This is a story/monologue that Nick Rohlf wrote. It deals with slavery, the holocaust, the coloseum, etc. Why would a God who is loving allow people to suffer...
A Moment in Darkness
by Nick Rohlf
The darkness closes in around me. Soon, everything is black. All around me. I can see nothing in any direction. I might be falling through the air. But I think I'm standing still. On...something. But on nothing. Everything is dark, but somehow there is still light. I can see my hand in front of me as though it were a bright, sunny day. Maybe it isn't really dark, but there's just...nothing to see.
After some time... maybe a minute, maybe an eternity... I hear footsteps. Hear is not the right word, exactly. But I know they exist. I turn around, and there is a man in a casual suit coming toward me. He doesn't look like anything special, but for some reason, I have a hard time keeping eye contact.
“Where am I?” I say. “I have to get to class soon...if I miss again, I might fail.”
The man speaks: “We are outside time.”
A slave song begins to play
Suddenly the darkness around me changes. It's still black, but I am somewhere else, and I see things in the darkness. I see a wide, open field. I see slaves working in the fields. Men being whipped by overseers, women picking cotton by hand. One collapses from exhaustion. I cannot bear to look any longer.
Roman imperial music fades in, perhaps with sounds of shouting, cheering, jeering - a music cut from Gladiator maybe?
The darkness changes again. I am at the coliseum. I am...in the crowd...yelling, jeering, thirsty for blood. I smell... I don't want to know what the smell is. There are two men, chained together. A gate opens, revealing a lion...it looks emaciated, but afraid to attack, afraid of the noise of the crowd.
Imperial music fades out, sounds of torment fade in.
The crowd fades...and a thousand other images appear before me, images of torment. Soldiers dying on a battlefield, starving children begging for a meal......a prostitute waiting for work, just so she can eat tonight. Then finally, after what seems like an eternity, the flashing images slow... and stop.
Torment sounds fade out, funeral music fades in.
I am in a cemetary. I see people...I recognize some of them, only they seem...older. Some are crying. It must be a funeral. I look at the gravestone...and wish I had not. It is my own. I dare not look at the date. I turn my back on the gravestone as it fades away, I turn to the man in the suit.
“You must be...God,” I say, with a hint of disgust in my voice.
“I am.” The voice is different this time... stronger. [Trembling knees] It takes all my willpower not to bow before his feet.
“You brought me here...why?”
His voice is back to normal. “Did you not have some questions for me?”
“Well....” I start off slowly. “I wanted to know more about this idea of predestination vs free will...” Suddenly, a great anger wells up inside me. “But obviously there's no such thing as free will. You can see everything. You know what I'm going to do, you know when I'm going to die, and you know whether or not I'm one of the 'elect.'”
“Yes, what of it?”
“You created us. All of us. Humans. How can you possibly pick and choose which ones are marked for salvation? Why not just create those few 'worthy' people, and never bother with the rest of us?”
“None are worthy.” It's that voice again. This time, it is filled with an overwhelming anger and disgust...and just a hint of sadness.
I cannot control myself. My legs become like jelly, and I fall flat before him. This only serves to further my anger. Some moments pass, and I stand as well as I am able. “Yes, so you're the Almighty God, you made us all, you can throw us all into hell if you want. You're just a spoiled child with too many toys. You play with the ones you like and throw the rest out.”
“Is that all you are? Toys?”
“You tell me. You're the one who wrote the rules.”
“Yes, yes I did. And none of you seem able to follow them.” I detect a hint of a smirk.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. 'None are worthy.' So why do you just pick a few to be your special little pets while the rest rot and die? Oh, yeah, and let's not forget that they don't go against you on their own, you 'harden their hearts,' like with the Pharoah. It's not even their fault.”
“Is that so?”
“Well? Why did you make them if you're just going to force them to disobey you and then judge them for it?”
“Am I forcing you to ask me these questions now?” I feel nothing but hatred towards this divine puppet-master. “You tell me. You have all the answers. You have your little time-line. For all I know, you wrote that time-line yourself, and we're just your little dolls acting it out.”
Traditional Jewish hymn fades in, juxtaposed against a crackling inferno.
The blackness around me begins to shift. I find myself in what must have been Krystallnacht. I see burning synagogues, burning homes, a jewelry shop with broken windows. I see people running about, some chasing, some fleeing.
“These are my people,” says that most despicable of creatures. “Is this my will?”
“You knew it would happen. Don't lie. You knew it back when you created the first human. You knew it would come to this.”
Sounds fade out.
The cries of the tortured fade from around me. Again, nothing but darkness.
“Yes. I knew it would come to this. I knew what humanity was capable of doing. I know what lies in the future. I know every evil that every human has ever, or will ever, commit against me and against one another.”
“So you know us, huh? You know what we're capable of, and you know we can't stop. But for some reason, you just pick a few. You just show mercy to your chosen people.”
“Israel was my chosen people. Israel turned her face from me long ago.”
I cannot help but feel...pity...for this great manipulator of humanity. But I know I am driving the dagger home, and if I faltered, even for a moment, I would not be able to continue. I have to go on.
“It's easy for you to judge us. You follow your will all the time. That's obvious. You know what your will is. But we don't. And even if we did, why should we work our entire lives, for something someone else wants, so we might be saved? Oh, wait, it doesn't matter if we work. Works don't matter. Ephesians 2:8-9. So it's just some sort of divine lottery, huh? We just have to have faith that maybe you'll pick our number and we'll get saved, and to hell with the rest. Literally.”
There is a pause. “Would it comfort you to know your eternal fate?”
I cannot believe the audacity of this man who dares to call himself God, dangling my fate in front of me like a fisherman's baited hook. I let all my anger and hatred surge forth to deliver the final blow. “I already know it well enough. If I had died when I was a believer, I was always one of the elect. If I died right now, I was never one of the elect, and my faith never mattered. If I become a believer again, I was always one of the elect. It's easy for you to make this decision, knowing everything. Try knowing nothing.”
God is...silent. I have beaten him. There is nothing more he can say to me. How could he, an all-knowing God, so casually pass judgment on someone he had created? Someone who couldn't see the big picture, someone who couldn't possibly know his will?
God appears to shrink before me. I sneer down at him, in triumph. I even dare to look him in the eyes. He dares not return my gaze. Then...something happens. A figure steps out of him. A living, breathing person just pulls himself out of him and stands next to him. This figure now stands next to God, wearing nothing but a tattered cloth. I look upon his face. I see... the faces of the plantation slaves. I see the faces of prisoners in the coliseum. I see the Jews from Krystallnacht. I see myself. I see a million other faces, all on this face. But it's still his face. It looks downcast, broken.
God speaks. Again, in that voice. “I keep my Word.”
I do not bother to resist. I fall on my knees. I do not hold back the tears that soon follow. Through my tears, I continue to question Him. “You... you were human. You died for us. Then why did you,” I go on, looking at the other Him, “why did you choose only a few to be saved?”
He in chains remains silent. “I see it all,” said God. “I know it all. I know how it began; I know how it will end. That doesn't mean I will it.”
At this, my heart becomes as frozen as the time around me. He doesn't will it? But everything is God's will. Isn't it?
Hymn fades in again, with the inferno, but this time the crackling fire overpowers the music - the fire grows louder, louder, until the music cannot even be heard, til the actor almost has to shout.
The darkness changes again; we are back in the flaming streets of Berlin. I see a man, a normal, German civilian, take a club and crush it against the skull of a fleeing child. God...the second one...He feels the blow, he crumples to the ground, alongside the fallen victim. God, in the suit...he watches in silence...he doesn't fall, but I know he feels it too. I can see it in his eyes.
The sounds fade out. Darkness slowly lifts, slowly, as the actor remains on the ground, motionless, sobbing involuntarily.
The camp fades around me. The black fades around me. And there I sit, at my desk, sobbing. “I'm sorry,” I say, and for a moment, I wonder if anyone heard me. Only for a moment.
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