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I Am
My religious life could broadly be interpreted as me being a Big Event Christian™. You know, that guy that shows up for all the major events such as Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals? That’s me.
I believe in the tenets of Christianity but at the same time view myself as so fallen that I have resigned myself to the knowledge that judgment day will not be pretty. (After that will probably really suck but let’s not get too depressing, shall we?)
There were times when I was prepared to walk away from it entirely. When my father passed when I was 16 I was very angry at the world. A Catholic nun who counseled me during and after my father’s illness stopped me. The love of a good woman who would become my wife stopped me the second time.
As I look around now, I am seeing an uncomfortable amount of hatred based in religious affiliations. I am reminded of accounts of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland when gunmen would burst into large gatherings and ask the Catholics and the Protestants to divide themselves by demanding that the members of one of those groups get down on their knees. Since you didn’t know if they were going to shoot the kneelers or those left standing you had to make a choice. Damned if you do, damned if you didn’t.
These days, I am having more of a Spartacus moment than a religious one. All I really want to do is stand up and say, “I am a Jew.” And l’ll let God and Christ do with me as they please.
Published in General
I like it.
It’s been done.
I flatter myself when I imagine that I would have that much guts.
Being of German extraction I would think, as a young person, about how I would have been on the right side in 30’s Germany. Brave, speaking up, sheltering Jews, maybe taking up arms. Now I know how incredibly brave one has to be to take such actions. I think of the French pilot who stayed with his Jewish passengers at Entebbe. May we all have the courage in this time and the future to be more brave than we think possible.
G-d bless you, E.J. I don’t think you’ll have a problem on judgment day.
Want to know what you would have done in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and early 40’s? Post-October 7th, 2023: You’re doing it.
I understand. I often waver at being angry at Him for what really amounts to my personal failings and ashamed that I would even entertain such thoughts.
But maybe we’re in a different sort of “dividing line” where we have the luxury of knowing history and the unforgivable horror of the Holocaust, and seeing who wishes to see it repeated or allows it to happen, and those who say and live “Never Again.” And it’s not just earthly eyes watching.
I prefer the Calvinism of Lt. Ronald Spiers. That being said, we should all wear a sky blue fabric star of David pinned to our clothes.
Right. I wear one on my hat.
EJ, God wants to be merciful. We all deserve death and damnation, but God islooking for an excuse to be merciful. Have Faith and give him an excuse.
We bought pins for our collars on October 8th.
I am praying for you.
I think you are missing something here – Nazi Germany would straight up demand compliance at gunpoint. You had to decide. You could not go off the grid and stay out of it.
That’s not completely true. Soldiers who didn’t want to kill Jews were not punished for staying out of it. Very few objected to participation, though. Just the same, the Nazis were somewhat careful about who they picked for that work. (If I think about it long enough, I may remember the name of the book where I read about this.)
And while it didn’t involve Jews, there is the case of the Catholic priest that Walt Rinderle wrote about in The Nazi Impact on a German Village.
Walt was a professor at Notre Dame, and that 2004 book is the result of his PhD thesis research. (My wife and I stayed a couple of times at his hometown B&B in Vincennes, IN, where I got a start on early spring/late winter bicycle riding.) Walt’s father had been born in that village, and Walt took advantage of that connection to get information from people.
The priest resisted cooperation with the Nazi regime as much as possible, for example, continuing to run youth church activities instead of morphing them into Nazi youth activities. And my memory is vague now, but it seems there was also something about baptisms.
One day at the breakfast table I asked Walt what the priest’s bishop thought of all that resistance. Walt said the bishop was a great patriot and wanted the priest to cooperate more with the Nazis. (This was not in his book.) He added that if the Nazis had won the war, they would have come to get this priest and execute him. But it is apparent that not even the Nazis could afford to alienate everyone, so they didn’t go that far with a war going on.
And now that you reminded me about all this, I am kicking myself for not visiting the village in September when I had a chance. I had told Walt that I hoped to visit it some day. The last time we stayed at his place he was in the process of working with some of the residents to put up a historical plaque in memory of the priest.
I looked it up after I started writing this, and now see that the village of Oberschopfheim was within easy bicycle riding distance of the AirBnB apartment where we stayed in a suburb of Strasbourg, France. Going to Oberschopfheim and back would have made for a ride of about 40-50 miles, which was just right for me with my folding bicycle. I did most of my riding on the French side of the Rhine, but on the last morning before we packed up I wanted to ride across to the German side, just to set my wheels down in that country. I went back and forth near the bridge, trying to figure out how the bike paths I was on connected to the road, which does get a fair amount of bicycle traffic, and finally decided that even though I could have lifted my bike over the barrier at one point, there was not enough time to do it and get back before we needed to check out. That bridge was about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way to Oberschopfheim. There wouldn’t have been enough time that morning, but I could have done it as my birthday ride a few days earlier.
EJ. Are you so fallen that Christ cannot help you? Many who were much more fallen than you are have been saved and become saints.
The apostle Paul used himself as an example of the mercy and ability and desire of God to save anyone. Paul had persecuted the church. He said it made him the ‘worst of sinners’. Have you been worse? I doubt it.
God is not unable or willing to forgive and restore even the worst of us. You have a strong sense of your own sin. That is not a terrible thing to have a sensitive conscience. You must also have a strong faith that God’s sacrifice of His Son can save you and cleanse you.
Go back to church and hear the gospel again. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Romans 10:17
Not good enough to go to church. Neither is anybody else. You will be in good company.