Pastors are not assassins

 

Just back from seeing the movie Bonhoeffer and trying to process the cinematic moral dilemma this movie was for me. I have a deep admiration for Bonhoeffer and his writings and I was a little more than concerned about his story being turned into a movie.

 I was impressed with the overall quality of the movie but it’s the deeper themes and ultimate meaning of the movie that I would like to discuss and discern with you. Bonhoeffer was a devout Christian and man of peace. A self-described pacifist. The major element of this movie was him being drawn into an assassination attempt of Hitler.

The historical evidence that ties him to that plot is very thin and I personally don’t believe he was an active part or even would have affirmed killing his enemies. It was not only not his way, it was and is not the way of Jesus.

With that said the movie has him do a moral flip in the middle of it. Suddenly Bonhoeffer believes killing his enemy is what God wants him to do.

I found it fascinating that as soon as he makes the switch one of his young students begins to question him intensely. The student sees his teacher’s integrity seems to have slipped. The moral/Biblical compass is spinning. But “movie Bonhoeffer” doubles down and continues to justify this tactic. In one line he simply says this is an enemy he can kill and so he will.

After this we see the desperate attempt that failed. Then he is arrested and even the Nazi officer who takes him into custody looks him in the eye and says “what has become of the church when one of its pastors becomes an assassin?” To which Bonhoeffer has no reply. What reply is there?

If I zoom out and look at the big picture, taking the message of the movie at face value: here we have a brilliant man, of high morals and biblical understanding, drop one of his key principles for life in exchange for a plot that failed.

 I would see this has a clear indication that he got off track and ran contrary to God’s will. The plot went sour. If it was God’s will that Hitler should be assassinated it certainly should have been done with Bonhoeffer’s blessing and crew, right?

The truth is there were 42 failed attempts to assassinate Hitler that we know about. I’m sure there were many Nazi Christians who pointed to those attempts and said “you see God is protecting Hitler, isn’t that obvious!” This is the scary view too. That we can endorse violence and hatred on both sides and let it spiral out of control in the culture and then the church? This can twist reality so completely, not to mention the Gospel!

Nevertheless I did find some prophetic warnings in this movie for us as a country and a church:

 #1 beware of politicians who print Bibles. I’d never heard of the “Hitler Bible” but it was a real thing! It was actually called Die Botschaft Gottes (The Message of God), and released in 1940. This was a book of some 304 pages, with about 60% fewer words than in the German Luther NT. The Nazis revised this Bible, scrubbing it of all it’s Jewish references and adding to it Nazi ideas. This the movie brought in chilling detail. And the church-but for a small faction-went along with it!

#2 beware of politicians who demonize minority groups and hang all of a country’s problems on them. This is classic scape goating. It takes the focus off the problem and places it on people-who we are then called to fear and eventually hate. This is utterly contrary to the Gospel and should never be affirmed by the church.

#3 beware of politicians and movements that demonize their political opponents. If we see our fellow countrymen as evil, not to be trusted or to the level that they need to be silenced or eliminated-we’ve crossed a line. Not only do we cease to be the country we should be, we are no longer the church, that is the body of Jesus in the world.

Oh friends, history repeats itself only if we forget the mistakes of the past or worse yet, pretend they never happened or could never happen again.