Sun 9:30a Class; 10:30a Worship; 11:35a Communion
Bible Bites
Self-Preservation
A while back, some German friends sent me a copy of the short story Address Unknown by the American author Kathrine Taylor. The story, which appeared in 1938, was based on a distressing situation involving some of Taylor’s friends. It remains, to this day, one of the most gutwrenching and chilling indictments of Nazism to appear in print.
The drama unfolds in a series of letters between two friends and business partners who own an art gallery in San Francisco: Martin, a German who has moved his family back to his home in Germany, and Max, his Jewish partner who remains in San Francisco to manage the business. In his early letters, Martin effusively describes to Max the wonderful changes that have occurred in Germany under the National Socialists. Gradually, though, Martin’s tone toward Max grows dark and sinister. When Max hears from others that Germany was brutalizing Jews, he asks Martin about it. Martin dismisses such reports as overblown, but soon after asks Max to stop writing him, fearing that if a letter was intercepted and it was learned that he, Martin, was corresponding with a Jew, it might go badly for him and his family.
Max, however, continues to write to Martin because Max’s sister Griselle, an actress living in Germany, has gone missing, and Max is frantic to learn that she is safe. He begs Martin, who at one time had been romantically involved with Griselle, to do what he could to find and shelter her. Then, one day, Max received this from Martin:
Heil Hitler! I much regret that I have bad news for you. Your sister is dead. Unfortunately she was . . . very much a fool. Not quite a week ago she came here, with a bunch of storm troopers right behind her. By luck I answer the door. At first I think it is an old woman and then I see the face, and then I see the storm troopers have turned in the park gates. Can I hide her? It is one chance in thousands. . . . Can I endure to have my house ransacked . . . and to risk being arrested for harboring a Jew and to lose all I have built up here? Of course as a German I have one plain duty. . . . "You will destroy us all, Griselle," I tell her. "You must run back further in the park." She looks at me and smiles (she was always a brave girl) and makes her own choice. I would not bring you harm, Martin," she says, and she runs down the steps and out toward the trees. But she must be tired. She does not run very fast and the storm troopers have caught sight of her. I am helpless. I go in the house and in a few minutes she stops screaming, and in the morning I have the body sent down to the village for burial. She was a fool to come to Germany. Poor little Griselle. I grieve with you, but as you see, I was helpless to aid her. [You can find this story in free format online.]
Is any human instinct a greater threat to friendship, duty, loyalty, courage, sacrifice, or love than self-preservation?
Of all the motives that conspired against Jesus, self-preservation may be the chief culprit. Three passages from John point in this direction. In 11.48, the Jewish council frets that Jesus will foment a situation that would result in the Romans coming and taking away “both our place and nation”; in 12.42, John reveals that though many of the Pharisees believed in Jesus, they wouldn’t publicly say so, “lest they should be put out of the synagogue”; and in 19.12, the Jews made a veiled threat to Pilate involving his tenuous position as procurator. Across each of these verses write: SELF-PRESERVATION.
“God was executed,” wrote Dorothy Sayers, “by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own. . . . In a nation famous for its religious genius and under a government renowned for its efficiency, He was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.” And Christ is crucified afresh by the same today.
Just days before His death, Jesus said that to love our life is to lose it, but to hate it is to keep it eternally (Jn. 12.25). May God help us to never seek our temporal survival at the cost of our eternal ruin.
— In The Prairie Papers
