You’ve gotta give it to the Brits, when they do television, they can really put Americans to shame sometimes (and then they do something like The IT Crowd and even it all back up again). Recently I came across something called God on Trial, based on an actual event that occurred in Auschwitz at the height of the Holocaust.

A group of newly transported Jews decide to hold a court and try God for putting them in the hands of the Nazis. They get a legal scholar to be the judge, a rabbi to set the defense. They use the Torah as a legal contract between themselves and God and formulate the principles of law into a matter of faith. God must be defined as a personal God who must be looking out for each of His children, punishing only because of a lack of faith or for wrongdoings.

What is suprising in this story is that both sides really do have good points. You can tell the trial is merely a formality for some, but for others, it’s an evaluation of their faiths, which the Nazis have laid severely torn. And as each argument is brought forward, you get a sense that each man really does care about their faith, and are feeling a sense of betrayal by God or sees this a test of their faith, in which they might die for some greater good to come out of it. The possibility of returning to Israel does come up. But at what cost and is it really worth it?

In the end the nature of God is questioned in one of the most electrifying monologues I have ever listened to as one man shows example after example of God’s mercy to the innocent and just how innocent the Hebrew nation has been, coming to a conclusion that is understandable if still misguided.

I have constantly refused to allow my thoughts on religion to play a part of my critical process. What does matter is how these characters wrestle with their perceptions of God and His involvement in affairs. If He is just watching by as they get slaughtered, do they not have a righteous beef with their creator? If he is taking a more personal hand into the events and they are supposedly God’s chosen people, what does that make of God? Or even worse, what if He’s changed his allegiances?

I wonder to myself what would my ideas of God be if I were faced with the possible extinction of my family and friends and everything I know by forces I have always been told my side would triumph over. Movies like Schindler’s List look at the big picture, but cannot see the individual. The closest that gets to this possible question of faith is Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone. And while this movie does lack great direction, the performances are solid by the likes of Stellan Skarsgard and Eddie Marsden. But it’s the writing by Frank Cottrell Boyce that is the real key.

I would love to know what you think of this razor-sharp drama. Leave a comment on the boards.