Some poems from Bonhoeffer...

As I continue to reflect on the similarities and differences between the rise of Nazi demagogues in Germany during the 1930s and the equally dangerous politicians and broadcasters who spew hatred throughout contemporary America, I find that the poetry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks to this era with remarkable clarity. (For a very helpful synthesis of Bonhoeffer's marriage of ethics and aesthetics see: www.crosscurrents.org/hollandf20.htm by Scott Holland.)

Bonhoeffer came to embody and express a life of faith as one that embraced solidarity with both the wounds and wonders of the world. In a word, the calling of Christ is compassion - sharing bread and suffering with others as equals - not sainthood. His poem, Christian and Heathen, puts it like this:

People go to God in their need,
plead for help, ask for happiness and bread,
for deliverance from sickness, guilt, and death.
So do we all, all of us, Christian and heathen.

People go to God in his need,
find him poor, abused, homeless, without bread,
see him entangled in sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in his suffering.

God goes to all people in their need,
satisfies them body and soul with his bread,
dies for Christian and heathen the death of the cross,
and forgives them both.

What I have come to call "incarnational theology" - living into the fullness of the human condition including all the brokenness as well as joy - is very close to Bonhoeffer's mature engagement with the world where "the Infinite and intimate become one." (Catherine Madsen in the essay sited above.) In this he exposes one similarity that the hate-mongers of both generations share: a rabid rejection of the humanity of their opponents. I do not think it is an exaggeration to claim that the demonization of Jews, homosexuals and Roma by the Nazi propaganda machine bears a frightening resemblance to the words of some Tea-baggers, Birthers and American militia.

The goal is to diminish the common humanity we all share. Their strategy is to fill our fears with racial venom and manipulate our economic anxieties with lies so that our hearts yearn to purge and punish the chosen scape goats. And as I consider this careful contemporary propaganda, I see strong parallels between the Nazi rallies of the 1930s and many of the current Tea-Bag and ultra-right conventions.

+ Both simplify complex problems into mean-spirited sound bytes
+ Both aggressively suggest that our current problems are the result of a sinister plot by those who hate the mother/father land
+ And both viciously portray those who disagree as either foreign dupes or human beings of a most inferior quality

And herein lies another tragic and potentially terrifying parallel: by denying our shared humanity in God to those they hate or fear, the contemporary Neo-Nazis who celebrate Guns, God and America are nourishing an idolatry the confuses hatred for love, anxiety for faith and violence for compassion. Christian militias? Lock and load for Jesus? Denigration and race-bating as the core of whatsoever you did unto one of the least of these?

Former US president, Bill Clinton, recently spoke about the consequences of the Oklahoma City bombing 15 years ago this week. Noting that the same type of fear-based anger was active in those times, he said, "I don't want America to have to experience more violence to regain its conscience..." After Oklahoma City we all became much more careful about how we talked and acted. We still had differences but we saw the consequences of our ugly words and dangerous hyperbole. One of Bonhoeffer's last poem, "Who Am I?" deserves another hearing:

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell's confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
Restless and longing and sick like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,

Yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.