David Bunce's blog

In his famous anti-war novel, ‘Slaughterhouse 5’, Kurt Vonnegut in talking about the fire-bombing of Dresden makes the observation that “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre”.  It’s an understandable sentiment, and one that deeply resonates with me. It’s as if, in putting words and descriptions to events like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the killing fields in Cambodia or the Gulag, we are somehow taking away from the raw power of the evil that was done. It almost seems to do an injustice to the victims of this evil when we try to rationalise it, carrying the connotations that what happened was merely an unfortunate set of circumstances, a curious by-product of history that had deeply tragic consequences. Therefore, silence is often the preferred option.

Yet at the same time, there is also the danger that, in remaining respectfully silent, we are unable to guard against a repeat of such an event in other circumstances (and a cursory knowledge of history will instantly tell us that such acts of inhumanity are repeated time and time again) and, most worryingly of all, we are unable to identify the same dehumanising and destructive trends and tendencies in our own lives. Even when writing this, I’m reminded by an RSS feed from a blog I read that officially in Turkey the Armenian Holocaust in the early half of the twentieth century is not officially acknowledged; in this area, as in so many others, the path to truth and reconciliation, already so painful, is made more impossible yet by denial and cover-up. Likewise, we would be foolish to think that such appalling acts of violence are not being perpetrated even now – whether it be in Darfur, or in the treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza strip.

In Rwanda, in Germany, in the Balkans, one of the main trends behind the massacre of millions of people was the loss of a sense of humanity. The story of massacre is the story of the triumph of nationalistic, ethnic or tribal identity over a deeper sense of shared humanity and a shared ethic of human dignity and human worth.

As a Christian, this recognition poses deep problems and fundamental questions for my faith – questions which became even more poignant last summer when I visited Dachau Concentration Camp and for the first time really became aware of the true extent of the Holocaust.

Theology after the Holocaust is something which is, quite rightly, very tricky. What is there to say to such an appalling act of inhumanity and evil, especially coming as I do from an evangelical perspective, when so often we only focus on the personal sin and atonement, the substitution of Jesus on the cross for our own personal sins? What is there to say to whole nations, whole peoples torn apart by hate, by division, by inhumanity? What hope does the cross of Christ hold out to such a massacre?

Indeed, it’s possible to say that it’s this focus on the personal, the private, a legacy from Martin Luther’s theology of two Kingdoms, that led many Christians in Germany and elsewhere to separate their beliefs from the wider political scene, to internalise faith and confine religious conscience to the private sphere.

Perhaps one of the few theologians who has begun to satisfactorily sketch the faintest shadows of an answer is the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. In his book “The Crucified God,” he reflects upon what the gospel of Mark reports as being Jesus’ dying words, the cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In this cry, Moltmann argues, we can begin to get a picture of the scope of the cross – the suffering God, not removed from the pain of the world, but suffering alongside it – and suffers alongside us and all those who are oppressed, persecuted and denied their humanity –  entering into the world in compassion and thereby protesting against it in an act of self giving. It is a challenge to me as a Christian to not think of God solely as God of sin management, allowing me to sit in an ivory tower and be removed from a hurting and broken world, but a God who goes into the deepest, darkest places of humanity and calls me to follow, to be the hands and feet of the crucified God, whether it be in advocacy for the victims of dehumanisation in all its forms, whether it be working in local communities for increased understanding and peace and a decrease in hate and fear – whatever area of life, I believe the call to follow Jesus is a call to follow the crucified God and to come and die in order to bring life.

I’d like to finish with a quote I saw when visiting Dachau Concentration Camp. “Signs of conquest are presented only unobtrusively. No euphemism, no playing down. Only here and there an indication that there are such things as liberation, reconciliation, redemption. Perhaps you may cast a glance at the cross protruding from the wall. You recognise a figure being crushed by the surrounding load. But you may detect a different motion as well: A figure bursting open this load. Resistance and resignation, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.”

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