Is Punishment Love?

Dialectic Journal #1 for Night, by Elie Wiesel

"Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.
Akiba Drumer said: 'God is testing us. He wants to find out whether we can dominate our base instincts and kill the Satan within us. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us relentlessly, it's a sign that He loves us all the more.'"

Concentration camps would seriously force you to think through your religious belief systems. Babies being thrown into fire, daily beatings, and total manipulation. To them, it's God saying, "I'll beat the hell out of you, but I love you more than you think." Isn't that a little twisted? Seeing God as the ruler of the universe must mean that Satan is God the Father as well. So much punishment and pain can be experienced in this world, and it makes you wonder how involved God really is in the world. This book, if taken from the stance of Wiesel and his fellow Jews, makes you not only afraid of the world, but afraid of God. It is hard for them to blame God for being so ruthless, but they can't deny that God is involved in it. It is not pleasant at all for me to imagine living and thinking like they did at the time of the Holocaust.