Steve's blog inspired me to comment on a program I saw on PBS, about Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted Nazi Germany (even to the extent of being part of a plot to kill Hitler) and was executed by hanging, on April 9th, 1945. The movie contrasted his endeavors with the behavior of the church at large.
I never realized how much the churches actually went along with Naziism -- I guess I was assuming that it was sins of omission (bad enough), rather than sins of commission.
Hearing that the churches actually prohibited semitic pastors, and finally semitic members, makes me wonder what they would have done had Jesus tried to walk in...
It makes me understand that the Jewish fear of Christians is not just paranoia, but is rather something that needs to be addressed by honesty and repentence on the part of the church at large.
And it also makes me wonder what injustices are going on now, about which history will ask "where was the church?". Although I guess I should be more concerned with what God thinks than what history thinks. So let me re-phrase the question: What injustices break God's heart, and therefore should break ours?
2 comments:
The genocide in Sudan is going on before our very eyes, as well as the famines in West Africa. Politics play such a huge role in who gets help and when. So if we're wondering how such a thing as the Holocaust could happpen, we only have to look around us. One of the amazing things to me is that anti-Semitism is still alive and well in Western & Eastern Europe. I traveled once there with a Jewish friend and was appalled at the comments made behind our backs. What we learn most from history is that we learn nothing from history. I'm not sure I would have agreed, however, with Bonhoffer's attempt to assassinate AH. I just don't see that in Scripture. Prayer and repentance are mightier than the sword.
Yes, I have to admit that even while I was impressed at his willingness to go against the flow, I was discomfitted by the assassination attempt -- although perhaps that just shows my own innate hypocrisy, since I wish Hitler had died sooner.
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