Death is a sad event. Death by old age or older people dying from illness is sad. A younger death due to illness or tragedy is slightly more sad still. Children dying is very sad. Death in war reminds us that living life is only worth it as long as we have certain things. But wars are also very sad. I watched a DVD last night about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It made me think about a lot. First off, this guy didn’t get much of anything he set out to do done. He was part of the plot to assassinate Hitler, he tried to smuggle Jews out of Germany and only got 14 out, he tried to get married and got executed before he did that, and he didn’t finish his last book, his friend had to finish after he died. But he stood up for something, in the face of something terrible. If you know me well, you know that there are two wars in American history that interest me more than the others. The Civil War, and WW2. Both for seemingly different reasons. I’m sort of a history guy, but I’m no war buff, so a lot of people know more than me about both these wars. But I’ve been to Gettysburg, and I’ve been to Dachau, and I’ve even been to Arlington national cemetery. Even when you are little those places seem to call out to you with pain. The blood is so soaked into the ground, and seems as if it can never go away. Nor should it, people need to remember that when it starts happening again…like it is, and has in Africa.
Life when filtered through war shows us something. It shows us that there are heroes living next door. People talk a lot in life. Few do anything. In war, people polarize. They jump behind what they think is a great cause. For Germany and the Confederacy, people were led into believing they were doing something right. Are the people who stood up for the ideals of that country, who shut up, and took up the task of fighting for it less than those who did for our side? Not exactly a question for me to answer, just something to think about after the winners write the history books. The one thing we know is that sometimes, very rarely I think, there is a right and a wrong. In the Civil war, that isn’t very clear. We only really want to go to war when there seems to be a clear right or wrong. Usually, being attacked is a reason to go to war, because it is right to defend ourselves. When you see a person on the street being victimized by the government, or by a large group of people, that is wrong. What Nazi Germany did to the Jews is wrong. Bonhoeffer spoke against this, he fought against it unsuccessfully, but he tried. He learned what all of us need to learn who call ourselves Christian. Jesus helped people who were victims of society, sickness, and death, and not all of them probably followed him. Not everyone who stood and listened to the sermon on the mount followed him and picked up when he died. But we who do, must pick up and call for justice for the oppressed. We must not sit comfortably in our big houses and warm apartments and be satisfied where there is injustice in the world. Bonhoeffer left Nazi Germany for a while at the start of the War, but came back because he said he couldn’t help rebuild if he didn’t go work with the people in the middle of it now. The Church loves all the people in the world. Never should the Bible be used as an excuse to stop loving. But it should be used as a cause to speak out against the wrongs of this world.
Right now it seems like the Church is so focused on Gay Marriage, and what War does is filter out the crap. If we were in the middle of a huge conflict, and resources were being tapped, war rations were passed out and such, would we give a crap about gay marriage. No, we would be worried about the evil of the opposing side.
Recent events make me wonder what would we (Americans) really go to war for. Most cynical people say money, most overly-patriotic people would say defense (right now anyway…i’m not saying they are or aren’t jaded like the cynics), but would we go to war to protect people not in the US. Bush says “look at the good it did Iraq,” and in a sense I agree. But going to war for weapons that weren’t there is the wrong reason I think. Going to war in Iraq because people were oppressed while Hussein lined his bathtubs with gold bought with food for oil money might be. But what about the Sudan, or when the crisis in Rwanda happened. Where was the UN then. Where was the US. The military power from any one of the major UN countries could end the genocide in Sudan. There are people being slaughtered like the Jews were, real genocide, in our post WW2 world. And we are aware of it, more than we were aware of the massacring of the Jews when we went into WW2. Would we have gone to war with Germany to stop the genocide. I doubt it. Bonhoeffer sent word to England of what was happening to the Jews, and Parliament deemed it as an internal German matter.
Well, anyway, the sociological effects of war interest me. It seems like a filter for all the BS, and all the big talkers. All the people who just talk take the side of the leading party, all the doers go out and work for that side, or stand up and push against it. Bonhoeffer was one man, a theologian, who loved God with all his heart, and subsequently loved his fellow human beings even if they weren’t Christians. He died fighting for that. Maybe no one will ever write a book about me, and I’ll never write a theology book that calls us to act, but it would be good if I could act out my faith, so that someones life somewhere got better, maybe just one person even…I could settle for that. And just maybe, I could inspire someone else to do the same for at least one more person. That would be great.
Jeff says
Another interesting guy is Eberhard Bethge. He compiled “Ethics” and “Christ the Center”, collected the “Letters and Papers from Prison”, wrote the definitive biography of Bonhoeffer. He doesn’t pull punches about Bonhoeffer’s faults, I think the documentary did a good job reflecting where Bonhoeffer erred.
But it’s interesting how this guy, who holds a doctorate in theology, has given his entire career to preserving the writing and theology of his friend and mentor Bonhoeffer.
jeff
BigCat says
Yeah, that guy looked cool.
I liked the documentary a lot. I was mostly trying to point out that he screwed up a lot, but pushed on in the face of extreme adversity. And War really sorts that kind of stuff out. He probably would have been a big player in the German church under different circumstances, but would we know who he is? Would we be watching documentaries on him? Without the war and events around him, would life have shaped his thinking into something worth us noticing now? Who knows? That is what i was thinking about when I wanted to write this.
Siberian says
Hmm.
It seems to me that Bonhoeffer was a bright God-centered point in a very dark, demonic moment of the history of Western Civilization. When someone stands like that, as he did, the world notices.
As Christians, we land so heavily in Bohoeffer’s camp not just because he was a hero, but a hero who spoke radically well of God when all others surrounded themselves with what their itching ears wanted to hear. The rest of the world looks back and sees the heroes. We see them too, but we especially see, amidst the darkest of nights, the star of God’s glory in the martyrdom of our brother.