Dialogue with the Movie "Downfall" - part 4 - A Secretary Goes to Work for Hitler

Dialogue with the Movie “Downfall”

Part Four: A Secretary Goes to Work for Hitler

Written by Dan McDonald

 

A scene from "Downfall"- helmeted actress Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge

 

            The movie “Downfall” begins with an elderly woman describing how she came to apply for a position that would lead to her working directly for Adolph Hitler.  The movie ends with the same elderly woman describing how, after the war, she came to realize that her ignorance of Nazi atrocities did not excuse her from having had the responsibility to discover the truths about Nazism if she had wanted to know the truth.  These clips were borrowed by the creators of “Downfall” from an actual documentary wherein Hitler’s youngest personal secretary in the final years of World War II was given the opportunity to tell her story as an elderly lady.  Despite the problems of considering the perspective of a witness whose life was marked by her season of service to one of history’s most recognized men of evil, her story is intriguing.  In this blog and the next blog in this series I will try to highlight Gertraud Junge’s story.

            If a summary of her life might have been written from the things I have learned about her life it might read this way:  Gertraud Humps was born 16 March 1920, married Hans Junge in June 1943, was widowed when her husband was killed in action in August 1944, and died without descendants from cancer at age 81 on 10 February 2002.”  The notes of her life might have said, “she worked during the Second World War as a personal secretary for Reich Chancellor Hitler, but following the war suffered from severe depression, tended to live as a recluse, but did enjoy visiting a home for the blind where she read books to the residents.

            It goes perhaps without saying that having worked as a personal secretary to one of humanity’s most evil figures, her story is not universally accepted.  Some historians regard her story as plausible.  This blogger, while neither an expert on Frau Junge nor in regards to historical method, finds her story to be plausible.  I find as many reasons to view the story she tells as plausible as I do for denying it on the basis that she worked for an evil man.  Her story seems to be one that an elderly lady might tell because she desired to tell the world a simple truth about her life.  She had thought through it for a lifetime.  She had to let the world know that she did not know during her time as a secretary many of the worst things done under the Nazi regime, but she also had to acknowledge that she was close enough to the truth that if she had wanted to know she could have known it very easily.  So she wanted the world to know that she could not hide behind never having known.  There were others who knew less than she yet came to discover the truth about Nazism and they were the ones who made her realize how she had refused to see the truth that was all around her.

            Rather than try to prove the plausibility of Frau Junge’s story, I will simply ask you to imagine the story being true, for then I think it would have great meaning to us.  But I invite my readers to think of this story as something more than another old World War II story.  This is also a human story that should be told because it is more than a war story.  Think of it as a story of a young woman who goes to work for a person that she sees as a kind gentleman.  That is how he treats her and how she sees him.  Then everything at the office blows up and later the young woman discovers that the older gentleman’s life had sordid secrets.  Perhaps he had abused people.  Perhaps he had been a serial killer, perhaps he had ordered the deaths of millions of Jews and ten thousands of gypsies and other people he thought did not merit survival in the world.  This is a story not just related to war, but to someone who worked with a person and never saw them as being evil monsters when that is exactly what they were.  Here is a person that never quite knows what to do with her failure to see that about the evil person she knew but did not know in his entirety.

The actual Traudl Junge in the interview: Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary

 

            We begin with information from the documentary “Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary” to a moment in which she has traveled from Munich to Berlin to interview for a government job in Berlin.  She has a sister in Berlin and she has dreams of studying dance and becoming a ballerina, and maybe this job will put her in Berlin where she can take her dance lessons and chase her childhood dreams.

            In Berlin she discovers that the position she has applied for is to be a personal secretary to Adolph Hitler.  He would test the ladies’ secretarial skills by speaking to them as they typed out his words. An elderly Junge described, in this way, the impression Hitler made upon the waiting ladies as he appeared: “And then a kindly old gentleman came up to us speaking in a low voice and giving us a friendly smile.  He shook hands with each of us, looked straight into our eyes with that famous gaze of his, asked us our names, said a few words to us with a sort of friendly, paternal air and then disappeared again.  When he went he just said, “Good Evening.”  When it was over we said, “Now we’re curious.”[i]

            She described how in escorting the ladies to take their test, Hitler would try to help them not be nervous.  The old gentleman, whom some of these ladies had never seen except in his uniform with outstretched arm saluting soldiers at military parades on newsreel or speaking with a powerful dramatic voice to the masses.  But this was not the Hitler they saw in this office.  Here he offered to fetch the ladies an electrical heater if they felt the room to be too cold.  Or he spoke a quiet confidence building word saying he was sure they would not make more mistakes than he had.  This was the man that Trudl Humps (Junge) met and with whom she would work until his death in April 1945.

She tells a story of how her chance at getting the job depended on an intervention.  Despite Hitler’s attempts to help her not  be nervous, the young Trudl Humps was extremely nervous as she began trying to type to Hitler’s speaking.  She didn’t have her fingers starting out over the right keys.  She was typing letters forming nothing resembling German words.  She was horrified.  But just then one of Hitler’s staff members knocked on the door to inform Hitler that Ribbentrop was on the telephone wishing to speak to him.  Hitler excused himself to talk to Ribbentrop.  The nervous applicant took the time to correct her errors, composed herself, and by the time Hitler returned she was ready and confident to begin typing.  She found the task of following Hitler’s speaking to be not difficult at all.  She spoke with that sense of accomplishment that she must have felt the very day she took the test.  She said of the intervention:  “Then thank God, or perhaps unfortunately, his servant came in”.[ii]

There is something very human about the story she told.  She surely had a sense of triumph when she came from her test typing triumphantly after such a horrible start.  There must have been a great sense of accomplishment to so overcome her jitters so as to be able to type serenely and confidently as Hitler spoke.  The intervention had to seem like a gift from God and a wonderful omen for the beginning of her new career.  She was going to be Adolph Hitler’s personal secretary and how many other young German ladies would have wanted this job.  Those impressions must have been so etched into her memories that her first recollection of those events was to say “Thank God.”  But looking back over a lifetime of having been marked as Hitler’s secretary she had gradually learned to respond to her triumphant sense of accomplishment with a subdued addition of “or unfortunately.”  She now knew a kindly old gentleman, but she did not know this gentleman in his sordid entirety.  It would take years for her to see the hidden person she perhaps never desired to see.  It would then require decades of struggle before gaining a sense of how she was to regard herself for not allowing herself to see him as he surely was all along.  She expresses to us a sad but profoundly human story.

 

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[i] Quoted from the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary

[ii] Ibid.

Dialogue with the Movie "Downfall" - Part 3 - History, Justice, and a Surprise Appearance

Dialogue with the Movie “Downfall”

Part Three:  History and Justice and a Surprise Appearance

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Image of Mel Brooks’ satirical version of history

History of the World, Part I (1981) 

            In our previous blog we considered how the vastness of the subject of history requires us to transform the subject of history into stories.  As we shift to a different focus in this blog it might be well to consider how we human beings are connected to the history of humanity.  I think this connection is etched into the fabric of our beings.  Think of what the genetic sciences are teaching us in our day.  Each of our genetic codes is distinctly personal and directs the formation of every cell in each of our human bodies.  Yet our genetic codes also reflect the whole history of the biological journey that has taken place within our ancestry.  Biologically we are connected to an ancient human past.  All that history is mysteriously inscribed into our genetic composition, yet we come into this world as special and unique new unrepeatable individual members of that humanity to which we are connected.  There is not an extreme divergence between who we are bodily and spiritually.  For physically we are connected to the whole history of humanity and yet are individuals, and spiritually we are individuals with our own perceptions and personalities who yearn to connect to humanity and even if with hurting damaged souls we yearn for connectedness.  I have been thinking much about this, especially as I watched this video of the thrilling event of life taking shape in a mother’s womb.  Watching the video, I envisioned two distinct lines of humanity merging together from the millennia preceding our human era and realized that in each of us as individuals the human journey from the time of the ancients to this day and onward to the gathering of the entire redeemed human race in that Great Day is being chronicled in our human bodies and genetic codes.

            In our present blog we move from considering the vastness of history and the nearness of the story of history to consider how invariably when we look at history we contemplate such things as good and evil, right and wrong, and issues we moderns describe as “social justice.”  Have you ever noticed how we do that when we consider history?  As an American sometimes I might look with joy and pride at our westward movement as men and women worked so diligently to create thriving farms, small communities, public schools, churches across a continent, libraries, and varied networks to aid the poor.  But as I would swell up with pride I see that not everything about that story was good, right, or correctly spelled out “social justice.”  The westward movement included conquest and forced removal of the Native Americans already on this continent.  We tricked, lied to, betrayed, slaughtered, and even used blankets carrying the germs of death to push them out of our way as we Americanized a continent.  Much of our early national wealth resulted from a system of slavery that enslaved millions of people based on skin color.  There arose an America with a privileged class and an underclass.  Many of us who began looking back at our American history with pride came eventually to hang our heads in shame.  In this I feel deeply connected with the Germans who created the movie “Downfall”.  I know they had to feel such pain and sadness as they portrayed a dark hour in German history.  It was not just the darkness of a national defeat, but the darkness that from that moment onwards when a German sat down at the table of humanity there was this in his national past; not really so much different than the sort of things I bring to the table as an American.  I suspect that it was painful for the actors and actresses and the makers of this film to portray the men and women of a time which brings Germans to feel shame in their national history.

            We look back at history hoping to find justice but we so often find injustice.  But it seems to me that if a disciple who had heard Jesus teach him about life were in our midst he might point to a field and say “Look over there.  Do you see the wheat?  Do you see the tares?  What do you see in this world?  Do you see wheat or tares, or wheat and tares?  What do you see in the churches?  Are you ashamed that you see wheat and tares in the church as well?  Now what do you see when you look into your soul?  Do you see wheat and tares there also?”  This disciple I imagine standing among us disappears as quickly as he appeared.  I am broken-hearted and yet comforted.  Was there no one who was good?  I looked upon history in search of the good and found where I saw those who wished to do good that they too did evil.  But because I was beginning to realize that I was not separate from my ancestors but connected to them, what I saw in them more easily enabled me to look upon myself and see that I too have wished to do good and have so often become an expression of evil.

“Lady Justice” blind without prejudice

We look for her presence in the past to guide us into the future.

            I think of Lady Justice, how she is pictured standing so firm, so tall, so erect and unbowed by the corruption around her.  But she was a goddess from long ago, a myth of a hope that one day we would learn how to implement justice.  I know that those who thought of her and maybe those who worshipped her had a concept derived from a living God that made them dream of goodness, righteousness, equity, fairness, justice for one and for all.  I have never seen a person in my life quite like her.  I have seen only men and women who have been broken by sorrows, by stabs from unkind words, by being pushed down by bullies, or made hard by becoming bullies.  So I never find someone standing so tall, so completely erect, or so careful to hold those scales so flawlessly so she never judges unfairly, presumptively, or without prejudice.  I find only those who walk with shoulders drooping and their back slouched forward at least slightly, whose scales are tilted towards the side where they looked out for themselves before preferring another.

I could imagine a woman bearing many of Lady Justice’s features but not at all identical.  She would not be wearing a blindfold.  Instead of a blindfold she would be wearing a flower in her hair with a shaft of wheat entangled in the flower on one side and a tare progressing from the other side.  She would not be as stern as Lady Justice, who to be honest I still love with admiring affection.  But this woman would have a slight smile and especially a kind glimmer in her eyes.  I would be almost startled by her presence as she would pass me.  She would probably not speak a word as we passed by one another.  I would, however, feel better for having seen her smile and that wondrous glimmer in her eyes.  It would take me a moment to realize that I knew who this woman was.  She was that middle one of the three sisters.  They were known for how they traveled the world to encourage people in their dark days.  This had to be her.  Yes it was I was sure of it.  It was Hope, sister of Faith and Charity.  I turned to see if she had gone.  Perhaps I was mistaken.  I turned expecting her to be gone, but was hoping to steal one last look at her.  She was standing looking at me if you can believe it!  She smiled a smile of kindness it seemed, nodded her head, turned and then went on her way.

I thought about all those tares.  Then I looked up to the heavens and said “I guess my wheat field will always have a lot of tares.  I guess when in the future someone looks at my fields and my life they’ll have reason to get indignant and ashamed.  I guess that is so.  Still is there something you might have me to do that is good, right, and promotes a bit of social justice on this earth?”  I sort of kept adding words, because I never know when to just honor him with my silence, and thinking of all those people that made “Downfall” I added “and would you make sure Hope makes her way to the Germans too and oh yes to all those who got hurt by the Germans and by us Americans."  By this time I realized I was just rambling and thought of one thing that I should of said that I hadn't said, “O’ and by the way thanks for sending Hope my way.”

Dialogue with the Movie "Downfall" -Part Two- Historie and Geschichte

Dialogue with the Movie “Downfall”

Part Two:  “Historie” and “Geschichte”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Keywords for today’s blog:

Historie – All the stuff that happened from creation and big bang to the socks you wore today.  I mean everything, yes that too!!

Geschichte – The story and the stories we hear and tell to make sense of the everything existing in Historie.

 

            Most of us once upon a time History majors learned at some time how the German language has two different words pointing to different aspects of studying history.  There is “Historie” which is said much like our word “history” with a slightly stronger long e sound in German and there is Geschichte.  I have seen some attempts by some conservative American Christian writers to describe how the German concept is problematic.  But I have always thought the distinction between Historie and Geschichte is a very useful distinction.  I could readily see how the creators of “Downfall” understood and made use of these distinctions.

            In modern German usage “Historie” refers to the past as it was.  If I speak of the year 2013 as a year in “Historie”, then the scope of what I refer to is every event fitting within the boundaries of the year 2013.  It would include the death of former major league baseball player, Stan the Man Musial, and also what socks I wore on July 8, 2013.  It would also include a dirt clod that was washed by the rain into the Mississippi River near New Boston, Illinois.  When you think of “Historie” in this sense it is just too big for any of us to understand.  Most of us believe that history has something to teach us.  Nevertheless in any given time period the number of events of the period far outnumber the events we are able to set forth as having important value for us to consider.  The German word “Geschichte” has a different meaning from the German word “Historie”.  “Geschichte” is applied to the study of history but it can also mean the study of literature.  It basically means “story.”  From the times of Moses and Herodotus until today, there have been people looking at the past and telling us the significance of the stories of history.  We have varied compilations of stories woven together to try to tell us the “Geschichte/story” of “Historie”.  Perhaps our human sense that history is important is rooted in our childhoods.  We were mesmerized as our parents told us those stories from their lives which somehow seemed to have importance for our lives.  We were connected from one generation to the next by the stories we shared.

I want to tell you about a story, a piece of Geshichte, my dad shared with me in my summer between high school and college.  I was a bit rebellious in those days.  I had a summer job for a local farmer cutting weeds out of his soybean field.  There were several of us that worked in the field.  The night before I was supposed to get up and work in this field, there was a big event in our town known as the Polish picnic.  There was lots of polkas, music, and beer and very little checking of identifications or ages when somebody went to a tent to get a brew.  I got home somehow after the picnic was over, but the next morning I was kneeling before the ceramic throne sacrificing heave offerings.  It wasn’t the sort of thing you could hide and when I came out and told my dad “I think I’m sick” he said, “I’ll bet you went to the Polish Picnic last night.”  I answered “yeah.”  He said, “You’re supposed to walk beans this morning you know?”  I said, “yeah I know, I don’t think I’m going.”  He answered me saying, “Yes you are.  I got drunk plenty of times when I was younger, but never missed a day of work because of it.  Hank and I used to stand over the batch at the glass factory and throw up.  But we never missed work.  So today when you go to work you maybe will want to think how often you want to get drunk the night before you go to work.” My dad was being selective in regards to the “Historie” that had taken place surrounding his life.  He was drawing one small item of “Geschichte” to help enlighten his drunken son’s journey through life.  To be honest I did something I never told my Dad.  I went to the soybean field where the others were working and I told the farmer’s son who was recording the times we worked that I wasn’t working that day but not to tell my Dad.  I then sprawled my carcass across the soil between the soybean rows and threw up a few times, sobered up under a hot summer sun, and I think got wasted only one more time in the forty odd years since that morning after the Polish picnic.  Somehow though I never knew Hank I still have an image of Hank and my dad when he was young throwing up into the batch at a glass factory.  There was on that day a sort of connecting my life to their lives through the story of history as told by my Dad.

The professional historian, like anyone who uses knowledge more formally distinguishes “Historie” and “Geschichte”.  A paragraph written by the Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises, captures how what we know about a field of knowledge is never more than a pittance of what there is to be known.  So the professional in a field of knowledge must bring what he does know together even though he can never be all knowing.  Von Mises' description of Economics applies to history as well as he writes:

“Now it is quite obvious that our economic theory is not perfect.  There is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that matter in any other human achievement.  Omniscience is denied to man.  The most elaborate theory that seems to satisfy completely our thirst for knowledge may one day be amended or supplanted by a new theory.  Science does not give us absolute and final certainty.  It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.  A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge.  It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort.  But to acknowledge these facts does not mean that present day economics is backward.  It merely means that economics is a living thing – and to live implies both imperfection and change.[i]

            This is something the creators of “Downfall” understood about history.  People my age grew up on stories of World War II.  People in Germany in the last half of the Twentieth Century grew up also on stories of the war years.  Our American story tellers told the stories of the greatest generation or tried to tell the stories of the men who planted the flags of our fathers.  But Germans learned the stories of World War II from the perspective of “why” and the hollow non-answer to the question “and to what end.”  Many of them lived in a divided Germany where East met West with a barbed wire fence running down the middle of Germany symbolizing the possibility of a story like that of 99 red balloons would be followed by one survivor standing pretty over the dust where a city once stood.  German men and women growing into adulthood when I did looked back at their nation's story with a profound sense of a shared guilt.

            But today that generation that fought in or knew the horrors of that war from 1939 to 1945 are settling down into that rest as they return to dust and ashes.  Their stories about which my generation were always thinking and learning about are themselves likewise often returning to the graveyard of Historie.  My generation thought of World War II as the war fought by our fathers, uncles, the mailman, the farmer down the road.  A child growing up might only know a grandfather or great grandfather who has passed away, is in a nursing home, or has lost his ability to speak in full sentences.  In ten more years it will be a war thought of by children much like we thought of the Napoleonic wars.  The creators of “Downfall” have thought it important that we remember a generation’s story, the painful story of the German generation that lived during and with Adolph Hitler.  They wanted us to understand that even the monsters of their generation had human faces.  They wanted us to remember that many who were not villains failed to see that they were living lives in service to monsters.  They wanted us to know that something happened that ordinary people thinking they were serving their country with honor had to live the rest of their lives knowing that they served evil.  I think the makers of "Downfall" wanted to tell this story because many of that generation's dying hopes were that we would learn from their past faults to live a better present to avoid in our futures what they did in their past.  The creators of "Downfall" wanted to give Germany's generation of regret their voice while these stories were still fresh in the mind of the children who heard these grievous stories.  For these stories were part of our human story, whether we were German or some other race.  These who made this movie have given us the chance to not allow this Geschichte, this story to be buried in the ashes and dust of that vast unknowable forgotten place we call “Historie.”  For the truth is we know nothing of Historie.  We only know the Geschichte, the stories, preserved for us and told from one generation to the next.

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[i] Ludwig Von Mises; Human Actions, Ludwig Von Mises Institute Publications, Auburn, Alabama 1998. P.7

Dialogue with the Movie "Downfall" - a movie review

Dialogue with the Movie: “Downfall”

Part One:  A Movie Review

Written by Dan McDonald

            The stern looking face of actor Bruno Ganz portraying Adolph Hitler is hopefully no one’s idea of a comforting image.  The movie “Downfall” was not made to be a comforting movie.  I was often intrigued by what I had read about the 2004 German movie, but never viewed it until recently.  I now regard it as one of the powerful masterpieces of cinematic accomplishment.

            This movie raised, reinforced, deepened and made me feel with powerful freshness issues of life that I am beginning to present here as a five blog response in dialogue with this movie.  Even so it can be hardly called comprehensive.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a masterfully made film is a library of contemplations.

 “Downfall” is well-researched and gives an important perspective concerning the final days of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime.  The focus is on Berlin as the massive Russian Army begins encircling the city.  There is numbness as people realize that the bursts striking outside the bunker, where Hitler’s headquarters reside, are no longer bombs but artillery shells launched from the outskirts of Berlin.  Inside Berlin, the focus of the film is on Hitler’s underground bunker, actually a large complex that had by this time become the headquarters for what remained of the Third Reich’s government.  Inside the bunker we see the variety of associates who work and reside alongside Hitler.  There are the like-minded party types, but also men of power who are allied to their ruler but having their own agendas.  There are also employees who are generally ordinary folk that came to Berlin for various reasons.  This view helps us to realize that the Nazi regime was not a monolithic group of dedicated Nazis.  It was a regime assisted by many who did not necessarily share Nazism’s ideological perspective.

            “Downfall” makes us rethink our thoughts on evil.  We often imagine evil in the form of a sinister heinous monster having lost all appearance of humanity.  We envision an evil monster surrounded by stereotyped entities of evil who have decisively determined to be bad guys and gals.  Sometimes we watch with passing pleasure an unrestrained evil type that seems simply to take pleasure in pursuing their passion for evil.  But that is seldom how evil presents itself.  The prince of darkness shows himself in the form of an angel of light, appealing to our good natures to assist him with a cause; a cause presented as good and desirable.  Sometimes the cause is the good of one’s country pitted against an enemy viewed as sinister.  The other country is likewise drawn into the conflict with similar enticements.  Evil is presented as good that we may be distracted, deceived and drawn into its service.

            “Downfall” portrayed Adolph Hitler with a genuine human face.  It did this by looking at the downfall of the Third Reich from the perspective of Hitler’s youngest personal secretary.  The movie, while also using other sources of material, chiefly brings to life the memories described by an elderly Gertraud (Trudl) Junge who told her story of the downfall, having served as Hitler’s personal secretary from 1942 until his death in 1945.  Hitler dictated for her to record, his last will and testament, as he prepared to commit suicide.  She remembered Hitler as an elderly gentleman with a human face.  She came gradually after the war to realize that he was a perpetrator of evil.  She also came to regard herself as a participant in evil.  She spent decades, often living as a recluse, overcome by depression and her unsatisfied conscience.

Because the movie shows Hitler with a human face, and showing the Nazi regime as a multi-faceted web of people with varied interests; this movie helps us to see evil in a fresh way.  This movie, however, does not minimize or explain away evil.  If his personal secretary happened to see a human side to Hitler, we viewers of this film will also see how Hitler angrily ordered executions of men simply trying to escape Berlin’s doom.

Few things show the evil of Nazism any more than how remaining fanatic Nazi officers issued military weapons to children and commissioned them as German soldiers.  These children were called upon to face a massive army, that by all estimates, had been responsible for the destruction of nearly ninety percent of the soldiers and military equipment lost by the Germans during the course of World War II.  The Soviets had rallied from near defeat at Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad to gradually crush the German Army.  It did so not only with massive numbers of men, but also with superior tanks and the invention of the Katyusha rockets which revolutionized the use of fast moving light artillery.  These were hardened warriors who had defeated the German Army at its peak.  These were soldiers who would not flinch if a soldier with a boy’s face pointed a military weapon at them.  The officers who issued the weapons to these children were the real murderers of these children.  Only the scene of happy Goebbels’ children arriving at the bunker with thoughts of seeing Uncle Hitler rivals that scene in this movie’s presentation of evil.  It becomes clear that Frau Goebbels has brought the children to the bunker because she wants to insure that her children do not live in a world without National Socialism.  The creators of Nazism, facing their own deaths want yet others to also die.  This movie shows evil with a human face to show us that evil is really evil, with no other word to describe or explain it.  This movie should not be watched by children, NO NEVER!  But I do believe the themes of this movie need to be contemplated and discussed by adults wanting a world redeemed from evil.

“Downfall” is a cinematic masterpiece because it reminds us that evil approaches us with a human face.  Evil always approaches us with a human face.  That is how evil feeds upon us.  That is how evil deceives, enlists, employs, and entraps us.  Write it upon your understanding that evil will come to us wearing a human face.

Tattered Fig Leaves - Christian Tribalism and Sexual Abuse

Our Tattered Fig Leaves

Christian Tribalism and Sexual Abuse

 

            There are whispers, even investigations, of patterns of sexual harassment and abuse.  There are whispers of sexual harassment at Christian universities that instead of being dealt with are covered up.  There are the stories of respected figures involved in patterns of sexual relationships, such that most of humanity would object to what is happening.  From most Evangelicals' perspective, these things would be wrong even if the relationships were consensual.  But many of the stories being told are not what we would consider consensual.  There are older trusted persons using "Christian counseling" to take advantage of a minor.  Or there may be patterns of harassment at a university where the institution would rather keep the problem secret rather than sully their institutional reputation by acknowledging a problem on campus.

            Christians in our era are divided among many groups, and often we doubt a different group's Christianity.  We are tribal, perhaps we have divided into warring clans.  We hear of another tribe or clan's problems and convince ourselves that the problem is a problem for that other tribe within Christendom.  If Catholic priests have been guilty of sexual molestation then it is because they are Catholics and don’t have good Evangelical doctrine.  If a Charismatic group has a problem, it is because they don’t have solid Reformed doctrine shaping their communities.  If a Reformed church has a problem it's because those Calvinists are always so legalistic.  But the truth is we imagine that if we have just the right doctrine, right tradition, right view of the Holy Spirit, then it makes us immune from the temptations that are common to mankind.  We could take any of my sentences and substitute different names and we'd all imagine that our group has an immunity from certain sins.

            Perhaps because we imagine that if we have the right doctrine certain sins won’t plague us we are set up for a worse problem in each of our tribes.  If we imagine that we are excluded from a certain sin, perhaps we will boast about our holiness, and the Gospel we preach will not just be about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it will be here is the Gospel and you can see it wonderfully expressed in our particular group which is why you need to come to our particular church, Christian university, or participate in our Christian ministry.   We will assume that we are just a bit better than the rest of everybody else.  But what happens when despite all our advantages that sin we didn't think would ever be our sin shows its face in our midst?  We will be tempted I suspect to try to keep its presence quiet because in our prayers and praises we have humbly cried out in our temples, “Thank you Lord you have not made me like other men.”  But suddenly there is in our midst sins that make it seem like we are like other men.  At that point we will be tempted to keep it quiet for the sake of our institutional testimony.

            I am not suggesting that every sin needs to be broadcast.  We should desire during an occasion of sin that because love covers a multitude of sins that a quiet repentance might take place in which no one is necessarily covered with shame.  But that covering of sin is a far different situation than when a college or Christian ministry is accused of having a pattern of sexual harassment or abuse, that the institution or ministry seeks to cover the problem for the sake of institutional reputation.  When someone is being violated by patterns of sexual harassment or abuse, then the Christian institution should clearly desire to support the abused above maintaining its own reputation.  When accusations of abuse are brought forward the accusations should be given their due, should be investigated and reputation should be secondary to insisting upon a merciful justice that upholds those who have been violated.

            One of the institutions with a respected leader in some circles is Bill Gothard.  Here is a recent blog asking for a thorough investigation of Bill Gothard.  Gothard’s ministry, from my perspective, shows how institutions, with people seeing all sorts of abnormalities, will excuse the abnormal appearances based on a belief that our spirituality is above that of other people.  When an accusation is raised against the leader, the followers circle the wagon even when some things out of the ordinary become obvious after the fact.  We resist wanting to believe about the leader of our tribe or clan, what we might well see written all over the leadership of a clan or tribe foreign to our perspective.  People on Gothard’s staff knew he spent a lot of time with young girls in counseling, but I suspect that because they believed they had some of the best teaching on dealing with sin, they could not entertain the possibility that anything wrong was taking place behind the pattern of closed doors with teenage girls.  There was a circling of the wagons around their leader.  This is not a problem strictly religious.  The movie "Downfall" showed secretaries working closely with Adolph Hitler.  One from the city of Munich said she never saw herself guilty of anything done by Hitler until she saw a plaque honoring Sophie Scholl, who was born the same year as she.  She then realized that if she had asked questions, pondered over statements she heard, she would have seen what Sophie Scholl saw but she chose rather not to see.  According to one group intent on seeing Gothard’s practices curtailed there are now 34 women who have come forward against Gothard’s dealings with them.  It is in the least time for a thorough investigation.

            For the past couple of years Bob Jones University has had an ongoing investigation into a pattern of sexual harassment on the campus.  They asked an independent Christian organization to investigate the complaints and file a report.  The independent organization promised confidentiality until the report was completed at which time the findings would be made public.  As the investigation was moving into its final stages, Bob Jones University released or fired the investigators.  Since the investigation was not complete the independent organization will not be able to speak on their findings.  Bob Jones University has commented that it has made substantial changes in school policy and therefore the investigation in their eyes is no longer needed.  This article describes the abrupt dismissal of the investigators.

            Here are the lessons I think we should learn from these fiascoes.  First, let us realize that every temptation we undergo is common to humanity.  Our doctrine, our denominational structure, our gifts of the Holy Spirit, and our tradition do not exempt us from the temptations common to man.  I can recall how as one who was a naïve Evangelical I would read the Epistle of Ephesians and see that some of the sins mentioned among the Corinthians didn't seem to be mentioned among the Ephesians.  I imagined that meant that the Ephesians had it together so well that they didn’t have the problems the Corinthians had.  But in reality St. Paul prophesied to the leaders of the church of Ephesus as recorded in Acts 20:24-31 how some from within their church would lead many astray.  The church at Ephesus seems almost ideal in the epistle written to it, but not in Acts, and not in the Book of Revelation.  The Ephesian church, if it boasted at how much better it was than the Corinthian church, evidently had it all wrong.  The truth taught to us in the Bible and perhaps especially in the New Testament is that real temptations come upon the people of God and real sins plagued the church and this is true no matter how impressive our tradition, our doctrinal confessions, our view of the Holy Spirit, or anything else we believe gives us a special right in which to boast.

            So we need to take into account that we have no guarantees that what we have in our particular spiritual package makes us immune from sin.  There are no easy vaccines to give to God’s people wherein the plague of sin will no longer be able to reach us.  We seek instead a sensitivity for our nearness to sin, and a desire to see those violated by sin healed and dealt with faithfully, and a desire that when one has fallen into a sin that they would be dealt with in a way that may show them how to escape being overcome by that sin.  None of this is accomplished by hiding sin so as to maintain a ministry's reputation, but rather this is accomplished by acknowledging sin at whatever level necessary to encourage healing and restoration both for the victim and the offender when possible.

            We should learn to accept that among human beings there will be many diverse sins.  That does not make a church ministry illegitimate.  But when a church or ministry chooses to cover up how a person’s humanity has been violated under their watch because it doesn’t want its institutional reputation sullied, then that ministry is rapidly descending towards illegitimacy.  If we are to take these horrendous violations of humanity seriously then we must insist that our churches and ministries recognize that sin is a part of Christian community life on this side of eternity.  We must also make clear that hiding sin to maintain a façade of reputation among men is never a legitimate way of ministering on behalf of the people of God.  We must demand nothing less than a cultural shift within our churches and Christian ministries away from protecting institutional reputations, and towards encouraging the healing of human beings violated by sin as well as the restoration of sinners guilty of violating their brother or sister.  No institution involved in Christian ministry is any better than its failure to provide for its weakest brother or sister.

Seeing our Bodies # 5 - Eating the Forbidden Fruit

Seeing our Bodies

Part 5 – How are we to understand the eating of the forbidden fruit?

 

 

Partaking of the forbidden fruit, expulsion from Eden

Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel

 

            It would seem that there is mystery involved in the Genesis account of mankind’s fall into sin.  Whether one takes this story as the factual occurrence, a literal historical account, or as God’s story describing what took place in a way in which we can understand the story and its implications for all of us, the story has mysteries not easily explained.

God made it clear to Adam and Eve that they were not to partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The Serpent suggested there was more to this command than God was letting on.  The Serpent told Eve “God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  This would be an easy enough story to understand if the story showed us in a clear-cut way that God was truth telling and the serpent was deceiving.  But deception seldom works by telling a simple lie.  Deception speaks truth aimed at hiding a significant element of the truth.  Deception is a confidence scheme using some truths as a hook to win one's confidence until the scheme has them sucked in.  The serpent was accusing God of a confidence scheme, of holding back something important from Adam and Eve.  When the story is told there is enough truth in the serpent's words to make us wonder because God acknowledges that in some way Adam and Eve had become like God able to distinguish good and evil.  There is mystery involved here, but there is enough of this story that when taken with the rest of Holy Scripture we can begin to see how the serpent was a deceiver, and how the gaining of an ability to distinguish good from evil did not necessarily give us much of an ability to redeem ourselves from a fall into sin.

Many a reader of the Biblical account is taken back by how the serpent seems to express more about what the forbidden fruit would do for Adam and Eve than God's simple command not to eat of the forbidden fruit had indicated.  So when Adam and Eve do eat of the forbidden fruit we would perhaps expect the story to explain that the serpent's promise was all a lie.  But instead God banishes Adam and Eve from Eden while saying “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” - - therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3:22-23)

There is a mystery of what took place in this transaction, but it seems to me that a couple of explanations perhaps make some sense of the story in a way that relates to what we are elsewhere given in the Scriptural teachings regarding the nature of man.  The serpent is a deceiver because he failed to tell them that this understanding of good and evil would come with a price tag.  That price tag would be that they would have knowledge of good and evil not as innocent persons having done neither good nor evil, but as transgressors having become sinners.  Adam and Eve gained an understanding of good and evil and became like God in that sense of understanding or sensing the distinctions between good and evil, but that understanding was an understanding twisted and turned by man’s fall into sin.  I think S. Bruce Narramore in his work No Condemnation perhaps has understood what happened in this transaction as well as anyone I have read.  Adam and Eve obtained through their partaking of the fruit an autonomous conscience functionally capable of distinguishing through reason the distinction of good and evil.  But this autonomous (rooted in our own individual beings) function had come to be as we fell into sin.  So from the beginning, not quite like the serpent told it, Adam and Eve had not only a conscience through the transaction, but a defiled conscience through the transgression.

 If we read the Bible carefully regarding our human consciences we will discover that they are not necessarily speaking divine truth.  There are those as Narramore carefully pointed out in his book that had well informed strong consciences.  There were those who had weak consciences wherein people feel condemned in a certain action that is not actually a sin whatsoever.  Then there are those who have seared consciences that have been silenced and reshaped so that they do not sound an alarm when sin is near or when a transgression is committed.  Narramore was concerned that too many Christians viewed conscience as a wholly divine voice within human experience rather than an autonomous conception of good and evil that was not only acquired in what is described as the original transgression against God, but has a tendency to try to work out salvation in a human manner separate of God's work of redemption.

That is what we see Adam and Eve trying to do in Genesis 3.  They see that they are naked and they make garments to cover their nakedness, a nakedness perhaps itself representing that they are no longer whole persons wholly integrated within God's creation.  They are instead defiled creatures needing a covering.  But the autonomous nature of conscience drives Adam and Eve to seek ways of clothing themselves, and of hiding themselves from God.  This is the very opposite of what we will be taught through the Gospel.  We are told in the Scriptures that he who covers his transgression will not prosper.  But Adam and Eve make for themselves garments from the fig leaves and hide themselves when God speaks.  The Gospel describes for us the need to confess our sins and to receive forgiveness and to be healed through God's provision of redemption.  But conscience will often lead us to try to cover our sins, to make up for evil with trying harder, and with some other way than looking to God for his provision of forgiveness and discipleship through his word, his Spirit, his church, and his people for restoration and sanctification.

For this reason Narramore became convinced that there were many ways in popular Christian teaching that Christians were being driven not to the Gospel for restoration from sin but to our own human consciences.  The human being confronted by his conscience can be driven to a remorse for sin, but as long as it is only a human conscience directed dealing with sin will always be trying to work harder to overcome the fault and will be characterized by hiding, by shame, and by a sorrow that falls short of repentance.  But the Gospel directs us away from an autonomous work of salvation directed by our individual consciences.  It describes a redeemer who has come into the world, taken his place in our lives by becoming God with us, and taking on human flesh in the incarnation.  He who has done this has made himself manifest to us in the life of Jesus Christ and has expressed an invitation as he says to us, "Come, follow me."  He is committed to being our Savior, our Redeemer, our teacher, our great high priest, the lamb sacrificed for our sins and the risen Lord capable of instructing, teaching, and discipling us not from the sense of guilt taught to us by our consciences but by the certain success of his resurrected life and eternal power, the proclamation of His Holy Word, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the pleasure of God the Father.

We sometimes read in our days of dressing in accord with purity codes.  But we need to watch carefully that we do not put on the clothes of an awakened but autonomous conscience like that which Adam and Eve wore when they saw themselves as naked and so put on the garments they made from fig leaves.  Instead, we are to wear those garments made for us in the life and righteousness of Jesus Christ.  These are garments made for us by the love of God and wrapped around us without shame or deceit in the promise of salvation.