My mother was born in Washington DC, in nineteen mumble-mumble. I don’t want to put her business out there like that, so I won’t mention the exact year, but a basic understanding of her age is important because her father was a Holocaust survivor. He was the son of a Jewish doctor from Berlin; when it became apparent the Nazis posed a real threat to Jewish Germans, my great-grandfather sent my grandfather to the US to live with relatives. He hoped to send the rest of the family to America as soon as he could, but none of them made it out of Germany.
For children of Holocaust survivors, the specter of oppression and anti-Semitism haunted them in the form of traumatized parents and other relatives: people whose homes were taken, whose culture was deemed worthless, whose communities were shattered and brutalized. Though my mom was born and raised in America, her life was shaped by her close proximity to the Holocaust. In a way, the Holocaust loomed over certain aspects of my childhood, too. I knew many relatives on my dad’s side, but I didn’t have those same opportunities with my mom’s family, since so many of them were killed in Germany decades before I was born. But one of the biggest ways the Holocaust impacted my development was through my mother teaching me one scathing and bitterly sarcastic term: “good Germans.”
The “good German” is an idea that refers to those German citizens who, after the war, claimed innocence and/or ignorance of the Nazi’s crimes. It describes the way people who think of themselves as innocent bystanders can be complicit in evil by their reluctance to oppose it or their eagerness to look the other way. Biblically, this idea is clearly communicated by Jesus in Matthew 25:44-45, when he’s telling his disciples about how the messiah – the king – will one day bring justice to the earth (Jesus taught his disciples and other followers that he was, in fact, that king). Earlier in the chapter, Jesus talks about people who will be rewarded by the king because they cared for the needy. He tells those people “to the extent that you [took care of] the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me.”
Then, Jesus mentions others who will be judged because they did nothing to help. The king tells those people, “I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me.” “Now, hold on a sec,” these people reply, genuinely confused (I’m paraphrasing – unfortunately, there aren’t any Bible verses that get literally translated as “hold on a sec”). “When did any of that happen? We never knowingly turned our back on you!” Here’s the kicker: the king replies, “to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me, either.”
That’s a tough message, right there. Jesus tells his followers there can be no “good Christians'' who claim ignorance about the needs of others. In this Lenten season, I’ve been compelled to think about my relationship to complicity and been convicted to reject it, outright. There are Black people in our city who feel the boot of the system pressing down on their necks; there are Asian people who have found themselves the targets of hate crimes because a former president hatefully insisted on using weaponized Orientalism in his discussions of the COVID-19 pandemic; there are countless others who are now unemployed or underemployed because of how the pandemic struck our economy. While I don’t think I’m single handedly responsible for ending racism in America or making sure everyone has enough money, I need to seriously ask myself how I can serve God by caring for the needs of others.
Awareness is only the first step, though; recognizing the needs of others must result in some sort of action. If I don’t actively try to care for other people like Jesus did, then I haven’t really rejected complicity at all. I’m so thankful Jesus wasn’t just aware of humanity’s need for salvation. If he had simply said, “Oh man, people are in a rough state. I sure hope someone does something about that,” we would have a remarkably empty gospel message. Imagine reading a version of John 3:16 that said, “For God so loved the world that he felt really bad for everyone.” Not a terribly compelling vision of salvation. And not a strong foundation for Christian compassion and service.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Jesus’ words: “to the extent that you did not do it for the least of these…” He was talking to regular people who thought they were doing just fine. These weren’t murderers or robber barons, slumlords or arsonists. They just didn’t help lift someone else’s burden. This year, I want to become the kind of person who simply can’t stand by and do nothing. I’m not going to steal from anyone and I’m certainly not going to kill anyone. But it’s not enough to refrain from doing harm; I want to be a person who actively does good.