The Rainbow at the End of the Unspeakable
University years for me were bittersweet. Having taken my childhood faith for granted, it crumbled as I encountered the world of science. Although I desperately wanted to cling to my beliefs, deep down I was afraid that God didn’t exist and that what was “me” was just a chance, temporary arrangement of a few molecules. When I died, the lights would go out. Looking back I see that it was the love of God and the love of my family and his people who saw me through. And there was the world of Christian writing that helped me along the way. I scoured Christian “bookstores” desperately looking for some help with my questions and usually came up short. I did find the InterVarsity book table and was relieved to discover there were other individuals that had struggled to believe. I made new “friends” through books. C.S. Lewis, Pascal, Luther, F.F. Bruce, Donald Mackay, Clark Pinnock, Michael Green, I. Howard Marshall, John Stott, and others. I found them all lacking in some way – never did find that book that answered it all – but they helped me through deep times of doubt about the existence of God and the truthfulness of Christianity. In 1975 I took a little time off and went to England to work, and one rainy day while pushing a wheelbarrow up a wooden plank, I said to myself, “I believe again, I really believe again.” It wasn’t that the intellectual doubts had disappeared but my faith was taking root.
One book that I found quite helpful was In Two Minds: The Dilemma of Doubt and How to Resolve It by Os Guinness (now entitled God in the Dark). It helped me learn to suspend judgment on some questions and know that I simply needed to trust God. Today I still watch for the announcement of a new Os book. Perhaps he errs a bit on the stoic side but there is an experiential side that one is able to pick up in his writing. His new book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, is written for a broad audience and doesn’t presume faith on the part of the reader. Guinness genuinely wrestles with the problem of evil that the atrocities of the 20th century presents. Guinness examines the topic by asking seven questions:
Guinness was born in China during World War II and narrowly escaped the death that took two of his brothers. He writes as someone who has been there. In the end he of course presents Christian faith as the answer to his seven questions. However it is not a formulaic answer and faith can be hinted at even in the genuine “Goddamnit” prayer of an atheist.
Guinness rightly universalizes evil. It is the common human experience. But, in a chapter entitled “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Evil,” he implies an unfair equivalence between Nazi atrocities and the Allied area bombing of Germany. “Ordinary People” is surely derived from Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning recounts how middle-aged German men were involved in the shooting deaths of tens of thousands of Polish Jews in the lead up to the Final Solution. Were the bombings of Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden by young British and Commonwealth aircrew that Guinness mentions the moral equivalent of what Browning gut-wrenchingly describes? Certainly if one is a pacifist then one can perhaps accept this. However Guinness is not a pacifist. Very early in the war studies showed that the average RAF bomb dropped over Germany landed on average of 5 miles from the target. This reality led to the British policy of area bombing whereby city centers were targeted in order to maximize e damage to German industry. While this is all part of a very large debate the bottom line is that without area bombing there would have been no Western Front prior to 44 and a considerably different Eastern Front given the amount of German personnel and material needed to defend Germany during the Allied air offensive.
At the end of Unspeakable, Guinness relates the powerful story of the pacifist Huguenot village of Le Chambon. Located in Vichy, France, the people of this little village and its pastor, Andre Trocme, succeeded in sheltering 5,000 Jewish children. Le Chambon and its non-violent resistance is for pacifist and non-pacifist alike, “a diamond flashing in a pile of dirt.” La Chambon was the rainbow in the midst of holocaust and represents a problem for the “problem of evil.”
The story of Le Chambon is taken from Philip Hallie’s Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. Hallie, an embittered ex-artilleryman and atheist philosopher, was personally transformed upon encountering the story of Le Chambon. In the introduction to the revised edition of his book he relates a lecture circuit story that is worth printing in an extended fashion:
Hallie continues,
-Philip Hallie, pp. xvii-xviii.
A powerful narrative that Guinness quite rightly picks up. I think Os has hit a home-run if that can be used for a topic that is so dark. Whether or not a book makes it as a bestseller can be tough to predict. I’ve been tracking Unspeakable almost daily with warehouse levels and Amazon sales, and while it has not exploded out of the starting blocks, it seems to be picking up. For an interview with Os, head here.
Os closes In Two Minds with this prayer of Martin Luther:
Bill Reimer, March 10, 2005
One book that I found quite helpful was In Two Minds: The Dilemma of Doubt and How to Resolve It by Os Guinness (now entitled God in the Dark). It helped me learn to suspend judgment on some questions and know that I simply needed to trust God. Today I still watch for the announcement of a new Os book. Perhaps he errs a bit on the stoic side but there is an experiential side that one is able to pick up in his writing. His new book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, is written for a broad audience and doesn’t presume faith on the part of the reader. Guinness genuinely wrestles with the problem of evil that the atrocities of the 20th century presents. Guinness examines the topic by asking seven questions:
- Where on earth does evil come from?
- What’s so right about a world so wrong?
- Are we really worse or just modern?
- Do the differences make a difference?
- Isn’t there something we can do?
- Why can’t I know what I need to know?
- Isn’t there any good in all this bad?
Guinness was born in China during World War II and narrowly escaped the death that took two of his brothers. He writes as someone who has been there. In the end he of course presents Christian faith as the answer to his seven questions. However it is not a formulaic answer and faith can be hinted at even in the genuine “Goddamnit” prayer of an atheist.
Guinness rightly universalizes evil. It is the common human experience. But, in a chapter entitled “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Evil,” he implies an unfair equivalence between Nazi atrocities and the Allied area bombing of Germany. “Ordinary People” is surely derived from Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning recounts how middle-aged German men were involved in the shooting deaths of tens of thousands of Polish Jews in the lead up to the Final Solution. Were the bombings of Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden by young British and Commonwealth aircrew that Guinness mentions the moral equivalent of what Browning gut-wrenchingly describes? Certainly if one is a pacifist then one can perhaps accept this. However Guinness is not a pacifist. Very early in the war studies showed that the average RAF bomb dropped over Germany landed on average of 5 miles from the target. This reality led to the British policy of area bombing whereby city centers were targeted in order to maximize e damage to German industry. While this is all part of a very large debate the bottom line is that without area bombing there would have been no Western Front prior to 44 and a considerably different Eastern Front given the amount of German personnel and material needed to defend Germany during the Allied air offensive.
At the end of Unspeakable, Guinness relates the powerful story of the pacifist Huguenot village of Le Chambon. Located in Vichy, France, the people of this little village and its pastor, Andre Trocme, succeeded in sheltering 5,000 Jewish children. Le Chambon and its non-violent resistance is for pacifist and non-pacifist alike, “a diamond flashing in a pile of dirt.” La Chambon was the rainbow in the midst of holocaust and represents a problem for the “problem of evil.”
The story of Le Chambon is taken from Philip Hallie’s Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. Hallie, an embittered ex-artilleryman and atheist philosopher, was personally transformed upon encountering the story of Le Chambon. In the introduction to the revised edition of his book he relates a lecture circuit story that is worth printing in an extended fashion:
One evening I was speaking to a group of women in the assembly room of a large hotel in Minneapolis. The women were all leading fund raisers for the United Jewish Appeal. They were a formidable audience, with their intense eyes and their energetic personalities. I was talking to them about the killing of more than a million children by the Nazis and about the village of Le Chambon as the safest place for children on the continent of Europe during the war years.
When my lecture was over, I asked for questions or comments. A woman in the back of the room stood up . . . She was a powerful woman wearing a sheath dress that made her body look like a slender cannon, taut, full of explosive power. But for a moment the cannon seemed to crumple. She stood there silent for what seemed like a long time and then she said, “Well, you have been speaking about the village that saved the lives of all three of my children.”
There was absolute silence. She drew herself erect in her sheath dress, and said in formal tones, “I want to thank you for writing that book…She came to the front of the room, turned to face the audience, and said, “The Holocaust was storm, lightning, thunder, wind, rain, yes. And Le Chambon was the rainbow.”
Hallie continues,
The rainbow reminds God and man that life is precious to God, that God offers not only sentimental hope, but a promise that living will have the last word, not killing . . . I do not regret fighting in that war – Hitler had to be stopped, and he had to be stopped by killing many people. The war was necessary. But my memories of it give only a sullied joy because in the course of the three major battles I participated in, I saw the detached arms and legs and heads of young men lying on blood-stained snow.
The story of Le Chambon gives me an unsullied joy.
-Philip Hallie, pp. xvii-xviii.
A powerful narrative that Guinness quite rightly picks up. I think Os has hit a home-run if that can be used for a topic that is so dark. Whether or not a book makes it as a bestseller can be tough to predict. I’ve been tracking Unspeakable almost daily with warehouse levels and Amazon sales, and while it has not exploded out of the starting blocks, it seems to be picking up. For an interview with Os, head here.
Os closes In Two Minds with this prayer of Martin Luther:
Dear Lord,
Although I am sure of my position,
I am unable to sustain it without Thee.
Help Thou me, or I am lost.
Bill Reimer, March 10, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home