Remembering not to forget

Last night, at the close of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, I watched the film “Denial” again – it’s currently available on the BBC I-Player (which, unfortunately, is only available in the UK). It tells the story of the London deformation trial of Deborah Lipstadt, an historian, who defended a claim brought against her by a Holocaust denier. Some of the most moving scenes are when she visits Auschwitz, along with her senior and junior counsel, and some experts on the events that unfolded there. One of the experts suggests they walk the perimeter to get an idea of the scale of the place. Her senior council says he has already done that, and so they proceed to part of the complex where Jews were first undressed, and then led into gas chambers, passing pacifying signs saying they were on their way to the baths. Scale is an interesting idea in this context. What word is appropriate? Immense? Industrial? The physical and numerical dimensions of what was done, as horrific as they are, do not come close to encapsulating the events of the Holocaust. For while they reflect the evil intent of what occurred, and are the most accessible aspect of that intent, they do not come close to capturing the true ferocity of the hatred that was vented on ordinary and innocent men and women, boys and girls, the majority of whom were distinguished by one thing and one thing only – they were Jews.  

Others are much more qualified than me to attempt an explanation of that hatred. That there was an implacable, intense and fundamentally irrational hatred burning in the hearts of some of the perpetrators of the Holocaust is undeniable. Much ink has also been spilt on the mass complicity that was required to achieve their evil ends; the blind eyes and numbed hearts (and not all of them in Nazi Germany) that helped, or at least did not hinder, the venting of that hatred. That it grew from poisonous but relatively small beginnings, that it involved the crossing of many lines from the subtle to the gross, seems believable. Where it all ended up, in mass, organized, documented, industrial, attempted genocide, seems barely believable. That’s why it is important that we do not forget, that we do not let the events of the Holocaust become some kind of fantastic myth. There are those who would like it to be regarded in that way. In addition to being monumentally unjust, this would be madness, perhaps a madness that could lead to its repetition. There have, after all, been attempts to follow the same playbook.

It is a playbook that involves the “othering” of a minority. It is always easy to blame someone else for personal or societal ills. Having identified one group or another as a scapegoat, by caricature and innuendo they are made to be somehow less. First of all less than “us”; ultimately less than human. That makes their persecution all the easier and less troubling. This all has to be done in the abstract of course. It helps if “they” don’t really look like “us”. This is usually tricky because, when it comes down to it, we all look pretty similar. Hence the need for caricature, some of which goes beyond superficial differences like skin tone or facial appearance. But even although certain features or claimed attitudes and behaviors might be emphasized, it’s the depersonalized idea that is highlighted, rather than real individuals. It helps if the group in question can be segregated, lest “we” actually get to know some of “them”, for then the barriers might break down before they can be built up.  All of this takes effort. The tragedy is that humanity seems willing from time to time to make such an effort.

But for much of history it seems, Jewish people have been a particular target of such efforts. And there is no avoiding the fact that in my corner of the world those called “Christians” have occasionally been at the forefront of such efforts. While being called a Christian and actually being a Christian are two quite distinct things, it’s the irony that is so much starker than the distinction. You cannot begin to understand what a Christian is, even what the word entails, without an understanding and respect for the Jews and their history. A Christian is a Christ follower, and Christ is not a name, it’s a title. It’s simply the Greek way of saying Messiah, God’s servant promised in the Old Testament to His people the Jews. It is true that what divides Jews and Christians is a disagreement over the identity of the Messiah. But the debt that any nominal or actual Christian owes the Jews, and the obligations that flow from it, is incalculable.

Consider. It goes without saying that, notwithstanding centuries of European art, Jesus was a Jew, as were the twelve Apostles (thirteen, including Paul). It’s a profoundly odd view that says this is all just historically contingent and accidental detail. This was God’s choosing and doing, and is therefore significant. The New Testament story of the Church, post the pivotal events of Pentecost (itself a Jewish feast not a Christian invention) begins with Jews, who initially made up the overwhelming majority of Christians at the beginning. As Jews, they saw their new-found Christian faith a fulfillment of, rather than a repudiation of, what their Old Testament (simply “the Scriptures” to them) taught, and had taught them to expect. Indeed this belief was firmly based on what Jesus Himself had taught them; He had taken two of them to task for not taking their Scriptures seriously enough (you’ll find the story in Luke 24:13-35). Even when a parting of the ways came, with some elements of organized Judaism opposing the growing Gentile church, Paul reminds particularly Gentile Christians that they have been ingrafted into “the nourishing root of the olive tree” (Romans 11:17) and not to be arrogant or proud where God’s ancient people were concerned. Paul had a burning and intense desire that his own people might come to recognize Jesus for who He was, and that there might be no division between Jew and Gentile.

In early Church history there were those who sought to divorce Christianity from its Jewish roots, notably Maricon and his followers. But they were quickly identified as not teaching Christianity at all. There is also still a popular idea that the Bible somehow teaches two Gods opposed to, or at least different to, each other: the Old Testament nasty God, and the New Testament fluffy one. But this can only be maintained by not reading and taking seriously what the Bible, Old and New Testaments actually teaches. For my own part, I do feel debt to those Old Testament saints, the likes of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah, Nehemiah, Malachi, and many more beside. And not as just figures from someone else’s ancient history. They tell me about me, and us about us. Without wanting to be proprietorial about it, I do feel that I belong to them and they belong to me, and that we all belong to Christ. That even today some of their human descendants should be identified and abused for simply that reason (i.e. that they are Jews) is both appalling and revealing. We dare not forget where it can lead.

Starting in weakness…..

There is something arbitrary about identifying 1^st January every year as holding some significance, and yet we do (at least in this part of the world). It is not as though between 31^st December and the 1^st January there is a change of season. It’s not the winter solstice (the day with the shortest period of daylight, after which day length increases again); that was on the 21^st December. Yet every year the transition between the 31^st December and 1^st January induces reviews of the previous twelve months, predictions for the next twelve, and even manages to induce, in at least some of us, an incoherent and usually unwarranted optimism about what is to come. Not this year.

I started 2023 off with a dose of the ‘flu (the real thing, not the ‘man’ variety). It commenced on New Year’s day, and I went rapidly downhill from there. I’m assuming that if I had not had my ‘flu shot back in the autumn my experience would have been a lot worse. But it was bad enough. It is said that if you feel like you’re dying you have a cold; if you don’t care if you’re dying, it’s the ‘flu. So, instead of long forest or beach walks to clear the mind of Christmas fug, I spent the first week of the year unable to do much of anything, much of it in my bed, and I spent the second week recovering. And when I have the ‘flu it also always messes with my head. Admittedly I didn’t have any serious near-psychotic episodes this time, but there were weird dreams and the occasional loss of place and person. It was all very odd indeed. Bounce into the New Year I did not.

All in all it was a reminder of my frailty and fragility. After all I had been floored by what for someone of my age and generally good health was a fairly minor viral infection. However, as the pandemic reminded us all, frailty and fragility is part and parcel of our human lot. Perhaps partly as a coping mechanism, many of us avoid the reality of just how frail as human beings we are. The reason the pandemic was such a shock to many of us was that, initially there was nothing that could be done. We all had to stay home and hope we didn’t get the bug. And if we did get it, we had to hope it wouldn’t be too bad.  And of course for many it wasn’t. And yet intensive care units filled with people who couldn’t breathe, many of whom did not survive. I was scary. How quickly we forget and move on.

But there is value in starting the year off with a reminder of one’s fragility and indeed mortality. I admit this is partly a function of age. When I was twenty I doubt that even a bad dose of the ‘flu would have had much of an impact. There was lots of time to recover and move on, and no need to worry about anything as serious as death. But it is worth bearing in mind that it is only relatively recently that life expectancy has been long enough, and general healthcare good enough, for us to fool ourselves about mortality. Current male life expectancy in the UK is just over 80 years. Given this, my suspicion is that most of us probably spend about the first fifty years of our lives convinced implicitly that  we are invincible and immortal, even although we know that we really are not. But there are lots of things to engage with and to keep us busy and distracted. Any younger person whose mind takes a more sober turn is likely to branded morbid. But then one reaches a certain stage in life where contemplating one’s demise in this life becomes much easier. There is a realization that, all other things being equal, one is nearer one’s death than one’s birth (something I wrote about last January).

All of this would be depressing were it not for the fact that there is a bigger picture. As important as life in the here and now is, if I really thought that this was all there is, I’m not sure it would be enough. If I really thought that from this point all that faced me was an increasing propensity to succumb to disease or injury, until my resources (plus those of various health professionals) were exhausted and I was unable to make a recovery, what really would be the point? So it’s just as well that my conviction is that there really is a bigger picture. Our very weakness and fragility is a sign, a reminder, that we are created creatures, and our needs are no accident. The tragedy of Western individualism is that it has misdirected us, telling us that each of us is all that we need, when this is clearly not the case. To deny my creatureliness and my createdness is to deny that I have a Creator, and also to deny myself the resources that He has provided. Importantly, my Creator is not the remote watchmaker-type creator of the Deist, but a Creator who is self-described as Father. Henry Lyte captures the reality well in his famous hymn. As well as writing “Frail as summer’s flower we flourish; blows the wind and it is gone; but while mortals rise and perish, God endures unchanging on”  he writes: “Father-like he tends and spares us, well our human frame he knows”. My reality (and I would suggest yours too) is that I am dependent on Him and created to know Him.

The here and now matters; this physical life now is important. If the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity tells us anything, it is that there is value to these lives lived now in weakness, frailty and dependence. Jesus Himself lived a life like this (and paradoxically a life completely unlike it in other ways). The value of these lives lies partly in what we learn about how things really are, and what we really are or ought to be. To deny all of this is of course a common strategy that has been adopted by humanity from almost the beginning of everything. But such a denial never ends well. Reality has a way of asserting itself eventually and inescapably. So to begin a year by being reminded reality is no bad thing. To be reminded of my real physical and spiritual dependence on my Creator and Father, and to be reminded of His gracious provision of all that I need will keep my focus on exactly where it should be.