Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
(Hosea 4:1-2 NIV)
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No faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. At first I thought it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" but when I looked it up I found that it was actually Edmond Burke. He was born first so he had the advantage. If nobody else had said it by the time D. B. was around he would have. It fits with the sentiment in much of his writings as well as the way he lived his life.
Bonhoeffer's most famous book is The Cost of Discipleship and to better understand how this concept fits with what he was writing there and to a lesser degree his other works, we really need to grasp what happened to the church and the society in Germany at that time. The charge Hosea brings against Israel could just as easily have been laid against the German Lutheran and Catholic churches.
There was no faithfulness. The German church had its loyalty to God usurped by its loyalty to Garman society, the German nation, and bit by bit, to the NAZI party.
There was no love. One by one subcultures in Germany were marginalized, suppressed, and eventually eliminated. Again, I believe it was D. B. who said something like: "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the trade unionists and the social progressives, but I was neither so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me there was no one left to speak." It is love that compels us to speak, it is selfish interest that shuts us up.
Finally, there is no acknowledgement of God in the land. Very quickly in Germany the mantra became not "In God we trust" but rather "Heil Hitler".
As a result there was cursing. This is literally to call down destruction on someone. It's the type of cursing a witch would do but without all the boiling pot and spooky words. In Germany they simply called it informing. If you didn't like someone it was very easy to make their life very difficult no matter how innocent they were.
There was also lying. Hitler's most famous quote was "The great masses of the people will more easily fall prey to a big lie than to a small one."
There was murder stealing and adultery. Millions were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Their property was taken, their women brutally used, and their very lives were fuel for the fire. This bloodshed was, of course, counterpoint to the bloodshed we now call World War II.
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In a 1930's Germany that was producing so many great theological minds like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, the Neibhur brothers, and of course Dietrich Bonhoeffer among others, it saddens me that such a charge can be laid them. It sickens me that the same charge can be laid against the Evangelical church in America today. But you might be saying, "Wait a minute, we aren't murdering millions of innocent Jews in concentration camps." No, we are murdering millions of voiceless children in so called hospitals and health centers.
Is there faithfulness? A hotel employee has said on record that they love it when religious conventions come to town because it always gives a boost to the pornographic pay per view programming. The former leader of the Evangelical Association was not an anomaly but rather than a symptom as we see more and more leaders being exposed for saying one thing while living another. I was one of them.
Is there love? Why did we not hold our president accountable when he actually cut spending for faith based initiatives from what it was under Clinton after it was such a major part of his first platform. Why are we throwing troops with guns against an oppressed people rather than workers with food and medicine?
Is there an acknowledgement of God in the land? Just recently a person asked me when they found out I am a registered democrat, "How can you do that if you are a Christian?" If our "Christianity" has become so allied with a political party then who is it we are really acknowledging. That is why many leaders like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis as well as ordinary guys like me are no longer calling themselves Evangelical but rather Red Letter Christians.
It's time to break free from the lies that society and the church have swallowed and get back to what Christ has called us to be doing.
How embarrassing. I went and checked and you're right. But in my defence, I did see it wrongly attributed to DB on multiple quote sites so I'm not alone in my error.
