Voice 1
Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Adam Navis.
Voice 2
And I’m Liz Waid. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
Would you ever kill someone? Wait, do not say “no” immediately. Think about it. What if someone was threatening your family? What if your country were being attacked? What if you could save millions of lives by taking only one? Would you kill then?
Voice 2
Ethics is the debate over how people should act. Sometimes this debate takes place in school – as a theory. Other times these debates take place in the middle of life. People need to make difficult decisions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one man who had to move ethics out of theory and into his life. He had to decide if he was going to help kill another man.
Voice 1
In 1931 Dietrich Bonhoeffer became an ordained Lutheran pastor. He had completed his studies and had been teaching and writing for a few years. Around this time, Germany was changing. The Nazi political party was rising to power and Adolf Hitler was taking control of the country. To get more control for himself, Hitler only permitted the state approved church. He began to tell people that their first loyalty belonged to the nation of Germany, not to God.
Voice 2
Bonhoeffer became part of a group of two thousand pastors who formed the Pastors Emergency League. They opposed the state approved Nazi church. When pressure from the government increased, this group changed into the illegal Confessing Church. The Confessing Church believed that Christians should follow God first, not the nation or Hitler. Bonhoeffer served as the head of the Confessing Church’s illegal school.
Voice 1
Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. A pacifist does not believe that violence is ever the solution to problems. But as Bonhoeffer heard stories of Jewish people being killed, his ideas changed. He decided that pacifism was a good theory, but to not act was to act. If he, and others, did not act, they were letting Hitler succeed. If he did nothing to fight the evil he saw, he was supporting the evil. He said this:
Voice 3
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us innocent. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Voice 2
This is how a pacifist minister found himself working to kill an evil dictator. Bonhoeffer joined a group working to fight Nazism. He could still travel outside the country, so he took information to Great Britain. He tried to gather support for the Confessing Church and tell the world that not every German supported Hitler.
Voice 1
Bonhoeffer did have the chance to escape from Germany completely. Once, he travelled to New York City. But after only a few weeks, he decided to return. He knew that if he was going to help rebuild the country he loved, he would have to stay during the struggle for the heart of Germany.
Voice 2
So he returned. He could not support Hitler’s government. But he could not do nothing. He believed that killing was wrong, but he also believed it was wrong not to help people in trouble. During this time he spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the right thing to do.
Voice 1
Eventually he decided to join a group trying to kill Adolf Hitler. And when the attempt failed, the German government arrested him and put in prison.
Voice 2
In prison, Bonhoeffer wrote many letters and documents. Some of these explained how he decided to join the group trying to kill Hitler. He said that there are two things to guide Christians in life’s situations. The first is the needs of the people around you. In this case, these were the millions of people Hitler was killing.
Voice 1
The second guide is the model of Jesus Christ and his teaching called “The Beatitudes” These centre on the poor, those who are sad, and those who suffer. When trying to make a difficult decision, he tried to remember these things.
Voice 2
We began today’s program by asking if you would kill someone. Now, put yourself in Bonhoeffer’s position. If you had the chance to kill a single person and save the lives of millions of people, would you do it? If you say “no” then what would you do? Nothing? Walk away? Let the people suffer and die? These are not easy questions. Every answer leads to suffering.
Voice 1
For Bonhoeffer, his answer led to his death. Here is what happened as told by the prison doctor:
Voice 4
“On the morning of the day, sometime between five and six o’clock, the prisoners were led out of their cells and the judgements read to them. Through the half–open door of a room I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, still in his prison clothes, on his knees in prayer to the Lord his God. The devotion and clear belief of being heard that I saw in this man, moved me to my depths.”
Voice 1
Then, Bonhoeffer had all his clothes removed. He was led outside to the gallows. Here he prayed once more. Five minutes later his life was ended. He was only thirty–nine years old.
Voice 2
Bonhoeffer believed that being a pacifist would require he remove himself too far from the suffering of the people that he wanted to help. He would have been no help at all. There are many Christians who would have encouraged Bonhoeffer to find a non–violent form of resistance. And yet, what makes Bonhoeffer’s actions different from other acts of violence was that he was moved by Jesus Christ’s command to help the poor and the suffering, those who cannot help themselves.
Voice 1
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not trying to develop a model of action. He was not telling people that all acts of violence were good as long as you felt God was behind you. Instead, he was one man in one situation trying to decide what was best. He was not sure he was doing the right thing. But he was willing to accept the results of his actions, both for his body and for his soul.
|