The Masquerade of Evil

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

(A great blessing of the past few years has been a renewed interest in the doctrine of vocation: that we serve God in the callings of our daily lives. Above and beyond daily activities, Christians also have opportunities to stand for what is right—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not. What may, or should, a Christian do in the face of public evil? Whether or not you find yourself raising a public protest about abortion or some other issue, Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto presents some challenging thoughts to ponder in this address to a pro-life rally in St. Louis, Missouri. —Ed.)

I am German. And I am seventy-two years old. When I was a child, my government killed six million Jews and millions of others in my name. The Nazis did not ask me, “Uwe, may we commit a genocide in your name?” Still, in my name this was done, for I was and still am a German citizen, and so I must live with this legacy.

Sixty years ago,Theodor Heuss, the first president of the new, free West Germany, said that those Germans not implicated in the Holocaust must not feel collective guilt. But he added that all Germans must have a sense of collective shame. This sense of collective shame has remained with many Germans till this very day.

Today it seems that this will be the fate of Americans, even those who have never harmed a child. They will be plagued by collective shame over the slaughter of fifty million unborn babies—a slaughter committed in their names.

Perhaps the best-known Christian martyr of the Nazi era was Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Before he was hanged, he wrote in his prison cell, “The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to disguise as light, charity, historical necessity or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethics, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.”

In our present reality, which is the fruit of the French Revolution, man claims absolute autonomy from God. Hence this has become a godless world. According to Bonhoeffer, Christians are called to “suffer with God in a godless world.” By coining the phrase, “godless world,” Bonhoeffer clearly did not mean to imply that God did not exist. He used the phrase “godless world“ in the same sense that we speak of “godless persons.” But he meant more than that: God allowed Himself to be driven out of this world and in so doing gave us our freedom.

Walking with God in a godless world requires standing fast, showing civil courage, and risking martyrdom like Pastor Walter Hoye whose nonviolent pro-life positions have landed him in jail in Oakland, California. Bonhoeffer lamented the dearth of civil courage among most of his fellow Germans.

Ah, if only faithful Christians had staged Lenten prayer vigils outside the death camps of Auschwitz or Buchenwald! Of course, they, too, would have been gassed as a consequence or been sent to the Russian front to die.

If only the German media had had the guts to report about the gas chambers! But, of course, they couldn’t. The newspapers then were censored. They were part of a totalitarian system. Such audacious reporters would have surely been hanged, decapitated, or sent to Russia, and their stories would have been spiked.

Today in America the media are free. What would a reporter risk when writing about late-term abortion procedures where doctors suck the brains out of unborn babies’ skulls in order to extract their bodies through their mothers’ birth canal? Such a reporter would risk no more than the ridicule from his or her colleagues, which is also the reason why Christians praying and fasting outside abortion facilities, thus saving lives, received virtually no media coverage.

So, “who stands fast?” Bonhoeffer wanted to know. Who is prepared to suffer with God in a godless world, he would surely ask on this first day of Holy Week? How are we going to answer Bonhoeffer’s haunting question: “Are we still of any use?” I have been a reporter for fifty-two years. I can report to you that I have seen the answer with my own eyes: down at the slaughterhouse for unborn babies on Forest Park Avenue.

You are the answer: you, simple men, women, and children praying and fasting, suffering insults and rude signs from passersby, but also being encouraged by honking truck drivers and the janitors of neighboring buildings shouting, “Bless you.”

“I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to resist in times of distress,” wrote Bonhoeffer before facing the scaffold. He added: “I believe that God is no timeless fate, but that He waits for and answers sincere prayers and responsible actions.”

This is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s message to you as well, you faithful people who imitated Christ during the last forty days. You imitated Christ by risking mockery and media silence at a time when we are once again witnessing a great masquerade of evil disguised as light, charity of social justice, a masquerade compelling all of us to share a sense of collective shame.

Thank you for what you have done and what you will surely continue to do. Remember the words of the doomed Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “I believe that God will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil.”

Uwe Siemon-Netto, former religion editor of United Press International, is Director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life, which is affiliated with Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.