Does Bonhoeffer’s brave stand against the Nazis ring any bells?
By Charles Gardner
As a child of the 60s growing up in South Africa, I was a big fan of the hugely successful folk/pop duo Simon & Garfunkel. In fact, Paul Simon later went on to collaborate with the brilliant South African band Ladysmith Black Mambazo from my home town, no less! I especially liked to play ‘The Sound of Silence’, one of the duo’s biggest hits, on my guitar at family get-togethers. But I struggled to get my head around the meaning of the words: “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…”
Well, it has now emerged as the theme song for the trailer of ‘Bonhoeffer’, the new movie about the man who, more than most, stood up to the Nazis as they systematically murdered six million Jews. Yet the German Church as a whole – heavily influenced by Reformation leader Martin Luther – responded to such outrage with deafening silence. This was a Church that was supposedly ‘reformed’ from the bad old ways of Roman Catholicism, which denied faith alone as the key to salvation. But when hundreds of synagogues were burnt to the ground and Jewish people were herded off to concentration camps in overcrowded cattle trucks, there was silence among the Christians – a dead “faith without works” (James 2:17) – apart from a precious few, including Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (Photo – Prisoner of conscience: Bonhoeffer, played by Jonas Dassler in the Angel Studios film, stood against state antisemitism. Credit: Angel Studios)
God’s chosen people were being sent to die like lambs to the slaughter, and hardly a whisper of protest was uttered by those who had so richly benefited from them!
Of course, on a natural level, believers had reason to fear the reaction of the brutal Nazis if they dared plead for mercy for the Jews, the very people who gave them Jesus and the Bible. But Jesus clearly taught that his followers should take up their own cross; in other words, that they should be prepared to die for his sake. But they failed miserably and betrayed their Saviour in the process. God’s chosen people were being sent to die like lambs to the slaughter, and hardly a whisper of protest was uttered by those who had so richly benefited from them!
Except, of course, from the likes of Bonhoeffer, who paid the ultimate price for doing so, executed for his stand within just a month of the war ending. The word of God plainly implores that, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent… till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch” (Isaiah 62:1). But do we today score any better than the German Church “passing by on the other side” of the road like the priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan? No. We should rather ponder how today’s UK pastors have failed the Jews by remaining largely silent amidst the wickedness of antisemitism breaking out all around us. Our pulpits rarely, if ever, mention the perilous predicament of today’s Jews – and I don’t just mean Israel.
A shocking new survey has revealed a significant proportion of young British Christians hold antisemitic views. In addition, 31 per cent of British Christians in the all-age sample endorsed the idea that the biblical covenant with Israel has ended and almost half believe Israel’s army has committed genocide in Gaza. Appropriately enough, in view of the film’s message, both Simon & Garfunkel are Jewish, and as their song puts it, “silence like a cancer grows”.
A significant proportion of young British Christians hold antisemitic views
In view of the fact Christianity is effectively Jewish with virtually the entire Bible written by Jewish authors, such indifference makes no sense. It is a cowardly cop-out from our calling as disciples of the Jewish Messiah, and it MUST stop – or else our nation will come under the judgement of those who have cursed rather than blessed Israel (Genesis 12:3, Numbers 24:9, Joel 3:2). We are also in danger of being separated from the sheep through lack of love for the brothers in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ (see Matthew 25:31-46).
Bonhoeffer spent time in New York and London in the 1930s and could have escaped the consequences of his beliefs, but he said: “I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” One of his quotes, although directed at the Nazi regime – seems remarkably prescient – if physically impossible – in the light of today’s car-ramming attacks on civilians in Europe: “If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”
Bonhoeffer surrendered himself to his Saviour’s call, aged just 39, with the haunting words: “I am ready to meet my destiny.”
And who is there among us who is willing to fill his boots, and walk his path?
Charles Gardner is a regular contributor to Israel Today at www.israeltoday.co.il and is author of ‘To the Jew First’, ‘King of the Jews’, ‘A Nation Reborn’, ‘Israel the Chosen’ and ‘Peace in Jerusalem’, variously available from Christian Publications International, Amazon and Eden Books (Eden.co.uk).