Today’s Scripture Reading (May 31,
2014): Ezekiel 38
On July 20,
1944, there was an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair where
Hitler was planning a conference with other German military leaders. The July
20 attempt is probably the most famous of the attempts on Hitler’s life. It was
planned, at least in part, by a cooperation between factions inside the German
Military as well as inside the German Military Intelligence. The plot was
co-ordinated by Claus
von Stauffenberg, who was executed by firing squad the day after the failed
assassination attempt. Von Stauffenberg knew that his actions with the German
Resistance constituted high treason, but he justified his actions by
referring to the right under natural law to defend millions of people's lives
from the criminal aggressions of Hitler. For von Stuaffenberg, he was right
because Hitler was so wrong.
But the justification for the actions of the resistance
was not so easy for all of its members. One of the members of the German
resistance that struggled with ethics of what they were doing was a pastor and
theologian – Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For Bonhoeffer, the morality was far from
clear. He was not sure that God would approve of his actions – especially a God
that demanded the high requirement of love from all those who followed him. For
Bonhoeffer, all that he was willing to ask from God was mercy as he acted
against Hitler, it was too much to ask for God’s blessing over their actions.
Bonhoeffer seemed to understand something that we have
lost focus off. Not all of our thoughts are worthy of God. Ezekiel speaks of
the day when Gog and Magog will attack Israel, and on that day the actions that
they will think of and end up planning will seem like the right thing – and the
godly thing – to do. But the rightness of the action will be a mirage – what seems
to be right, will actually be wrong. And the godly action of Gog and Magog will
only serve as the reason why God will end up taking a stand against them.
For Bonhoeffer, all actions had to be judged by the
overarching fact of God’s love. And it was this insistence on love that made
Bonhoeffer question his actions and the repeated attempts on the Fuhrer’s life.
For Bonhoeffer, spiritually he suspected that there must have been another way,
but in the reality that Bonhoeffer was living in, he just couldn’t see it. So
he asked for God’s mercy in his actions.
And that might be precisely the lesson that we need to
learn from Ezekiel and Gog and Magog as well as from Bonhoeffer. Sometimes we
seem to want to simplify right action too much. We desire all of our actions to
be clearly right or clearly wrong, but that kind of a determination is not
always possible. We tend to make excuses for our behavior especially as it
opposes God’s law of love. Sometimes, we simply have to find another way – find
a way to love. But when we can’t, we cannot assume that God’s vengeance is on
our side – or that we fight on the side of right. In those moments, we need to
learn from Bonhoeffer and simply ask for God’s mercy – and not his blessing.
The aftermath of the July 20, 1944 attack on Hitler was
that it gave the German leader the excuse he needed to arrest over 7,000 people
and execute 4,980 problem people in Germany – and only a fraction of those
executed had anything to do with the assassination attempt. In hindsight it
seems that the events of July 20 only gave evil a chance to multiply. Maybe there
was another way. Maybe …
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel
39
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