Against Indifference by Lambert Carole J

Author:Lambert, Carole J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang AG

If the creation is being destroyed by its very Creator, what right have we to grumble about the destruction of our own work? It will be the task of our generation, not to ‘seek great things,’ but to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos, and to realize that this is the only thing we can carry as ‘booty’ out of the burning house….We shall have to bear our lives more than to shape them, to hope more than to plan, to hold out more than to stride ahead. But for you, the younger, newborn generation, we want to preserve that soul, which will empower you to plan and build up and give shape to a new and better life. (Bonhoeffer, Letters 387)

Thus Bonhoeffer and his generation can only barely survive God’s wrath and Hitler’s chaos while little Dietrich, preserving his family’s values, can create a ← 91 | 92 → new Germany. It is significant that Bonhoeffer’s loving focus on his newborn godson ignores the extermination of newborn Jewish children who also would wish to survive the “chaos” and “to plan and build up and give shape to a new and better life.” Recognition of Jewish suffering is not a part of his horizon of expectations.

Bonhoeffer obviously felt that destruction reigned upon and around him and that the most he himself could do was to hold on to his soul, or perhaps Germany’s real and better “soul,” so that eventually little Dietrich and his postwar friends could design “a new and better life.” This sentiment of currently living under the wrath of God had already been expressed to Eberhard Bethge in Bonhoeffer’s letter to him of 29–30 January 1944, when he stated the following: “When the bombs are crashing down around this building [Tegel prison], I can’t do otherwise than think of God, of God’s judgment, of the ‘hand stretched out’ of God’s anger (Isa. 5:25 and 9:11–10:4)” (Letters 276). The image of a wrathful God is again echoed in two biblical references found later in this baptism missive: ‘“But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land, says the LORD, to till it and live there’ (Jer. 27:11)” (Bonhoeffer, Letters 389), and ‘“Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past’” (Bonhoeffer, Letters 389). He does not mention hiding others, namely Jews, when the “doors” are “shut” “until the wrath is past.”

The “younger, newborn generation” will be better equipped to build “a new and better life” because they will be inured to suffering. Bonhoeffer admits that “[a]voiding pain, as far as possible, was one of our subconscious guiding principles” (Bonhoeffer, Letters 388), but little Dietrich’s “generation will begin early having to bear privations and pain and having [their] patience severely tested, so [they] will be tougher and more realistic” (Bonhoeffer, Letters 388). In addition to

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