An unpublished novel by me treats of
violence and nonviolence as a major theme with hell a subtheme. It is entitled Chrysalis Crucible, and tells the story of a young evangelist’s
coming of age on the short-term mission field in West
Berlin. Following is a
chapter that is a kind of climax of this theme.
Please also read “Violence and Nonviolence – (Part I)”.
If you are interested in dialogue on this,
please feel free to contact the web administrator with your e-mail address and
comments. I will then respond to you at
my discretion. Thanks.
Wayne Northey]
Chapter Seventy-Five
Andy had not seen Petra since the Great Seduction. Would she hit on Jack next? Presumably not Gary and Peter, since they
were after all married. The next time he
talked to Janys, he would ask her to work this through with Petra.
Or should he? The answer was
instantly obvious. He could not trust
himself to do so. He would ask
Janys. He would tell her that she could
let their secret out to Petra:
they were secretly engaged to be married.
He did.
She did. On Friday the 13th
no less, that evening, Janys and Petra
had a very blunt talk in the War Room at the girls’ apartment. Andy still had not seen Petra.
Janys explained afterwards to Andy that she first
approached the issue in terms of her and Andy’s secret engagement. At that, Petra was thrilled for them, then immediately
apologetic.
“Oh Janys”, she had said, “I’m so sorry! Did Andy say…?”
Janys’ nodding in the affirmative led to further
discussion about that side of the issue, that no one appreciates a boyfriend
stealer. Janys said that she approached
more tentatively the issue of Christian sexual faithfulness, sexual parameters,
etc. It was a stretch for Petra; still in part
linguistically. But she eventually
understood everything, Janys explained.
“But some men in the Bible had hundreds of wives,
concubines, and prostitutes, it seems.
King David for instance, a ‘man after God’s own heart’, it says in
Scripture, must have been a sex addict!”, Petra
had exclaimed.
“Ever hear of Wilt the Stud?’, Janys had asked,
wrestling with German and English. “Or
President Kennedy with Resident Kinky Dee… and Alice, and Jane, and Martha, and
Marilyn, and…. Kennedy would have sex
with several different women all in one day, sometimes. His Secret Service would round them up for
him, like Jesus said go to the highways and the byways and compel them to come
in… And strip and screw… in their
case. They all did for President John Don
Juan.
“It’s amazing no one ever blackmailed him and
with that the entire nation. It came
close to happening around the same time in Britain.
“You were probably too young”, Janys continued,
“to remember the Christine Keeler affair. She brought down in Britain the Harold Macmillan
government in 1963 through her sexual involvement with both Secretary of State
for War, John Profumo, and a Soviet Embassy attaché as well. In 1964, there were consequently ‘winds of
change’ for Prime Minister Macmillan, who was turfed out of office. The joke at the time was, ‘Question: Who’s
the worst carpenter in the world?
Answer: Christine Keeler… A few
screws here and there, and the whole cabinet fell apart!’” It took Petra
a while to get the joke with the play on “screw”…
“Well, my dear, that’s a little of why the
Apostle Paul says no to be screwing around, unless in a committed marriage
relationship, if one is a Christian.
“It’s tough when you’re sexy and used to it, Petra. But go read the Book of I Corinthians, then
let’s have another talk.”
Petra agreed. She took it very well. She said she’d apologize the next time she
saw Andy.
Janys suggested they invite him right over and
talk about it. They did. Petra
said she was sorry; Andy did not even see naked boobs. He thanked her. It was over just like that.
“Oh, and you guys, congratulations! This marriage thing must really be neat! Can we talk about it sometime? I have no idea…”
Janys said again, “Read the book of
Corinthians.” And they showed her to the
door.
“I think Petra
got it, Andy.”, Janys said finally. “I
wish we could go to another beach party.
I’d love to see what kind of bathing suit she’ll wear…”
In October as well, the team added to its
activities a Boys’ Club for the winter months, having received again permission
from Wilmersdorf assembly to use their facility. Still no offers of help from any of the
churches they connected to. They had
hoped G.E.’s initiative might have changed things. So far not.
Despite Braxman’s arrest, Fiona had remained
melancholy. Jack was still staying over
Friday and Saturday night’s at the girls’ apartment. Fiona was going
thorough the motions of team
life, but the lustre had gone. It even
showed in her complexion and hair. Jack
understandably cursed Braxman. There
were phone calls going back and forth between Fiona and her parents;
Fiona and
G.E.; Jack and G.E. The phone bills,
Peter’s domain, must have been significant.
Maybe they shouldn’t have gotten those new phones installed… So far,
nothing was being resolved. Jack and Fiona were showing the stress.
Meanwhile, Jean’s health had stayed
constant. For the time being, they too
were holding.
On occasion, the guys’ apartment took in “strays”
met usually on the Ku’damm during open-air Evangelisationen. One night in mid-October, a guy, Mannfred, stayed
with them. He had become ‘saved’ through
a local Jesus People expression known as the Children of God. He spoke
not a word of English, but strangely claimed comprehension of English-language
Christian magazines he perused in their apartment, believing the Holy Spirit
somehow supplied spontaneous comprehension.
Andy felt tempted to press him on content, but other than obliquely so
as not to embarrass him, refrained.
Mannfred only stayed one night, then rather
mysteriously disappeared with not a word of thanks. A few others disappeared with a little
more. The first found the change purse,
and absconded with it. Thankfully there
was little in it. The next disappeared
with one of Andy’s Schaeffer books. He
was less chagrined about that. He
suddenly knew he was changing…
Mention was made of some of this petty theft by Gary in a letter to
G.E. A clear directive arrived shortly
thereafter: STOP TAKING IN THE HOMELESS!
G.E. went on to say that they had gone to Germany to preach and teach the
Gospel. This, he explained, would engage
them in Bible studies, door-to-door and open air work, and many similar kinds
of activities. But it was too risky to
be taking in street people. Especially
men with Sharon,
not at all unattractive, living in the apartment too. Though likewise if it was all girls being
taken in, G.E. would still have prohibited the practice, for opposite reasons.
On the last Saturday of October, Jack had booked
yet another visit to Scott Cunningham at the Zehlendorf American Army
Base. He was going weekly now, working
out with him, hanging out, etc. Jack
never said very much about the visits.
Todd Braxman was apparently being held at the Base now. He had suffered a broken collarbone the night
of the abduction. It had sufficiently
immobilized him that night. No one knew
how he had dealt with that medical condition.
No one quite knew either how he had survived in the intervening
weeks. New German charges however were
pending, for several Breaks and Enters.
Jack’s working out included rebuilding his karate prowess.
Fiona was not doing well; there was talk of
G.E.’s possibly coming to Berlin
in early November.
Jack asked Andy if he wanted to join with him for
the ride that October afternoon. They
agreed that he would not meet with Scott.
Andy said he’d be glad to go along, and take the car to a nearby park
for an hour or so.
The daytime drive to the Base was reminiscent of
the wild drive there the night of the kidnapping.
Andy began, “You know, Jack, I can now imagine
the terror of those Israeli athletes at the Olympics. Look what it’s done to Fiona weeks later,
even with the guy caught.
“She’s not doing well is she, Jack?”
“She’s a mess, Andy.”, Jack said, agonizing. “You know what she’s been talking about
most? Her son, Timmy.”
“So where’s this all going to end up, Jack?”,
Andy asked.
“Almost
for sure G.E.’s comin’ out in early November.
One of the things I’m gonna talk to Scott today about is whether there
may be any kind of psychiatric help for Fiona.
They have a responsibility we both think. It’s a real bummer.
“Her parents want her home. I think now that is the best, too. I’m thinkin’ of leavin’ too, Andy.”, Jack
behind the wheel looked grim. All the
bounce had gone.
It was the first time Jack had come out and said
so much. It was not surprising. It was still shocking to hear it said so
starkly. The whole team was tottering.
Jack easily found parking outside the Compound on
Clayallee. When Andy looked
around he told Jack, “I’ve got a key too.
I think I’m just going to stroll around.
Take as long you need.
“I have a novel idea that just hit me. What if you were to ask to actually see
Braxman in jail.”
“Whatever for, Andy?”, Jack looked incredulous.
“I don’t know, really, Jack. The thought just hit me. What if you
could actually win him over? That would sure set Fiona at ease…”, Andy
was
conjecturing.
Jack shook his head and strode towards the
electronic gate. He was soon ushered
inside, leaving Andy to wander along the Allee. It was like an Indian Summer fall day back
home, though a touch cool. Andy suddenly
thought it would soon be Hallowe’en. On
which planet again? It all seemed
frightfully far away. He was glad Janys
had not joined him. He had some serious
thinking to do. Somehow the sight of
this Compound, representing American power flung to the far corners of the
world, was an inspiration. But not to
sing The Star-Spangled Banner.
Andy’s mind first turned to G.E.’s forceful
missive about only “preaching the Gospel”.
He thought immediately of the Matthew 25 passage.
He felt again overwhelmed with the salvation
message of the passage. It all turned
upon good works performed in this lifetime.
And yet he had been raised all his life to believe “not by works, lest any man should boast”, Paul’s teaching, which
was all after-death oriented. So did
Paul simply contradict Jesus? Did a
choice have to be made of that sort? Or
was James, in echoing Jesus with “ Show
me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”, simply
out to lunch, author indeed of a “right strawy epistle”, unaware that salvation
was freely offered without good works?
Were James and Jesus in their teachings somehow
heretics? Even though Jesus the icon
saved us through His blood? But not
through His words lived out? Then Andy
remembered the startling discovery in Matthew’s Gospel that the “wise man” was
not the one who believed, and the “foolish man” not the unbeliever destined for
hell fire. Rather, the wise man was “everyone who hears these words of mine and
puts them into practice”. And what was the immediate context for Jesus’
“words” to discern what practice? The
Sermon on the Mount, which is chock-a-block full of the call to treat the
neighbour with justice, mercy and compassion.
That was the purview of the wise man.
That was the concrete actualization of salvation that is “today”.
How had Andy missed, how had the entire
Evangelical tradition misread, such evident biblical teaching? Could it be that Evangelicals, for all their
protestations of biblical faithfulness, were instead after all most like the
legalistic Pharisees, “of their father, the devil”, murderers and liars from
the beginning? Andy hated it when his
mind took such turns. This could get a
guy crucified he self-scolded with a chill.
Andy turned to the immense human capacity to
inflict human suffering upon one’s fellow, as he walked alongside the American
Base. The American Army is the most
capacitated in the entire world to do precisely that! Images of Agent Orange defoliating multiplied
hundreds of thousands of hectares of pristine jungle, and doubtless deforming
thousands of unborns for a whole new generation; gas ovens; massive bombings;
scientific excising of “cancer” from the body politic; cluster bombs scattered
by the millions, and jungle slaughter of soldiers, villagers, and anyone else
caught in the crossfire; napalm sending an eight-year-old girl naked down the
road, the searing pain all over her face, captured for the world by a
happenstance photographer. He wondered
at the enormous human capacity and lust for perpetrating overwhelming misery
against others.
The thought struck, had he first heard it from
Hans?, that this had to be the ultimate inversion of evangelism, when bombs and
bullets, Agent Orange, and God only knows what else in word and deed, not “the
good seed”, were scattered indiscriminately upon the earth. Pain, death and devastation followed. Massively.
Then the terrifying reminder that Evangelicals en masse blessed
all that! The ultimate world evangelist gave routine
assent, as surely as Saul and those stoning Stephen persecuted the
early
Christians. Billy always prayed with the
President during times of national crisis.
And with Graham, the vast majority of Western Evangelicals nodded their
approval, like the Nazis at Dachau
and elsewhere in the white coats at the end of those one-way train
trips. What utter perversion of the Good News. What Gospel travesty.
What complete inversion of evangelism. By the world’s greatest
evangelist, and
amongst the world’s most virulent religion propagators: Evangelicals.
How could this be? How could a man, not to mention an entire
faith tradition, so endorse and defend pure, unadulterated evil perpetrated against God’s good creation and his image bearers,
for whom, additionally, Christ himself suffered a painful victim’s death by
“legitimate” state decree? Andy’s mind
recoiled at the emerging sense of sheer horror of what he and his fellow
Evangelicals accepted as nonchalantly as going out for a Sunday School
picnic: mass slaughter of enemies of the
State. This was in company with dominant
Western Christian tradition since Constantine. It was also in lock step with Machiavelli,
Napoleon, Bismarck,
the German Kaiser, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese Emperor, Mao,
to name only relatively recent mainly Western tyrants.
His horror turned to terror that his entire life
he had worshipped God and had been formed in all his core beliefs in company
with such sycophants of mass murder and mayhem.
As if he had been born into a Mafia family, where killing and slaughter
were simply routine, justified as what was needed to “get the job done”, to
enable “normal” life to go on. “Just
War” theory as Christians had always enunciated it, Andy suddenly understood,
was equally the prerogative of the Mob and every vile tyrant known to
humanity. No doubt Christians were more
sophisticated than what a Mafia family godfather or dictator might articulate,
but in the end, it all boiled down to exactly the same thing: terror and
slaughter. People destroyed, the earth
raped and pillaged, all for a “just” cause.
How could he have been so duped, and not have seen the true face of
Christendom, of Evangelicalism, viciously “red in tooth and claw”?
He crossed over the Allee at a light. He walked towards the Base but from the other
side. As he looked at the base, he
imagined all the keen Christians wanting to propagate their faith while they
gleefully slaughtered their enemies in Vietnam. The juxtaposition was stark.
He thought of Christian support of slavery and
the slave trade. Thousands of lives were
stolen, brutalized, raped, terrorized, and discarded at the behest of those whose
unquestioned, until politician William Wilberforce, participation in
“Christian” genteel society was as grotesque then as Nazi concentration camp
guards 150 years later – or Allied bombers or majority Christian supporters of
the death penalty and warfare throughout church history. The entire edifice of Western civilization
after all built upon a gargantuan garbage dump of justified “holy”, wholly,
terror.
There was a bench at the edge of the
sidewalk. The sun was warm. Andy sat looking at the expanse of the entire
Compound.
He was again realizing, like awakening from a
terror-filled nightmare, that this
kind of justification was dominant
Evangelical Christian reality. Not
“justification by faith” intentionally productive of a “life of love”, which
seemed largely a massive Christian fraud, a kind of ferocious legal fiction,
but justification of every imaginable form of harm and destruction wreaked upon
humanity and nature in the name of God.
Andy wondered what kind of powerful sorcerer had incanted such a
pervasive, potent spell, that the entire Evangelical tradition, including
millions upon millions of ostensibly Bible-believing, Jesus-following,
God-fearing souls, accepted such indescribably sick justifications as Gospel
truth? Was there ever any hope of
breaking such a spell, when the Bible, God, and Jesus ostensibly, according to
most mainline leadership past and present, queued eagerly in unequivocal
endorsement?
His mind moved inexorably to Evangelical, in
general Christian, justification of every war fought in the entire history of
the church. All had been blessed by the
church on both sides of the conflict.
Andy knew that over one hundred millions had been slaughtered in the
twentieth century so far alone, mostly with the blessing of the church from
every side. He knew from Hans the
terrible recitation of mass butchery by Western Allies. These hundreds of thousands of immolated
innocents just happened to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time, like
the infants under two that Herod had destroyed to wipe out the
Christ-Child.
Just like that!, Andy saw it with a start. Then: And
they’re still aimed at murdering the Christ-Child! What was that Christian World War II slogan?:
“Praise God and pass the bombs!”. Sick, and designedly destructive of the
Christ-Child in every last one of “the least of these”! Herod’s decree marching orders ever since for
virtually all Christendom, world without end; world brought to a horrible end
possibly in nuclear nightmare!; all enemies for sure consigned to a
God-forsaken end, Amen and Amen, intoned by every military chaplain in the
history of Christendom.
Why was such an obvious biblical association so
out of step with virtually everyone else living in the West?
Incredible!
Astounding! The power of
monstrous myth-making to perpetrate the Ultimate Lie: “Might is right.
Violence is holy.” Isn’t that exactly what he was looking
at? One clarion symbol of that very
mythmaking? A two-millennia religious
phenomenon, Christendom, including right up to its most vehement
contemporary
defenders, Evangelicals, utterly at odds with the most straightforward,
most
pervasive, most undeniably central Gospel ethical truth: Love your
neighbour; love your enemies. The
Core of the Gospel: unbridled reconciliation; the Core of Christendom: endless
violence. Each in diametrically
opposed stark juxtaposition.
Then: Who did Andy think he was?! To see things so differently. Who did Hans think he was? Dan?
Jesus?, the questions thudded like a sledge hammer. Andy physically recoiled. He held onto the bench as if falling. Then,
but whom are Evangelicals following, when Jesus is the rock bottom source of
the Gospel logic against violence? What
had Gandhi said?: “It seems everyone but Christians
knows Jesus was non-violent.”
When Gandhi once was asked what he thought of
Western civilization, he paused, then replied: “I think it would be a great
idea!” Freedom of the Western press for
those who own one. Freedom from violence
for those who own the biggest guns. Drop
that first atomic bomb. Now the Russians
will know who has the Biggest Gun!
Stupid white men facing each other down on Main Street at High Noon. Little kids all; puerile; totally stunted
growth; utter fools every last one, from President John down to Kinky Sex Dee
and Christine and Marilyn… A great idea
indeed, “civilization”, however foreign in the West.
Gandhi might have similarly responded to, ‘What
do you think of Western Christianity?’ with, ‘I think it would be a great
idea…” Then he might have added, “They
could even start by following Jesus!”
What a novel thought. And for
different reasons, but in the end with identical outcome, both believer and
non-believer respond: “So what?” Billy
Graham, the pagan, the lowly G.I. Private in Vietnam, latest evangelistic
convert stroking his New Testament like a good luck charm, while proceeding to
engage in routine acts utterly anti-Christ:
blowing, not welcoming, the enemy to Kingdom Come! That, in the end, is the true measure of
Evangelical evangelism. “Kingdom Come”
all right, when all is said and done, at the point of the gun, the discharge of
the bomb, the launch of the missile.
Praise God and drop those bombs, toss those grenades, spew death from
the automatic weaponry, fire those missiles.
That’s God’s true Kingdom Come on earth for Western Christianity: all
enemies be damned, God be praised forevermore.
Andy knew that his Evangelical peers did not see
war, World War II, the Vietnam War, any war their nation needed to
enter, that
way. That they invariably intoned, he
had heard it, war was a tragic, unavoidable, necessity so that people
could
live in freedom and peace. Which
people?! his mind exploded in remonstrance!
The hundreds of thousands who “are the dead, though short days ago they
lived” whether or not “poppies grow in Flanders
fields”? Which poem was callous call to
continue the massacring. What of their
peace and freedom? They were to be
accorded only the peace of the graveyard?, as Evangelicals and most of
Christendom cheered, saying indeed ‘Praise the Lord, and pass the
bombs! – or
the spears; or the guns; or the missiles; or the electric chairs.’
Sick and desperately evil. What a monstrous lie Christendom had
believed, had perpetrated! For
centuries. And with ubiquitous,
iniquitous, world-conquering outcome.
He could not stop his mind’s stream of
consciousness. He noticed absently geese
overhead. Presumably. He imagined American war planes about to once
again drop deadly destruction upon all beneath, the good creation.
What an abject, calculated rejection of the one
who taught and lived, “Love your neighbour, especially your enemies”. He wondered, as in the story of the Rich Man
and Lazarus, what emissary from hell might perhaps be sent to lift the veil of
abject evil from his fellow Evangelicals’ eyes so that they could see? Or would they rather be as Jesus warned, seeing, yet they do not see; though hearing,
they do not hear or understand? They
already had Moses and the Prophets, and Jesus and the Apostles. If they didn’t “get it” in reading them, what
hope, were one even to raise again from the dead! Did not Billy Graham and “a great cloud of
witnesses” preach ‘Jesus Christ, Risen Again, Mighty to Save, Able to Keep’,
what Andy’s home assembly boldly announced it preached, visible above the
pulpit for all comers? The iconic Bible
wide open in Billy’s and millions of preachers’ hands as they thunder their
evangelistic message without the Gospel;
Jesus denied and crucified in Evangelicals’ blessing of mass victims
everywhere. Jesus the Salvation
Icon. But not Jesus the Exemplar. Horrors no…
Horrors yes.
Andy’s mind reeled, but had nowhere to turn. This could get a guy crucified. He was under no illusion that Evangelicals
believed in Billy Graham, for all intents Pope of Evangelicalism, believed in
Billy Graham far more than they believed in Jesus. If Billy prayed with every President for
victory in whatever war America
was fighting, then Billy must be right
and Jesus wrong! It was surely as
blatantly stark as that.
And who would be thanked for saying, “But the
Emperor has no clothes!” Certainly not
the little boy crying out the sudden revelation in Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. “Crucify him!”, Andy suddenly heard the
Evangelical hordes crescendo in response, as robustly, as resolutely, as
incomprehensibly, as the mob in front of Pilate two thousand years before – or
the soldiers doing Herod’s bidding to the two-and-under toddlers in Bethlehem
so long ago. Why did Andy’s mind think
this way? What was the matter with
him? What had seized his troubled mind
to arrive at conclusions that would get him
crucified, and blacklisted by every Evangelical leader in the world? Who did
he think he was?!
He wondered about Scott Cunningham who wanted
Christ and American Empire; his cake and eat it too; God and Guns. Jack was obviously having a good
discussion. There was no sign of him
yet. Andy felt okay about that. The sun was warm on his face. He still had some ways to go in sorting some
of this out.
Had he somehow misunderstood? Did Evangelicals after all really take
Jesus seriously? He thought
immediately of all the “born-again” military personnel right in front of
him. A real revival, the team had been
told. He remembered what Hans Beutler had
said, recalled his discussions with Dan, and reviewed his own awareness of
church history. No. He was not wrong. The vast majority of
Christians throughout history, and of his contemporary Evangelicals, best
represented by Billy Graham at the White House in his constant blessing of U.S.
military interventions, had always underwritten mass slaughter of America’s,
the West’s, the “good guys’” enemies, worldwide. Whenever it served American, or Western
interests.
There was always justification for Western
Holocaust. The “other justification”
like Paul’s “other gospel” that was pure symmetrical inversion of biblical
“justification by faith”. It was
Evangelicals’ primary gospel; foremost kind of “justification”. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the Bible, was
unknown or secondary.
There was no difference between Evangelical
doctrine and Mafia belief in the end.
Regrettably or not, in cold blood, or with a glimmer of conscience, people must die, the good earth be wasted! Whatever to get the job done. It was the logic of High Priest Caiaphas who
said of Jesus that it was better that one man should die than that the whole
nation perish. Evangelicals, all of
Christendom, had simply repeated that scapegoating anti-Gospel dogma throughout
their long, sick and desperately evil history, who can know it?; Andy’s mind
echoed Jeremiah. The dynamics that had
killed the Prince of Peace were identical to those theologized, endorsed, and
perpetuated by most of Christendom most of history, by most
everyone. Andy quoted to himself: the heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked, who can know it? Evangelicals
obviously did not. Did he?
And there was Andy daily on the streets of West Berlin, door-to-door at the Centre, with the
evangelistic throngs at the Munich Olympics, preaching the anti-“Gospel”,
representing reversed “Good News”.
He stood up, then sat down again; felt almost
like throwing up, like expectorating to oust some kind of forbidden ingested
food. But he knew it was far too
late. He had long-since swallowed, for
years, Evangelical belief, which included, like King Herod, perpetual
endorsement of mass slaughter of innocents.
Most Evangelicals, most Christian believers, were King Herod’s foot soldiers
when it came to war and capital punishment.
He remembered the observation that Billy Graham’s
first book was Peace With God. But he had never written Peace With Man. And not
likely to, given his anti-Christ evangelistic theology. Yet were there not two “Greatest
Commandments”, not one? Why in war and
the death penalty did Evangelicals excise the Second?
So what about all the Germans, Japanese, Koreans
and Vietnamese – enemies all within the past thirty-five years – murdered on a
grand scale by the “Good Guys”, and blessed by all Christendom , except “enemy”
Christendom, which of course identically called down God’s blessing on the
slaughter of the “Good , really Bad, Guys”.
Had God not made them in his image too?
Had Christ not also died for them? Was there not Good News they were equally
entitled to hear? Embrace? Live out?
Does “love” mean in the end what the papal legate said centuries before,
and Evangelicals explicitly follow in the present day, “Kill them all, God will
sort out who are his own!”?
Andy wished Jack would hurry out now. He needed somehow to put a stop to the
impossible build-up of stream of consciousness.
There had been very little traffic on the Allee.
He felt tempted to get up and walk again. His mind roared on.
What kind of utter perversion, inversion, of
biblical “love” had Christendom embraced, to permit the wholesale slaughter
throughout the centuries of domestic and foreign “enemies”, who were
“neighbours”, who were “God”, at least God’s image bearers, in whom, “the least
of these”, Jesus was to be found? Why
had seemingly so few in the history of the church from within screamed out: The
Emperor has no clothes!?
Some of Andy’s earlier discussions were doing
reruns.
In that light, in consideration of the
overwhelming unrighteousness of Christian belief and action for centuries, was
not the era of the Enlightenment a supreme gift from God to the church? To the world?
Were its proponents perhaps the “stones” God would make cry out when the
church for centuries had endorsed and committed endless atrocious adulteries
with the State, approving innumerably the very violence that killed its
Founder? Was not the revolt of atheism
over against the church’s horrendous unfaithfulness pure religion of the sort James spoke of? Were not Unitarians in their pacifism far
more faithful even when throwing out the baby, Jesus’ Incarnation, with the
bath water, however regrettably? Was not
Gandhi “right on” in his rejection of the missionaries’ “Christ”?
Was not Martin Luther tragically misguided in only trying to find justification before
a holy God, yet never likewise before God’s image-bearers, not least God’s
chosen, the Jews? Luther who had
instructed the German Nobility, “Smite, slay and kill” the peasant hordes, and
had committed to writing some of the most vituperative anti-Semitic hate
literature known to humanity. Which the
Lutheran church officially rejected only after
the Nazis, steeped in Martin Luther’s German Christianity, had slaughtered
six million Jewish innocents.
Was not, come to think of it biblically, contrary
to mainstream Protestant and Evangelical understandings, the only way to find a holy God through loving embrace of neighbour and
enemy? Was not Jesus the Way, and
that Way according to Jesus is living out the two Greatest Commandments, of
which the second is the “royal law” and only way of actually performing the
first – loving God – Whom one has not seen?
How had Evangelicals, so adamant about following Jesus, sucked him
utterly dry of all true content when it came to Jesus’ own central teachings
and example about love of neighbour and enemy?
Andy’s mind had built up such momentum that
nothing seemed able to stop the ineluctable questions he was posing to
himself. He felt immobilized, like a
terrified mouse before the proverbial snake.
Yet somehow the serpent, unlike in the Primordial Garden,
rightly was about to swallow its
prey. Wasn’t the church, in light of its
long and terrifying history of violence, one of the most evil scourges on
humanity the world had known?
Possibly the most evil? He remembered a line from a German poem, Die Gerechtigkeit der Erde, O Herr, hat Dich
getötet – the righteousness of the earth, O Lord, has killed you. Only
he would change O Herr to O Kirche.
The church had self-imploded in light of all human standards of
righteousness, which were far more vaunted than the church’s. Or were they?
Had the secular world simply imbibed the church’s biblical teaching,
despite Christendom’s contrary example, and now was holding the church to
account when it had so quickly and so long since turned faithless to its own
founding texts?
Andy didn’t know where to turn. Who had written on this stuff? Why
didn’t he know of it? When in church history, if at all, did at
least a few lonely voices cry out about the Emperor’s, Christendom’s,
Evangelicalism’s stark and shameful, vile and unconscionably evil,
nakedness;
unrepentant and endlessly repeated whoredoms?
Were there at least seven thousand in the long history of the church
who
had not bowed the knee? Would he have to
leave the church to find God? Would he
have to turn to the secular thinkers and philosophers to discover true
biblical
religion? Was the church, in the end,
the Mob; worse?
A car honked.
For a split second Andy actually thought someone was acknowledging
him. But it was obviously not. He decided he would get up to walk some
more. He continued in the same direction
he had been heading. His mind plunged
headlong in a similar direction.
He wished he could somehow tear out that part of
his brain that was causing so much offence, like Jesus had said one should do
with an eye or a hand. But wasn’t the
church in fact the primary offender? He recalled a saying he had read by Simone
Weil: The church is that great
totalitarian beast with an irreducible kernel of truth. And Weil refused to join it throughout her
lifetime. No wonder, Andy now
reconsidered. And hadn’t she also said
the most fundamental act of forgiveness humans needed to undertake is towards
God? Wasn’t she right? Might it indeed have been better had Jesus
never been born even, had the word “God” never first been uttered long ago
amongst Semitic nomads? Given how the
church and its precursors had desecrated so violently its content?
Andy felt wretched. It seemed like he was being thrust inside an Alfred Hitch*censored* horror movie,
when all perspectives and norms were rendered kaleidoscopic. Where was he to turn when everything normal
had convulsed into a thousand distortions?
He had come over to Germany
to propagate faith, and instead had found his faith buffeted and sent
topsy-turvy, not by contrary intellectual argument from others, he had braced
for that, but from his own experience and rethinking within the faith.
He was his own fifth columnist, his own desperate
traitor, self-betrayed! How
distressing. He had unwittingly been
lying in wait to ambush his easy-believism cheap-grace Evangelical faith, so
proud and *censored*y about having “the truth”, that he didn’t know that he was
himself the hunted, not the hunter.
The tables had been turned. The shoe was on the
other foot. He needed to be evangelized.
He was that Emperor without
any clothes. This was his moment of truth. Would he repent and turn, from what?,
Evangelical faith?, or would he, like the Emperor, thrust his head a little
higher, and strut stark-staring naked onwards to the beat of Christendom’s
droning blood-drenched drums? He knew
the sycophants who in that case would cheer him on. He knew the irony of a British gun boat
“rescuing” the children in Golding’s Lord
of the Flies. Out of the frying pan,
into the fire. Was he, in his evangelistic zeal, only guilty of traversing the
ocean to make his converts twice the sons
of hell for his efforts? Was this
the indictment of most Evangelical missionary and evangelistic efforts
worldwide, of every Billy Graham evangelistic crusade he had so unthinkingly
prayed for? How dare he think such
thoughts? Wasn’t this ultimate heresy? Who did
he think he was?
“O wretched man that I am!”, he suddenly cried
out audibly. No one heard.
Around the corner at which intersection he had
arrived, there was a horrific thundering as Army vehicle upon army vehicle
rolled down Clayallee to enter the Compound. There must have been twenty or more; tanks,
armoured cars, and a fleet of others he could not identify. They must have been on some kind of training
exercise. He was wrong, therefore. All the Christians were not at the Base. Some at least were training once again to
kill. He felt sick. He felt like launching a rocket to wipe them
all out. He felt wretched.
Jack came out after the last of the procession
had turned in to the Compound.
Andy crossed over to the other side. Jack said he looked like he’s seen a
ghost. Andy said he had, millions
of them. But nowhere the Holy
Ghost.
Jack did not even try to understand.
“Let’s head back.
I’ll tell you about the visit on the way.”
Andy looked again at the Compound for the Holy
Ghost, maybe Jesus. No such luck.