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God, The Holocaust, and Benevolence

Sitting at my desk, checking emails, waiting for a pot noodle that just won't cool down fast enough, the faint sound of Lady Gaga's Artpop filling the air, I come across an email from the Jehovah's Witnesses. I signed up for their mailing list along with a couple others - The LDS, The Messianic Jews, and The Quakers. I just like to keep up with what the smaller denominations are doing. I think their whole sitch is really quite cute, and I love an underdog.

I opened up this email from the Jehovah's Witnesses, and it had a link to an article on their website. It was really a very generic blog promotion email, that I doubt was even authored by a human, but I clicked on it anyway as the article's title hooked me, it was titled "Why Did the Holocaust Happen? Why Didn’t God Stop It?" I must admit, I was rather curious as to what spiel of apologetics the Jehovah's Witnesses were going to spin around this, and I wasn't pleasantly surprised in the slightest - so I've decided to break it down here to be presided upon by the people in my computer. 

The article begins with a lot of 'myth-busting,' which is the term the church uses for its more convincing propaganda. Some of it is actually true and just re-affirms the reader's right to ask good questions, before beating any dissenting opinion to a pulp. They state:

Myth: The Holocaust was God’s punishment for the Jews. Fact: God did allow Jerusalem to be destroyed by the Romans in the first century. (Matthew 23:37–24:2) Since then, however, God does not single out any ethnic group for a special favor or for punishment. In God’s view, “there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles.”—Romans 10:12, Good News Translation.

Interesting. So we've learned here God isn't an antisemite, which is very clearly evidenced by the fact that he only allowed the Jewish holy land to be destroyed once by Romans. You see because God only allowed this massacre once, it's okay because he was very sorry and promised never to do it again. Since then, God has never given out punishment to single out ethnic groups, which totally proves that he's a Zionist woke king. Also, if you have to clarify you see no difference between Jews and Gentiles, perhaps you take a look in the mirror and ask exactly why you even had to make that statement - somebody needs to fire God's PR guy. They continue:

Myth: If a loving and all-powerful God existed, he would have prevented the Holocaust. Fact: Although God never causes suffering, he sometimes allows it temporarily.—James 1:13; 5:11.

 Okay, those aren't related statements. The 'fact' here neither proves nor even argues that God is loving or all-powerful. I feel like I'm being told that God was simply above intervention because he just couldn't be bothered. Sure, he loves his little subjects and is more than capable of protecting them from evil and suffering, but he's unwilling to prevent the Holocaust, or, come to think of it:

  • The Israel-Palestine "Conflict"
  • The Afghani War
  • The Californian Genocide
  • The War in Ukraine
  • The Slutsk Affair
  • The Opelousas massacres
  • The Soviet Famines 
  • The Circassian genocide

...and that's just off the top of my head. Why is God so above preventing suffering if he's got both the capacity and loves for the people being hurt? Jesus, literally. The article goes on to argue that the Holocaust was allowed because humans were created with free will, which I'll concede is a somewhat plausible point, but it's literally the only thing in this article not backed up by a God quote, or a 'bible verse' and they like to call them - I rather like 'God quote' though. Just when they've gained a little moral footing, and have made some really quite respectable theological arguments, they go and drop perhaps the most offensive notion yet:

God can and will undo all the damage of the Holocaust. God promises to bring back to life millions who have died, including Holocaust victims. He will also eliminate the pain that Holocaust survivors feel because of horrific memories. (Isaiah 65:17; Acts 24:15) God’s love for mankind guarantees that he will fulfil these promises.—John 3:16.

I'm not here to debate what the bible says, because I don't like to use an ancient book written by men as a manual for my own philosophy. I have no doubt that the opinions of the Jehovah's Witnesses are very biblical, and therefore delusional and probably a little xenophobic, but I'm here to criticize the logic of what they're saying, not the 'biblical viability,' or whatever that means. Here, they talk about how God is actually sad that humans are suffering, and absolutely hates the prospect of human suffering because he loves us so much. If only he was an all-powerful deity with supreme control over the universe. 

Seriously, this is like watching an establishment democrat defend Biden because he actually really hates guns, before sulking away because it's not like he can do anything about it, he's only president after all. The notion that God sometimes has to self-limit his power for the good of humanity is borderline laughable. You're telling me that he goes out of his way to casually flood the world and drown virtually all of humanity but simply cannot save millions of Jews and other minorities from mass extermination.

Honestly, could it be any worse? I'm trying to decide if they actually believe this or if they just felt really pressured to make another 'point' - as horrific as it is. I'm not going to make some kind of logical argument against reincarnation here, because it's never a religious person's job to prove their beliefs, only for me to disprove them - and I'm not sure how to go about disproving reincarnation. However, this is a disgusting point for both believers in a second chance and those that scoff at the notion. The suggestion that the Holocaust is actually a-ok because God will bring the victims back to life is almost comical. Even more so, the notion that God will just 'undo the damage of the Holocaust and 'eliminate the pain that Holocaust survivors feel' is genuinely sickening. I'm sure anyone can understand how - as an agnostic person - the suggestion that a God I don't believe in will make the Holocaust (he could have stopped anyways) okay by forcing survivors to forget the mass murder of their people and resurrecting victims of the genocide is positively absurd. 

They do know they can believe in God and admit that maybe he makes mistakes sometimes, right. Or perhaps you should just start suggesting that the lord works in mysterious ways that mortals can't even fathom, rather than spouting antisemitic Holocaust-apologizing rhetoric that only works to encourage the erasure of the event, rather than supporting survivors - instead telling them to just leave it because God'll make you forget anyways. 

Yet the JWs still can't seem to wrap their heads around why some people have started worshipping Satan - perhaps they've just come to the conclusion that at least he doesn't minimize the Holocaust. 

07/04/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson

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