Category: Religion & Philosophy

A case study of a church doing the work of communal repentance

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of communal repentance, particularly as we work against idolatry, nationalism, and racism. Now, I want to give a concrete example of what a modern-day act of communal repentance might look like; not just a performative act but one that takes ownership of the past and seeks to make amends. In Plough (a quarterly magazine), Pastor Helmuth Eiwen wrote an article titled “The Sins of the Fathers,” sharing why and how he led his Austrian church to publicly repent of anti-Semitism past and present. (While I am unsure if Eiwen is specifically familiar with Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, his articles accurately reflects the same points that I shared in my blog post.) I encourage you to read his whole piece, but in the meantime I will quote a few parts: 

“Forgiveness of sins, in the sense of the cleansing and salvation of the sinner, is a personal experience between God and the penitent. No one can step in to be cleansed or forgiven in the sinner’s stead. Yet the Bible describes another important aspect of guilt: the reality that the so-called “sins of the fathers” may have lasting negative results. In other words, even if we do not bear the sins of our ancestors, we may not be able to escape the consequences of their actions….Such an inheritance may not be personal but collective; God’s history is marked not only by relationships and covenants with individuals but with whole groups – families, cities, tribes, and entire peoples or nations…

“The ongoing aftereffects of “sins of the fathers” may be temporal: political oppression or subjugation, or economic woe. They may manifest as wars, famines, and natural catastrophes, or as pandemics and plagues. Just as grave, if less visible, are the spiritual fruits of such sin – the blindness that can lead to unbiblical or faulty theologies being passed from one generation to the next; they may be wrongheaded (and even deadly) traditions, worldviews, and attitudes. Antisemitism is one such malign legacy; its insidious invincibility has poisoned countless souls and continues to do so. Ungodly decisions, stipulations, and legal decrees by government officials or clerical leaders preserve injustice.

“When a dark cloud hangs over a city, region, or a church, its origin does not matter: it will hinder the breaking through of the gospel. More often than not, it will show itself in splits and divisions within Christendom that can be traced back to instances of persecution, hatred, and ostracism.“

In the late 1990s Pastor Eiwen realized that the legacy of anti-Semitism had left a curse on his small Austrian town that had left it strangely resistant to receiving love and grace from God. Interestingly enough, the most recent Atlantic cover article makes a similar point, that centuries-old acts of evil can have tangible, measurable impacts in our modern world: “[William Bernstein says] You can actually predict anti-Semitism and voting for the Nazi Party by going back to the anti-Semitism across those same regions in the 14th century. You can trace it city to city.” Wow! I am reminded of the ways that you can still see the tangible effects of redlining, urban renewal, or other past racist policies in many American cities today.

As Pastor Eiwen and his church wrestled with the implications for their specific city in Austria, they realized: 

“We cannot repent on behalf of somebody else. But we can identify with them and ask God to lift the curse – the negative consequences – that we are suffering under; we can even be so bold as to pray that he turns it into a blessing.…Daniel does not pray [in Dan 9], “Lord, forgive our fathers, cleanse them of their guilt.” That is something they could only do themselves. When Daniel prays for forgiveness, he is asking God to lift today’s curse. And so we too pray for God to break today’s curse so that the chain of destructive consequences of “the sins of the fathers” might come to an end – and so that there will finally be real freedom, once and for all….Daniel was given a clear recognition regarding the sins of his ancestors. He did not seek to remove himself from them, sweep them under the rug, or say they were not his business. Rather, he clearly acknowledged and named sins, and confessed them “before God’s countenance.” He could do this because he knew he was a member of a people whose ancestors had sinned, and he himself was thus ready to bear the consequences of their sin in his exile – perhaps almost as a guarantor for them.“

Eiwen emphasizes that confession is just one part of communal repentance. 

“A confession of identification is a beginning, but to bear fruit, it must lead to concrete action on the part of individuals and the community at hand – to deeds that demonstrate the authenticity of the confession by bringing about real change. Examples might include the correction of false theologies; reconciliation, which encourages new behavior and new attitudes; compensation, which, to some degree, returns what has been stolen; and the solidification of new attitudes and paradigms by the passing of new insights to the next generation. For repentance by identification to be fruitful, it must include as many of the individuals and groups who represent the collective body in question as possible. Not only solitary men and women, but whole families, congregations, churches, neighborhoods, cities, and peoples, must be willing to identify with the guilt of their fathers and step into the fissure.“

For Eiwen’s church, they felt led to take a number of actions: 

  • Learned about the guilt of their city, particularly in mistreatment of Jews
  • Gathered church leaders for a prayer
  • Confessed ancestor’s guilt as their own, and asked God’s forgiveness
  • Implored God to turn his face to the city once again, and turn the curse into a blessing
  • Do a public act of external remorse, which involved seeking out Jews that had left Wiener Neustadt and seeking forgiveness and connection

Eiwen closes:  

“One remarkable fruit of this process of “repentance by identification” has been an increased openness to the gospel in Wiener Neustadt. As far as we have been able to observe, God has revitalized not only our congregation’s spiritual life but also that of other churches in the city. Many spiritual leaders and congregants gather regularly to pray for revival. I do not know what the future will bring, but I can say this: the spiritual atmosphere has changed, the cloud has lifted, and the skies above Weiner Neustadt are now open to God.“

I continue to be immensely inspired by Pastor Eiwen’s article and recommend you read it. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions:

  • What are the open wounds still open in America that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 
  • Of what communal sins should I and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 
  • What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the truth about history when they are enthralled by semi-fascist narratives of a perfect nation under God that can do no wrong? 
  • Is communal repentance a “once-and-done” activity, or something that must be pursued for decades (or even longer)? How can you know when a communal crime has been sufficiently repented of? And how far back do we go; must modern-day Italians repent of the crimes of the Roman Empire?
  • How big a community is necessary to truly do communal repentance? Ideally the entire social group that is implicated in a crime would be willing to repent, but if that’s not the case, is it enough for just one church to do communal repentance? One family?

These are not easy questions. But they are important ones. I hope that you’ll join me in continuing to wrestle with them.

Two Massive Missed Opportunities by the American Church

In my childhood church growing up, I remember hearing our senior pastor speak about a massive missed opportunity by the American Church (he was speaking about evangelical Protestants but I’m sure it would include other groups too). According to him, the 1950s and 1960s were a time where many Christians were fervently praying for revival, especially among young people. This is when evangelists like Billy Graham and organizations such as Campus Crusade were really gaining momentum. These Christians, especially members of the “Greatest Generation,” longed for another Great Awakening and for millions of Americans to wholeheartedly turn to Jesus.

Then, my pastor explained, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, arose the Jesus Movement–a massive wave of young people passionately pursuing Jesus! But these weren’t buttoned-up, clean cut Christians like their parents; these were long-haired, barefoot, jeans-wearing hippies. They listened to rock-and-roll, went to Woodstock, cared about Civil Rights, and also loved Jesus. I count both my parents and most of my aunts and uncles as participants of this movement, and many of them were first saved in “Christian Coffeehouses” that functioned as the informal headquarters of the Jesus Movement. All of them are still practicing Christians today.

My dad, c. 1970

But unfortunately, the broader American Christian Church was not ready to receive these Jesus Freaks. If these guitar-strumming radicals weren’t ready to conform to what “Christians” were supposed to look like, then they weren’t fully welcome to join the existing churches. Eventually some members of the Jesus Movement assimilated to the mainstream church culture, others started their own churches, and others slowly faded away from Christianity altogether. [Thus perhaps the 1980s Moral Majority movement can be seen as a mostly successful attempt to capture these young, unorganized Christ-followers within a more focused political and culture effort: the Reagan-era Republican Party.]

I don’t fully know why this story from my church’s pastor has always stuck with me. I suppose because it helped me to simplify and make sense of some generational dynamics that I had already noticed, as well as because it was one of the few non-triumphal stories I had heard about American Christianity. It was a story of where American Christians had messed up, a missed opportunity, of pride and selfishness getting in the way of the movement of the Gospel.

My uncle and other members of the Jesus Movement. No ties or suits in sight.

As I sit writing this in 2023, I am convinced that there has been another major missed opportunity made by the American Church, this time in the past two decades. You see, around the year 2000 I and many other evangelicals were part of many discussions, conversations, and seminars about developing a “Christian Worldview.” I even went to a Worldview Academy summer camp! A Christian worldview was one which thought critically about the world and responded to issues by asking insightful questions, sharing biblical truths in comprehensible ways, and gently probing at unchallenged assumptions by the non-Christian culture at large. There were a few aspects to this that adjoined a bit close to rightwing politics–such as when it came to economics– but for the most part my experience was that of a philosophy class. I think it was worthwhile and helped make me a sharper thinker.

At this time, the greatest threat that Christians saw to our worldview was that of “relativism”- the idea that there is no such thing as an objective truth or objective right and wrong. Relativism was seen as the root of sexual promiscuity (“if it feels good do it!”), selfishness, greed, violence, atheism etc. Relativism said that all humans were fundamentally perfect as they were, and just had to follow their hearts to discover their own paths forward. In contrast, a Christian Biblical worldview clearly stated that there was such a thing as objective truth. All humans were fallen and needed redemption from their sinful ways, which could only come through repenting from evil and following Jesus.

I believe there was a kairos moment in recent years, when it seemed to me that secular culture had all of a sudden turned away from the concepts of relativism! Instead of seeing humans as perfect, there suddenly arose an awareness that each of us bear some connection to and culpability for systems of greed, racism, imperialism, misogyny, and other manifestations of sin. There spread the idea that there is in fact such a thing as timeless truths and universal right and wrong–ex: The Founding Fathers were slave-holders, and slavery is wrong. We must not excuse them simply because it was common behavior or think that they didn’t know any better. “Social Justice Warriors” were everywhere, pointing out sins both big and small, both on the group level and individually. This secular culture has had numerous good outcomes across society, but wasn’t without its flaws. Some people were ‘canceled’ with little hope of redemption, while others cowered in fear, afraid to make a mistake.

And this is where the opportunity should have been for the Church to jump in– to say something like: “Yes! You are right! There is such a thing as right and wrong, and those sins you have mentioned are evil and condemned in the Bible! And you’re right that every individual and indeed every group is fundamentally broken in one way or another. As the Bible says, ‘for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ We Christians are also guilty of these sins–sometimes especially so– and have to constantly repent of them. Even just looking at someone lustfully Jesus counts as adultery–and we could say that is part of rape culture and misogyny. To name just one example. However, Jesus offers not only forgiveness of all our sin, but power to free us from shame and to live new lives of repentance and righteousness! By the power of the Holy Spirit we can live differently-not that we’re ever perfect, we’ll still make mistakes-but we can seek to continually be transformed day by day, loving God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and praying for God’s perfect kingdom to be more and more present on earth as it is in heaven. Would you like to learn more about this Jesus?”

If the American Church had taken this route, we would have not only been able to speak into the social issues of our time, but would have offered a realistic path of redemption forward for those who struggle with fear of making a mistake or being forever ‘canceled.’ We might have seen more unexpected alliances forge across party lines to face real problems in society–like homelessness, AIDs, hunger, and more. We might have seen millions of young people once again take the words of Jesus seriously, wondering if he might indeed be the Way, the Truth and the Life.

But on the whole, what we saw was precisely the opposite. Instead of acknowledging the persistent existence of sin in America and pointing people to Jesus, we saw denial and self-justification by most conservative evangelicals. Too often the response has been: “I’m not a racist! I’m the least racist person you’ve ever met! And besides, Marxism and those George Soros globalists are far worse anyway. Also our Founding Fathers were chosen by God, how dare you criticize them! And how can I be a sexist, my daughter is a woman! We just need to cling ever more strongly to our country and to our Christian leaders. In fact, it’s probably a good thing if they swear, if they mock, if they lie, if they are willing to get their hands dirty–that’s what politics is you baby! Suck it up you crying libtard. All you’re doing is encouraging me to buy more ammo so I can get ready to waste these traitors. Let’s Go Brandon!” Now perhaps I’m getting carried away, but anyone who’s spent any time on social media in the past 10 years knows it’s not far from the reality. Just like Adam and Eve in the Garden, it is far easier to point the blame at someone else than to acknowledge our own failings, and American Christians are no different.

And interestingly, this is almost a complete inversion of the cultural situation from the year 2000. In many liberal secular circles, you can now see a Puritanical, almost religious culture that requires perfect behavior, language, rites, and rituals (e.g. land acknowledgments, “Latinx”, confessing one’s privilege, etc) that may indeed be worthwhile, but are sometimes performed out of fear rather than faith because there is little opportunity for forgiveness if you screw up. And on the flip side, among some conservative Christians, you can now see a reveling in grotesque language, actions, and ideas that are decidedly unlike Jesus but that are justified through self-oriented discourse. Gone is the concept of timeless, objective evils that must be condemned regardless of who does them; now it’s wrong if “they” do it but justified if “we” do it. It’s relativism all over again.

In consequence, millions of young Americans are fleeing this version of Christianity as fast as they can. I don’t think most of them are necessarily trying to flee from Jesus, but if no one has told them the full truth about Him, then how would they even know what He’s like?

Ultimately, I think the kairos moment has mostly passed for the American Church. We faced a test of our integrity and failed. To be fair – there were indeed some churches and ministries who faithfully integrated Christianity and social action, and saw some good fruit. (And again, this is mostly speaking of the part of the American Church I know best–white evangelical Protestantism. I welcome insights that come from other denominations and backgrounds.)

But I think the writing is on the wall (a biblical allusion that fewer and fewer Americans will understand each year!). In all likelihood Christianity will continue to expand in leaps and bounds in the Global South and East, while it slowly shrinks in North America except among certain immigrant groups. Perhaps it is for the best that faithful Christians one day exist here in the US as a small holy remnant, rather than as an idolatrous concubine to capitalism and empire. But in the meantime we can pray, and ask God for yet another revival, even if it’s not what we might expect. Pastor Tim Keller recently wrote in The Atlantic what such a revival might look like, and I think his analysis is spot on. We may not deserve revival any more than the Church deserved it in the 1970s. We might not like who God brings to our church doors any more than they liked the Jesus Freaks. But we can pray nonetheless. And prepare.

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part IV. We Need Communal Repentance for Communal Injustices

[Read all posts about Antifascist Theology by clicking here.]

When telling the story of America, where do you begin? Did the story of America begin in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal”? Or did it begin in 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to our shores, ushering in the start of a decidedly unequal society built on the backs of marginalized people groups? The answer to that question has been hotly debated in recent years, and I don’t plan to address it today, except to say that “it’s complicated.” However, it is crucial that we do think deeply and critically about the past — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Real history requires the study of nuance, of complicated people groups doing complicated actions for complicated reasons. 

In contrast, one of the hallmarks of fascism is an oversimplified, often mythologized celebration of a nation’s founding story, which may have little basis in fact. In the first century BCE, the Roman poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid , which linked the founding of Rome to the glorious heroes and demigods of the Trojan War stories. Virgil’s writings helped to prop up and justify the new order of the Pax Romana, the empire led by Caesar Augustus after the fall of the Roman Republic. All past evils and uncomfortable truths were washed away in the glow of the founding story. 

Fascists over the centuries have followed suit. Mussolini linked his vision of Italian fascism to the Roman Empire, nearly 1900 years prior, while Hitler’s Nazis concocted a pseudoscientific story about “Aryans” that linked to Norse and Germanic legends. For both Mussolini and Hitler, these stories required a timeless villain that they described as the globalist, unrooted, corrupt, disloyal Jew. We all know what horrors would soon be justified by these fables. 

Norse imagery used in Nazi propaganda : Source

Now, I don’t think there is anything automatically wrong with telling semi-mythical origin stories about one’s people group; humans have been doing it since the invention of language — see the Babylonian Enuma Elish, or the book of Genesis. To the extent that Americans are inspired by a fake story about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree tree, that is probably fine. However, it is bad when those stories are misused to justify evil, oppress marginalized groups, and/or to puff up a sense of false pride and supremacy. What’s even worse is when Christians, who ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard, refuse to acknowledge wrongs done and instead continue to justify sins and evil done in our nations. 

So what is the answer? How can we as Christians move forward to tell the truth about previous generations, repent and make amends as needed, and pursue justice in our own time? 

Bonhoeffer has much to say about this in his Ethics (pages 134-145), written in the 1940s under the specter of Nazi fascism. As I have written previously, while Bonhoeffer does not use this term, what he is essentially creating in Ethics is a work of antifascist theology. The tendrils of fascism have been creeping up in many places recently and we would be wise to heed Bonhoeffer’s warnings, lest we fall into similar errors. 

Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Communal Guilt

I have written before about the idea of communal guilt and communal repentance. It is a deeply biblical idea, but in the West it is often ignored because we are overly focused on individual culpability. In contrast, as Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, “The church today is [supposed to be] the community of people who, grasped by the power of Christ’s grace, acknowledge, confess, and take upon themselves not only their personal sins, but also the Western world’s falling away from Jesus Christ.” Even if we ourselves do not think we have done wrong, or have done very little, we still must confess: “Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war—all arise from the desire that lies within me (James 4:1). I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all this is slight and hardly noticeable…I am guilty of inordinate desire; I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken; I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the face of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors….what does it concern me if others are also guilty? Every sin of another I can excuse; only my own sin, of which I remain guilty, I can never excuse.”

Bonhoeffer points out that this is not merely something to be confessed by individuals for themselves, but by Christians on behalf of the whole church. “The church was mute when it should have cried out…the church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ.”

Bonhoeffer shares a litany of sins of which the German church was guilty. How many of these are similarly true of the American church today?

  • Using the language of “resisting Bolshevism [communism]” to legitimize violence against leftists
  • Not resting on the Sabbath
  • Exploiting working people beyond the hours of the workweek
  • Disrespect towards elders
  • Not speaking out against the arbitrary use of brutal violence
  • Looking on silently while the poor are exploited, and the strong were enriched
  • Not condemning slanderers who tell lies about other people

Clearly, all of these sins have both individual and communal manifestations. In our day, one person’s private sinful inclination can quickly become very mainstream — witness the rise of slander as we share unfounded conspiracy theories and lies on social media — “Oh I’m just asking questions; it’s my freedom of speech.”  Or witness the coarse joking of Christians who eagerly express the not-so-hidden desire to kidnap, kill, or rape their political opponents (#FJB anyone?).

Of course in our day, like in Bonhoeffer’s, there are those who would argue that these sins are not so bad, or at least, not so bad as the sins of our opponents. Bonhoeffer responds to these people and writes sarcastically, “Is this going too far? Should a few super-righteous people rise at this point and try to prove that it’s not the church, but all the others are guilty?…to be called as judges of the world, proceed to weigh the mass of guilt here and there and distribute it accordingly?” To these people who engage in such Whataboutism, who argue that the Church’s confession of communal sin is unnecessary when the other side is also bad, Bonhoeffer thunders at them— “Free confession of guilt is not something that one can take or leave; it is the form of Jesus Christ breaking through in the church. Whoever stifles or spoils the church’s confession of guilt is hopelessly guilty before Christ.”

Wow! He is not holding back. For the church to be the church, it must be willing to confess the sins of its people, and its nation. Anyone who tries to oppose such communal confession is “hopelessly guilty!” I think of all the pundits and politicians who are so quick to deny that American Christians have ever done anything wrong, and say that we have nothing to apologize for. Bonhoeffer thinks such people are not only deluded, but practitioners of a false gospel. To deny the existence of any guilt is to deny any possibility of forgiveness, repentance, or redemption.

However, if we do choose the right path, progress is possible. Bonhoeffer writes: “The nations bear the heritage of their guilt. Yet by God’s gracious rule in history it can happen that what began as a curse can finally become a blessing on the nations…to be sure, the guilt is not justified, not removed, not forgiven. It remains, but the wound that is inflicted is scarred over. For the church and for individual believers there can be a full break with guilt and a new beginning through the gift of forgiveness of sin. But in the historical life of nations there can only be a slow process of healing…Continuity with past guilt, which in the life of the church and the believer is broken off by repentance and forgiveness, remains in the historical life of nations…

“What matters is only whether the past guilt is in fact scarred over. If so, then at this point, within the historical conflicts of nations both domestic and foreign, something like forgiveness takes place, though it is only a weak shadow of the forgiveness that Jesus Christ gives to believers. Here the claim to full atonement by the guilty for past injustice is renounced; here it is recognized that what is past can never be restored by human power, that the wheel of history can no longer be rolled back. Not all wounds that were made can be healed; but it is critical that no further wounds be made….Where this does not happen, where injustice rules unchecked and inflicts ever-new wounds, there can certainly be no talk about such forgiveness. Instead, our first concern must be to resist injustice and convict the guilty of their guilt.” 

Bonhoeffer clearly makes the distinction between wounds that have slowly been left behind by the passage of time, and wounds that continue to remain open and gaping. In both cases, however, there is the need be a need for Christians to seek forgiveness and healing, not to simply sweep the past under the rug.

Some Case Studies

The idea of communal guilt is a bit vague. What might this look like practically? Let’s take a few case examples. 

There are some sins of our own nation that have indeed “scarred over,” and are mostly in the past. For example, Anti-Catholic sentiment used to be one of the biggest forms of discrimination in the US, with legal, social, and ethnic prejudice embedded throughout the nation. Recall that it was a big deal that JFK was the first Catholic President. However, as writer and speaker Eboo Patel has pointed out, anti-Catholic sentiment is very rare nowadays, and systemic and social barriers to Catholics have virtually disappeared. This feels like a good example of Bonhoeffer’s “scarring over”— it doesn’t justify the sins of the past, and the pain may still be there in some ways, but for the most part it is in the past. There are no new wounds being made against Catholics except in the absolute rarest of occasions.

Anti-Catholic cartoon from 1913 depicting the church and the pope as a malevolent octopus (source)

Or take the response of Germany after the Holocaust. After being forced by the Allies to reckon with the evils perpetrated in their name, Germany has embarked in a multi-generational, long-term effort to make amends. Germany has sent reparations checks to individual victims of the Holocaust for decades, as well as billions of dollars of military funding to the Jewish nation of Israel. They have constructed memorials to the Holocaust in ways both big and small, both national and local. And in terms of foreign policy, Germany has accepted over one million refugees fleeing violence, and has been very hesitant to resort to armed violence (as seen in the recent hesitation to get involved in the war in Ukraine). The repentance after WWII in Germany has thoroughly remade both that nation and Europe as a whole-for the better! [In comparison with Germany, Russia never made a serious attempt to repent or make reparations after the collapse of the USSR, and instead allowed bitterness and jealousy to take root. The contrast between modern-day Germany and modern-day Russia is vast.]  

Or to look at a negative example, we can look at certain people groups in America and see that some harms never scarred over, or, even if it partially healed, the scar keeps getting picked at and infected. Witness the genocidal removal of Native Americans from their lands and continued overlooking of the problems they face now, particularly in Native reservations. Witness the longstanding mistreatment of African-Americans at all levels of society, from the lack of reparations and justice after slavery, to the continued under-investment in and over-harsh policing of their communities. Or witness the coddling of wealthy corporations while consistently overlooking small farmers and blue collar workers. None of these are new phenomena in America, but we have never truly seen the Church at large confess sins against these groups, nor has the nation sought long-term justice, healing, and progress in them. 

Now, it is tempting in some liberal circles at this point to blame “white supremacy” or “capitalism” for all systemic sins in America and in the entire world. However, a view that blames Western ideology for all problems in the entire world actually falls prey to the same Eurocentric mindset it is critiquing. It removes agency from non-Westerners to choose their own paths, and treats them like children whose every choice is ultimately based on the foundations laid by Westerners. Can we blame white supremacy and capitalism for the genocide of Uyghurs in far-west China by the Chinese Communist Party? Should we lay the blame for 1930s Japanese militarism and violence in Korea and China at the feet of Western Europeans, or is it instead appropriate for descendants of those victims to seek justice and apologies from modern-day Japan (as they actually are doing)? Or what about evils that happened around the world centuries ago, before European colonialism started, that still have a legacy today? At the final judgment of the world, the sins of Europeans are indeed vast. Western Christians must deal with them all as quickly and thoroughly as possible lest we ourselves receive judgment. But at best it overstates the case, and at worst engenders unneeded opposition, to lay all the sins of all history at the feet of modern-day Europeans and North Americans. Each community must take proper account of its own actions, right or wrong, justified or unjustified.

On a related note, Bonhoeffer himself is hesitant to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by rushing straight from the evils of empire into a different mess. He writes, “By renouncing the crown or by surrendering what had been conquered, a ruler could cause even greater disorder and incur even more guilt.” In other words, we must be careful that the unjust systems we seek to tear down are not replaced by something even worse. The French Revolution started with lofty goals but ended with the guillotine and Napoleon. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring both sought the ends of evil dictatorships but both resulted in bloodshed and violence worse than before. We must not be slow or scared to act against social injustice, but we must be wise in how it gets corrected. 

Me at at an Arab Spring rally in Ramallah, Palestine, 2011.

Conclusion

There is a LOT to think about here. And I am still learning and having my theology shaped on the topic of communal repentance. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions. 

What are the open wounds still open in America and around the world that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 

Of what communal sins should me and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 

What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the messy truths about our nation? 

The Garden of Naming

[Note: I first published this blog post on June 21, 2011 on my old blog, and am reposting it here with slight edits.]

Perhaps the most powerful thing in the world that anyone can ever do is to name something. To choose a word to sum up. With a few syllables, names can stick, they can both describe and determine identities. Think how powerful these words can be: Beautiful. Hero. Messiah.

Or: Ugly. Failure. Disappointment.

In the Old Testament, names were incredibly important, and a change of name marked a change of identity. Abram became Abraham. Jacob became Israel. God, while having many names and characteristics in the Bible, is often referred to by modern Jews as “Ha-shem,” or “The Name.” God’s name is considered by them as too holy to even say. Maybe they grasp a truth that Christians don’t…


In the Garden of Eden, the first man Adam was given the job of naming the all animals. Whatever he called them, that was its name. Its identity. As God had created Adam and had named him, now Adam was doing the same. This is a powerful image, Adam fulfilling his destiny as a lord over the earth and co-creator with God. (Check out my previous blog “Red” for more analysis on the meaning behind Adam’s name).


Maybe it has something to do with gardening. Recently, I think I’ve finally begun to understand its allure. I had never cared much about tending to plants before, and tasks like weeding and watering seemed dull and pointless. Why grow plants for beauty? Or even food (which I’ve yet to attempt)? It always seemed too much effort, for little gain.


But I’ve revised my opinion lately. I have had more free time this summer, and I’ve surprised myself by willingly going out to clear weeds, trim back plants, mow grass, etc. I’ve found I enjoy seeing the results of my work, being outside, and being in touch with nature. I don’t understand exactly why this joy exists. But it fits in with what it seems human existence is about: it’s part of that co-creating for which the original humans were created.


Now, if the connection I made between naming and gardening were an isolated connection, you could write me off (you always can, actually). But I see at least two other examples in the Bible where these two meet. At the end of the book of John, we find Mary Magdalene weeping in front of Jesus’ empty tomb, wondering where his body is. Once again, we’re in a garden. Jesus comes behind her and asks her what’s wrong. She thinks he is the gardener. Jesus calls her by name, saying, “Mary.” And that’s all that’s required for her to realize that he’s Jesus. In shock and in joy, Mary replies in her own language of Aramaic, “My teacher!”

The Garden Tomb's story
The “Garden Tomb,” one of the possible sites where Jesus may have been buried.


Are you getting this symbolism? It blew me away when I saw it. Jesus is the “new Adam” the firstborn of a new race of humans: those who are perfect, forgiven, and who have eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:20-28). So where do we see this new Adam? In a garden, of course! And what is the first thing this new Adam does? He calls Mary by name, and she responds. I can imagine him saying it full of love, and Mary rushing to embrace him. Thus God’s new order begins, as the first one did, in a Garden of Naming.

But this is just the beginning. The garden motif is consummated in the prophetic book of Revelation, which describes the final destruction of evil and the marriage of heaven and earth. In the last chapter the author of Revelation describes the ultimate city of God, where He lives with all of his people on Earth. This eternal paradise has a river, fruit trees, and a tree of life. Sound familiar? That’s because this is the same description as for the Garden of Eden. Eden has finally returned, it’s back, and it’s been completely redeemed from sin. And guess what? Every single person in this city of New Jerusalem has the name of God on his or her forehead (Revelation 22:4). Their identity can only be described by using the name of God. They are now considered full children of God, bearing his name.


So there’s something special in the Bible about gardening and names and identity. The connections are tough to unravel, but they’re lively, interesting, and beautiful.