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I Am

EJHill
@EJHill
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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.

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Discussion (14)

  • Arahant@Arahant
    EJHill (View Post):

    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.

    I like it.

  • Percival@Percival

    It's been done.

    So when the German camp commander, speaking in English, ordered the Jews to identify themselves, Edmonds knew what was at stake.

    Turning to the rest of the POWs, he said: “We are not doing that, we are all falling out,” recalled Chris Edmonds, who is currently in Israel participating in a seminar for Christian leaders at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies.

    With all the camp’s inmates defiantly standing in front of their barracks, the German commander turned to Edmonds and said: “They cannot all be Jews.” To which Edmonds replied: “We are all Jews here.”

    Then the Nazi officer pressed his pistol to Edmonds head and offered him one last chance. Edmonds merely gave him his name, rank and serial number as required by the Geneva Conventions.

    “And then my dad said: ‘If you are going to shoot, you are going to have to shoot all of us because we know who you are and you’ll be tried for war crimes when we win this war,'” recalled Chris Edmonds, who estimates his father’s actions saved the lives of more than 200 Jewish-American soldiers.

    I flatter myself when I imagine that I would have that much guts.

  • colleenb@colleenb

    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.

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