The Revelation of Jesus Christ

[WhyCzar]

without judgment?

there is a well-known and powerful story — often described as a historical event witnessed during the Holocaust — of Jewish prisoners (including rabbis and pious scholars) holding a mock trial (a rabbinical court or din Torah) to judge God for allowing the atrocities of the Holocaust, particularly the mass murder of His chosen people and the apparent breaking of the covenant.

This incident is most famously recounted by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Holocaust survivor.

As a teenager imprisoned in Auschwitz, Wiesel personally witnessed the event. In multiple interviews and writings, he described how three erudite and pious rabbis (or Jewish scholars) convened one evening to indict God for permitting the massacre of innocent Jewish children and adults.

They put God on trial in absentia for silence, indifference, or betrayal amid the suffering.

• The trial followed traditional Jewish legal forms.
• After hearing arguments (essentially charging God with failing to intervene or protect His people as promised in the Torah), the judges reached a verdict: guilty.
• Wiesel noted a profound, stunned silence afterward — no one cried or cheered; the gravity was overwhelming.
• Importantly, after delivering the verdict, the participants reportedly proceeded to pray (or one account says they began evening prayers), underscoring the complex mix of accusation, faith, and continued relationship with God even in judgment.

This real event directly inspired Wiesel's 1979 play The Trial of God (originally Le procès de Shamgorod), though he set the fictionalized version in a 1649 Ukrainian village after a pogrom (with traveling actors staging the trial instead of a Purim play).

The play explores similar themes of theodicy (why a good God permits evil), divine silence, and human protest against heaven. The story also influenced later adaptations, including the 2008 British TV film God on Trial (written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and aired on BBC/PBS), which dramatizes a group of Auschwitz prisoners holding such a trial in a barrack as they await death, debating whether God has abandoned the covenant.

This episode stands out as perhaps the most direct, documented modern parallel to biblical themes of humans "contending" with or questioning God (like Job), but taken to an extreme in the face of industrialized genocide.

It highlights raw anguish, theological protest within faith, and the refusal of many survivors to abandon prayer or tradition even after "convicting" God.

Maybe that’s heresy to some, but I think they’re valid questions.

Judging from the story above one might even say that not only are the questions valid they are biblical in proportion.

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

If the world goes to war it won’t get better. The sexual abuse of women is a tool, a weapon of war.

Actually, there are parts of the world at war, and women and girls being raped by soldiers now. It’s an age old problem. War bringing down the world?…then more of that will happen in more parts of the world, disproportionately to people that privileged countries don’t care about. That’s not fair judgment. Then there’d have to be another judgment for that bad judgment. And a lot of collateral damage - which isn’t justice either.

 

[WhyCzar]

Why would God create wicked children? How could he? To his own wicked creation, you say? Creating something bad then punishing it. That is not love.

Why would God create automatons?

Would you rather be pre-programmed to always choose good, obey perfectly, and never sin or suffer—since that would eliminate evil, rebellion, and all the pain tied to free moral choices?

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

Why would God create automatons?

Would you rather be pre-programmed to always choose good, obey perfectly, and never sin or suffer—since that would eliminate evil, rebellion, and all the pain tied to free moral choices?

If I was I wouldn’t know the difference.

 

[Mendalla]

Why would God create automatons?

Would you rather be pre-programmed to always choose good, obey perfectly, and never sin or suffer—since that would eliminate evil, rebellion, and all the pain tied to free moral choices?

Interestingly, this is largely getting into the answer of process and open theologies to theodicy. God does not control the universe because God chooses not to. It matters to God that our actions be free and our love be given freely. See the thread we did discussing God Can't by Thomas Oord. That's largely what he is exploring, taking the theodicy problem and looking at how the process/open theological understanding changes our stance on it. Basically, God wants to and has to work with us, not take the wheel, and offers "lures" to try to show Creation their will while leaving our reaction to those lures free. We can take them or not. And if we don't and God sees that the path we chose offers new problems, then God offers new lures. Basically, if we go "where were you God?" God's answer may be "I showed you the way, why did you not take it. Let's try this again." God is all knowing, all powerful, all loving but the love limits the power out of a desire to build relationships with free beings, not automatons who have no choice. God intervenes by inspiring and helping us to intervene.

That's pretty simplistic version. Read Oord's book or another text on process and/or open theologies to see the picture better. The Homebrewed Christianity podcast does a lot of a episodes on the subject, too, since the host did his doctorate at Claremont School of Theology, a hotbed of process thought. He knows Oord and often has him on as a guest.

 

[WhyCzar]

If I was I wouldn’t know the difference.

So would you rather not know the difference then?

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

So would you rather not know the difference then?

Tough call. If I was never able to know it wouldn’t be a question.

The truth, biblically speaking, is we’ve all sinned. The world was primed for it - God’s choice in Genesis, to put two trees and a snake in there - he wrote it in, we’re told. By the biblical account God set us up for it, so we could later experience the wrath of judgment. Even if one were to be spared, they would have to witness those falling all around them - which, as far as I’m concerned, is punishment. It’s trauma. There’s no separation between anguish for me and anguish for my “enemies” because they might also be my friends. If we don’t always see eye to eye, and we’ve all screwed up, that’s the paradox. Life is weird like that - again because we were born into in a world where it can’t be avoided - it’s systemic. It’s a big trap. It gives me no satisfaction to see anyone hurting. To be placed in a world like that feels like a huge injustice in itself. And at the same time, there’s potential for good. It’s been my experience that most people have more good qualities than bad ones - it makes no sense to destroy the world and the love and beauty in it because of a bad set up God started. But by the biblical account, that’s to be expected. That is a reflection itself, of human choice as written and practiced, not a loving God choice.

But if all that is to happen, what was the point of Jesus being killed if we have to face wrath and devastation and heartache anyway? Why not just let him continue to transform the world and teach others by extension? I don’t think we are supposed to be hoping for judgment day. I think it’s a sin. Because we are wishing ill upon others rather than wishing healing. That’s a sin.

 

[WhyCzar]

Would the present look different if the original council of men who decided, selected different books for the New Testsment and/ or in the order they were written?

I don't think it would look much different to me because I have never considered the Bible as more than a collection of writings by ordinary men seeking divine revelation and writing out their experiences in that regard.

I have an anti clerical streak and knowing that "publishers" got a hold of the books and mish mashed them together to suit their own institutionalized religious dogmatic agenda where instead of promoting the radical freedom of Jesus of Nazareth they promoted the Jesus of the Christian.

Ever since @Waterfall reminded me of Gibran I have been finding more and more passages from his works that resonate soundly with my imagination of Jesus and Kahlil Gibran's Jesus the Son of Man: His Words and His Deeds as Told and Recorded by Those Who Knew Him.

It stands as his longest and most ambitious work—a poetic, multifaceted portrait of Jesus Christ, crafted not as a traditional biography or gospel retelling, but as a mosaic of voices from his imagined contemporaries.

"Once every hundred years Jesus of Nazareth meets Jesus of the Christian in a garden among the hills of Lebanon. And they talk long; and each time Jesus of Nazareth goes away saying to Jesus of the Christian, 'My friend, I fear we shall never, never agree.'" - Kalil Gibran

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

The only people I don’t like are people who take pleasure in causing others pain. And I don’t mean people who screw up, or people who lash out because they’re angry and then regret it. I mean the types of people who wake up in the morning with the intention to hurt others. They belong in a separate world. Because they can’t be happy with not hurting others. They revel in it. If revelation means revealing those people, so be it…but does the whole world have to be destroyed to achieve that? I don’t think so. It could be done humanely. Figure out if they have a conscience or not - because that’s key. If not, send them to their own territory where they can’t affect everybody else. I couldn’t condone killing them - even if they’re monsters they can’t help being that way. I don’t want to be around it but I don’t want to hurt them either. I could see finding a psychiatric solution to healing their brains in the future so they don’t have that problem. That would go a long way to healing the world without destroying it in an apocalyptic scenario. If I could think of that, why couldn’t a loving God? Maybe there does need to be another chapter at the end. Regardless of what John of Patmos wrote about his nightmare. Maybe he got it wrong because he had ill intent.

 

[unsafe]

Why would God create wicked children?

Does this say God created wicked children ---

Where do you get that God Created wicked Children ---from this =======would God Bless wicked children ?????????

Genesis 1
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

 

[WhyCzar]

Why not just let him continue to transform the world and teach others by extension?

Who crucified him?

 

[Luce NDs]

God allowed everything to happen through the effect of mankind ... so God wouldn't have to accept the blame ...

Tis the Doppelganger effect ... was the other side of thyself ... "had nothing to do with me" said God in order to self impose the primal command: "to put nothing there to interfere with the autonomous affair. (these are processes that go on without thought ... resembles passionate plays)

Always expect the other to be cranked and screwed ... rather like crawdads in some stories ... clawed beasts!

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

Trump and several of his administration - ICE - the difference between them and other leaders and people in power, is intention, it’s conscience or lack thereof. It doesn’t mean the latter are perfect or never make bad decisions. It’s that they don’t live to cause deliberate pain to others.

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

Who crucified him?

The same people hoping for judgment day.

 

[WhyCzar]

God allowed everything to happen through the effect of mankind

Jesus himself noted that rejection was expected:

The most profound rejection came from the religious establishment.

Especially the Pharisees and chief priests.

But also there is this:

"A prophet is not without honor except in his own town"

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

Revelation is a Love story of a Loving God who is bringing Justice to His wicked Creation who all by them selves have rebelled against Him and He is fixing what we all by our selves did to his once beautiful paradise ---and keeping His covenant with his Chosen nation ------ saving them in the end ---

@unsafe you said it ( I bolded your words). You must believe it.

 

[Luce NDs]

The same people hoping for judgment day.

Thus the Pride and Prejudice connection ... more commentary! Its humbling and reduces power ... avoids blue 'n ... thus red surfaces ... flush with heardebeasts?

 

[Luce NDs]

@unsafe you said it ( I bolded your words). You must believe it.

Self limitation? That'd be embarrassing ... as stripping a soul down to essence ... foul thoughts?

Even smell brains being processed for tanning ... cowhide for binding manuscripts? Life is like that ...

 

[WhyCzar]

Trump and several of his administration - ICE - the difference between them and other leaders and people in power, is intention, it’s conscience or lack thereof. It doesn’t mean the latter are perfect or never make bad decisions. It’s that they don’t live to cause deliberate pain to others.

If Trump is the BEAST and his legion is ICE - is God off the blame hook?

 

[Mendalla]

If Trump is the BEAST and his legion is ICE - is God off the blame hook?

Given what I said about God's power earlier, is God not found in the protests and those to help and heal the victims? Perhaps God cannot directly stop Trump and his goons, but can rally people to help those seeking justice and protection.