This past week, the Austin American Statesman featured an op-ed piece by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. In his piece, Cohen reflects on words that Pope Benedict spoke during his visit to Auschwitz last month.
"In a place like this, words fail," the Pope said. "In the end, there can only be dread silence--a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God. Why, Lord did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"
The Pope's words at Auschwitz clearly agitate Cohen. He believes the Pope did little more than justify the Roman Catholic Church's own silence during the Holocaust. According to Cohen, the Pope essentially said, "If God was silent, who could blame the church for being silent as well?"
I think Cohen makes a valid point in his critique of the Pope. But he presses his point much further by asking the question, what does God's silence mean, and what does it mean that God tolerated the Holocaust?
Does it mean God approved of it?
Does it mean God liked what God saw?
Does it mean that to God the Nazis were ok?
Or does it mean God just didn't care? In Cohen's words, God "didn't give a damn?"
Cohen rejects these answers, concluding instead that God's silence proves God's absence. He writes, "Where were you God? I don't think you were silent. I don't even think you were there...I know Holocaust survivors who are religious. I don't understand it. I know others who feel that Auschwitz is proof that there is no God. I understand that. I am sure there are people who feel that way about Biafra or Rwanda or even Hurricane Katrina. I can understand all of that, too."
The Pope's words and Cohen's response raise a number of difficult faith questions and theological issues.
Was God silent during the Holocaust? God did not directly intervene to stop the systematic mass murder of millions of innocent people, but does this mean God was silent?
Is it accurate to say God tolerated the Holocaust? Is tolerate really the best word to describe God's response? Especially given Cohen's interpretation of "tolerate" to mean at best God not caring, and at worst God sanctioning the Holocaust.
If God exists, and God is good, and loving, and powerful, then why does God allow such horrible things to happen to human beings in God's creation? Why doesn't God intervene to stop them?
These are age-old questions. Powerful questions.
In response, I don't think it is accurate to say God was silent during the Holocaust. In the madness and the cowardice that consumed so many people during the Holocaust, I believe it more accurate to say, many stopped listening to God.
Nor do I believe it is accurate to say God tolerated the Holocaust, especially if by tolerate we mean God didn't care about it, or worse, God sanctioned it.
I believe some people--Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes immediately to mind, but there were others--some people were listening to the God who was not silent, and in responding to what God was saying to them, they refused to sit back and tolerate what the Nazis were doing. They resisted.
Instead of saying God was silent and God tolerated the Holocaust, perhaps the Pope should have confessed that many in the church were not listening to God, and that many betrayed God by themselves tolerating the Holocaust.
But what about this whole issue regarding God's intervention, or non-intervention, to stop acts like the Holocaust? As far as we know, God does not intervene to save us from human acts of cruelty, oppression, violence, or murder. I say as far as we know because how would we know if God intervened?
What if the Nazis were going to kill 12 million and God put a stop to it at 6 million? How would we know? What if terrorists were going to blow up the city of Houston with an atomic bomb last week, but God intervened to stop it? How would we know? What if someone who doesn't like our church's Torture Is Wrong banner was going to burn our church down last night, but God prevented it from happening so you could hear my sermon this morning? How would we know? Like I said, as far as we do know, God does not intervene.
But what if God did intervene, and what if we knew that God intervened? Imagine the questions we would be asking then.
Why God, why did you wait until the Nazis killed 6 million people before you stopped the Holocaust? Thank you for preventing 12 million deaths, but why did you wait until they killed 6 million?
At what point would we expect God to intervene? After one million deaths? We'd still be asking, God, why did you wait until they killed one million?
Half a million? Why half a million, God?
Five Hundred? Fifty?
Would we have wanted God to intervene after the Nazis killed one person? We'd be asking God, why did you allow the Nazis to kill that one? Why couldnt you have saved that one person's life?
Let's not even get into the issue of how God would intervene. It just seems to me that God would have to intervene every single time someone was about to treat another person in a cruel, oppressive, or violent manner. Otherwise, we'd drive ourselves crazy asking questions like:
God, why did you wait so long to intervene?
Why did you save this person but not that person?
Why did you intervene here but not there?
Think about what God's constant intervention in human affairs would mean for human life on this planet. For human freedom. We know what it is like living with a God who does not intervene, and it is not always pretty. But would we really want to live with a God who did intervene all the time, or even sometimes? It might be prettier, but our lives would lack the freedom we know have.
Like you, I long for a world in which there is no human cruelty, oppression, violence, about as our hearts, minds, wills, relationships, and lifestyles undergo a deep, radical, thoroughgoing transformation.
Again, our faith tradition has a number of ways to expresses this transformation. Being "born again" is one of them. So is "dying with Christ and being resurrected with Christ, or dying to the old self and rising to a new life with Christ. Renewing our mind, or having within us the mind of Christ. Taking on the heart of Christ--loving even as Christ has loved. Taking on the will of Christ--serving even as he has served. Receiving the Spirit of Christ. Clothing ourselves with Christ. Dwelling in Christ and Christ dwelling in us. Sharing the body and blood of Christ. Collectively being the Body of Christ.
These are not just churchy-sounding inspirational phrases. They communicate a reality. To me they communicate the most fundamental reality of Christian faith, the most fundamental truth of Christian spirituality: God seeks to heal, reconcile, and renew God's creation through the transformation of humanity.
God will not force this transformation on us. Rather, God invites us to submit our lives to this transformation, a transformation that God's spirit will help facilitate.
For me, this transformation is the very essence of Christian faith and spirituality. Jesus may have taught a number of religious and spiritual precepts, he may have taught a morality and an ethic, but he did far more than that. Jesus revealed a new way of being human, and he revealed a path that leads us into that new way of being human. Jesus calls us to follow him down that path of transformation, a path through which our old self dies and a new self is born. Jesus calls this path the way of the cross.
His path includes prayer. Long hours of prayer, self-reflection, discernment of God's will, confession of our own resistance to God's will, self-emptying, deepening and expanding our consciousness, and enjoying intimate communion with God.
His path includes absolute devotion to God. Absolute love for God and commitment to God. With all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength. It involves seeking God's Kingdom first before anything and everything else
His path includes love of neighbor. And love of enemy.
His path includes forgiveness.
His path includes service to others, especially the least, the outcast, and the most vulnerable.
His path includes giving up possessions. Giving up privilege. Giving up our lives for our friends if need be.
His path includes exposing lies and hypocrisy, including, most painfully, our own lies and hypocrisy. It includes speaking truth to power. Refusing to compromise with unjust power.
Following Jesus down this path involves incredible discipline and intention.
Following Jesus does this path will lead us to sources of power and depths of joy that we cannot know unless we follow him down the path.
Following Jesus does this path we will encounter phenomenal resistance. Societal resistance out there. Personal resistance from in here, from those parts of us that don't want to undergo a transformation, or don't believe we need to.
In my reading of the Biblical drama, God's promise is this: if we undergo a radical transformation of our hearts, minds, wills, attitudes, relationships, and lifestyles, then we will have a future within God's creation that is joyful and peaceful.
However, if we refuse to undergo this transformation, if we resist it, then there really is no viable future for us in God's creation, at least not one with much joy. It is not that God is going to punish us or throw us into hell. It is more the consequences of our own behaviors, attitudes, and ways of life will make human life increasingly difficult and harsh, divided and violent.
We have a choice. And there is a promise that goes with either choice.
I believe that individual Christians--myself included--and churches as communities must take much more seriously the call to be reborn.
To die with Christ in order to be resurrected with Christ.
To focus more intentional attention on how we shall practice the transformational path of discipleship. How we shall become a community that more intentionally promotes and supports transformational Christianity.
In this church, we don't think of ourselves as born-again Christians. We like to think of ourselves as liberal or progressive Christians. But a truly progressive Christian church in my view is one that supports and promotes progress down Christ's path of personal and communal transformation. By submitting to our own spiritual transformation, we heal, reconcile, and renew God's creation.
May we become a more truly progressive Christian church.
