\t\t\t\tIf the title of this blog is disturbing to you, I must tell you that it is disturbing to me.<\/p>\n
For any not familiar with the phrase, Final Solution was the official euphemism attached to the isolation and destruction of the Jewish citizens of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
Antisemitism had many advocates.\u00a0 The great Christian reformer, Martin Luther, late in his life was responsible for some of the most vicious statements ever written against the Jews in Germany; statements which will not be repeated here, but which many Lutheran bodies have repudiated<\/a>.<\/p>\n In November 1998, the Lutheran Church of Bavaria issued a statement: “It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences. It has to distance itself from every [expression of] anti-Judaism in Lutheran theology.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As a professing Christian for nearly 50 years, I have to confess that I was shocked when I read his statements. Were these atrocious comments often duplicated and made available through the subsequent centuries? Or did these strongly held opinions of an aging scholar encourage the Christians in Hitler’s day to view the F\u00fchrer’s verbal attacks on the Jews with favor? Did they render Christian institutions useless when a challenge to Hitler’s Aryan Nationalism could have made a difference?<\/p>\n I don’t have the answers to these questions. I do know that Adolf Hitler manipulated the faith of many German Christians so that they would support his agenda, to whatever degree they might have understood it.<\/p>\n This is written, not so much as an indictment of the churches in Nazi Germany, but as a soul-stirring reflection of a 61 year old Christian whose faith requires that he challenge racist tendencies, first in himself and then when observed in others.<\/p>\n It’s not that I hold some superior high-ground morally. It’s that I believe the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth do. On more than one occasion he, a Jewish teacher, challenged the all too prevalent “anti-samaritanism”, the racism of Jesus’ world, when it appeared in his disciples.<\/p>\n [Jesus] sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. But [the Samaritans] did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” That so many of the “Religious Right” are so comfortable echoing racial sentiment is personally very painful, and disappointing, as were Martin Luther’s racist rantings of the late 1500′ s which unfortunately found fulfillment in the Holocaust of the mid twentieth century. According to an article in Wikipedia<\/a>, Luther advocated that:<\/p>\n they should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A few years ago, I attended a lecture given by David Fabor<\/a>, a Holocaust survivor. I cannot express the depth of my feelings when he recalled the nightmare of his youth:<\/p>\n Our Christian neighbors were directing the German troops to our houses. We looked just like our neighbors. We didn’t have “Jew” written on our foreheads. Why didn’t our neighbors know that their Jesus was a Jewish teacher who taught love for others?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed!<\/p>\n In recent years we have seen a wall being constructed, detention centers built and filled, and families deported. However, of greater concern to me is the growth of the wall of negative energy against the Latino community in the United States.<\/p>\n We are dealing with human beings, and laws do not exist for the sake of law itself. There are life-altering implications to any legislation.<\/p>\n Is there no room for considering the plight of the poor who come to this country motivated by the desire to make things better for their families?<\/p>\n Is there no consideration that can be given to undocumented young people who have grown up in this country, and who see themselves as USAmericans, with little or no memory of having lived anywhere else?<\/p>\n Cannot we move beyond the amnesty-no amnesty logjam, and acknowledge the contributions that the Latino workers have made and are making to our economy?\u00a0 And can we not be historically honest and admit that when times are good we invite them into the workplace, and when times get bad we throw them out of both workplace and country?<\/p>\n Must we always view them as “foreigners determined to overrun our country and take our jobs”, when this simply is neither true nor fair?<\/p>\n When our retail outlets choose to print up English-Spanish signs and labels, rather than responding with resentment, cannot we understand that these families are far more “assimilated” than is conventionally thought, renting homes, buying household goods and groceries–fully participating in the USAmerican economy?<\/p>\n Do we even think about how difficult it is to learn and speak a second language, or must we simply maintain our smug pride in our superior ability to speak the one and only language that we have ever or will ever learn, a language that we learned passively?<\/p>\n Are we willing to assist a Latino adult in learning English, or at least willing to show appreciation for the many who have learned?<\/p>\n For all these immigration tensions our country desperately needs resolution.\u00a0 My fear is that with so much racism, we will seek some sort of final solution.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the title of this blog is disturbing to you, I must tell you that it is disturbing to me. For any not familiar with the phrase, Final Solution was the official euphemism attached to the isolation and destruction of …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-perspective","category-immigration","category-race-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4405,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBut He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And they went on to another village. Luke 9:52-56 NASB<\/p><\/blockquote>\n