. Our faith for God should be like our parent’s love towards us, unconditional. If it is unconditional, then the God in our souls shall become immortal, shall become immune to the events of our lives. If we love God unconditionally, then he will never let us lose faith, as Elie Wiesel says in his book, “You must never lose faith, even when the sword hangs over your head.” Pg. 29.