When I was around Nine years old I lost my sister to Leukemia. As one would with any loss of a sibling I found this very hard and found out the hard way not only after loss are you faced with a massive hole in your life, but you begin to question everything. You question why it wasn’t you, you question what your purpose is and you wonder how there could be good/ hope in a world that is so harsh that it would take away someone you love so much.

Prior to my loss I had held full belief and hope in god, I enjoyed visiting synagogue and loved the tunes to the prayers. Alas, today, as a 16 year old the idea of a god disturbs me. As I attend a Jewish school it is compulsory to study the subject and a section of this being the ethics of our forefathers. Within the syllabus arouses the issue of ‘how there could be a god with all the injustice in our world’. Jewish attitudes dictate that there is poverty because despite man being blessed with the resources to prevent and eliminate the problem, man does not share out his wealth. It is said that suffering is a test of our belief in god and should we ‘pass’ (survive trauma yet maintain belief) then we will be rewarded. This comes from the story of ‘Job’ that dictates that he was deprived of all his riches and started to live a simple (yet religious) life and in result it is said god doubled his initial riches. In my opinion this simply does not justify how a force that is supposedly omnibenevolent (all loving) would strike down his own people like bowling pins.

To avoid misinterprettation I would like to state that I'm not denouncing any religion, and for some it's what is essential in their hour of darkness- their glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps I am being bias on the subject, or perhaps I have just seen enough to have lost faith.