The Downfall

I went out with a group of friends and saw "The Downfall" last night. It
was intense and troubling. At first I couldn't think of anything in the
American experience to compare with the German fixation for National
Socialism. We demonize Hitler and place him on an evil pedestal to the
effect that "well that'll never happen again." Read Jonathan Glover's
"Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century." The facts of later
history reveal that we've let it happen again and again and again. And
its not slated to stop any time soon. Hitler's ideology brought down an
entire nation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose to die trying to stop Hitler as
an expression of his faith and be numbered with the Jews at
Flossenburg. "The Downfall" was a German director's attempt to reflect
on his people's history. As an American viewer I'm trying to process our
parallel history as the "righteous victors who would never do anything
like that." Let's look again: genocide of hundreds of Native Americans
from Columbus on, an economy that flourished because of the slave trade,
coming out on top after two world wars in the world economy, "righteous
enough" to drop two A-bombs "for peace", and on and on. "Let's not call
the events in Rwanda genocide" (Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Kofi
Annan) How is American Democracy and Globalization not its own ideology
that paves a superhighway over the poor masses in the name of consumer
progress? And where is Jesus now in all this Democracy? What right have
we to pray for the countries we conquer?

Bonhoeffer reviews/article up

cornerstonemag.com

I've been working for the last two weeks on this article on how JPUSAs use the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and identify with the aims of his community. My biggest hurdle is to make all these academic texts accessible to lay folk. Taking lofty propositional truths and clarifying them is a dance to say the least. The big test will be when I'm ready to share it with others. Martha has read it and found it too lofty for her. I'm getting to the most academic part, on the need for Bonhoeffer's Bruderhaus and the need for JPUSA. Its far easier to comment on the need and impact of an extinct community. JPUSA is well known and controversial enough to make any comparisons I draw a strain. Craig Slane comments on the need for rituals in Bonhoeffer's community to counteract the Nazi nature propaganda and rituals. I wish I could draw a straight line between the American consumer cult and JPUSAs daily activities. There's no way to call them ritual though. And how our activities effect behavior is hard to tell as well.

This time let me start with my beautiful wife. And not just because she's in the room. I'm so thankful for her help in big and small ways. She is really so lovely. I don't know that I can really appreciate true beauty yet and I fault myself for that. At 31 I should know what true beauty is but I fear it miss it often. But I know she is true beauty and I look forward to getting to know her beauty more with each new day as God gives me the grace and as I get to know her better as we get older. I'm still learning to believe in a Higher Power who can rescue me from myself. And as I get to know him better I trust he will reveal her beauty to me in deeper ways. Thank you Jesus.