Letter to the American Church Eric Metaxas
Here is a 139 page book; perhaps too little, too late, for mere man to enact the change necessary to revert the already sprung “tipping point” for the possible unwinding of western civilization we may be about to witness, but certainly not for God to exert His influence, perhaps even, just in time.
Strangely reminiscent of yesterday’s blog of our situational predicaments, such as Moses at the Red Sea that required 450 years to climax. The Egyptian media hawkers then reported their journey was merely days – being concluded with such a spectacular feat – and such that certainly nobody predicted their 40 year stint in a wilderness! Similarly, the American Church, as was Moses, is in similar straits as was the German Church, 90 years ago. And, again, some in the fray today understand events for centuries, or even BC, created this showdown between evil and righteousness, whereas the media hawkers are clueless that the third and final act of their play written merely decades ago, is nearly concluded. And if we’re lucky, we can all go out to celebrate our amazing accomplishments after the final curtain drops, before every man goes HOME, to his own tent. (Note: Moses led the original tent city assembly)
May I quote the last paragraph from my March 23 blog, “Does False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR) Cause Our Predicaments?” So, God provides us painful predicaments to arouse us from spiritual lethargy. Our predicaments are not punishment, as much as they are wake-up calls from a loving God. Envision pain as God’s fuel to restore His passion in our relationships ( includes the Church) because pain energizes us with an intensity to change that we normally just don’t possess. Lookup CS Lewis pain quote! These are serious times as you are about to learn below. Quoted verbatim.
Chapter Two: Does God Ask Us To See the Future?
As I have said, to understand where we are today in the American Church, we are obliged to see what happened to the Church in Germany in the 1930’s. Because I became closely familiar with that subject in writing my biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I have been troubled and astonished by the growing parallels for some time.
Most American Christians have some idea of the tragic blindness of the Church in Germany during the rise of Hitler, and likely know it “didn’t do enough” and somehow failed to stand. But exactly what didn’t they do that they might have done? And what did they do that they shouldn’t have done? Of course, our judging the German Church of that implies that we believe we would not have made the mistakes they did – and yet we are making those same mistakes now.
Perhaps because of the unprecedented size of the tragedies and horrors of that era, it is particularly tempting for us to put them in a separate category from anything that could happen anywhere else. Many of us have unwittingly adopted a tribalist and racist view of the Germans of that era, and attribute to them a unique level of evil, as though it has no bearing on us, nor can it ever have any bearing on us. But if we are Christians who believe in the doctrine of Original Sin, we know that our own intrinsic evil is perfectly equal to whatever we wish to attribute to the souls living in Germany in the 1930s. Therefore, we need to be more honest and ask how it was that they failed so spectacularly, knowing that we too can fail similarly – and are indeed this minute failing precisely as they failed.
So before we continue, we must dispense with the idea that we are for some reason incapable of allowing things to get to the point that the German Church did. That’s precisely why I am writing this book: Because what I see happening in the American Church today makes me understand that we are are wrong to think we would have acted differently if we were alive then precisely because we are not acting differently now.
As we approach the story of the German Church’s failures, we should do so not only with some humility, but with some humiliation. That’s because they did not have the benefit that we have – of actually seeing what happens when a church fails to stand. They did not have the example of what happened to them because it had not yet happened. But we do have that example and that grimmest of warnings, and so we are without excuse.
So what exactly did the German Church of that time fail to see? In a word: the future.
Christians are expected to see the future, or to listen to those who see it. We know that God is outside time; for Him the past, present, and future are equally easy to see. And we know that He has spoken through prophets who can, and often do, tell us what lies ahead, if we are interested in hearing it. So the real question is never whether we can see the future but whether we heed the warnings of the prophets who do. As we shall see, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a prophet to the German Church in the 1930s, although he wouldn’t have thought of himself in quite that way. But he spoke boldly and powerfully about where things stood in the German Church and about what must be done, and we know that the German Church did not take his warnings seriously and paid the gravest price imaginable.
But what if Bonhoeffer is a prophet for us today? Will the words that fell on deaf ears in his day fall differently on ours? Will we hear what he has to say, or rather, what God has to say through Him? Since we have the dramatic advantage of knowing what happened in Germany, will we take what he said to them more seriously than they did? Will you?
Part of what the German Church failed to see in 1932 or 1933, for example – when there was still time to act – was that their small actions or inactions were setting the course for their future. When God speaks through prophets like Bonhoeffer, He makes clear what lies ahead and gives us a clear choice. If we do X, Y will result, and if we don’t, then Z. But many German church leaders thought Bonhoeffer a bit of a young hothead – a brilliant intellectual to be sure, but one who was overstating what was at stake. And so, as people always do – and always with good intentions – most of the German Church simply ignored what he said and drifted along as it had always done. They didn’t feel the urgency that Bonhoeffer obviously felt and boldly spoke about. When they might have recognized where their actions were leading and changed course, they did not. It takes courage to stand athwart history and shout, “Stop!” It takes courage to understand that you must not do what everyone else is doing. Most of us rarely rise to such courage. But why and exactly how did the German Church ignore Bonhoeffer’s prophetic warnings?
To tell this story we must begin at the end of 1932, two months before Hitler became chancellor, when Bonhoeffer gave a certain sermon in a certain church in Berlin on November 6, 1932 – Reformation Sunday. To be continued in Chapter Three “Unless You Repent,” text from Revelation 2:4-5 “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first….
Accept His Love. Share His Love. Live His Joy. Grow Your Fruit. Embrace His Peace. Share His Hope. Refute Satan’s Evil. merlin