History beneath our feet

Years ago when I lived in Katowice, Poland, I knew an American expatriate living in nearby Gliwice with his Polish wife and three sons.  He taught English for a living and lived to write and publish poetry.  He accepted a handful of my poems for publication and that's how I met him. 

One evening he and I were drinking beer in a pub in Gliwice when he asked me if I was aware of the old Jewish cemetery there.  I said that I was not.  So after we finished our beers he said, "Follow me, I'll show you."

We came to a narrow alley and he said, "It's down here."  Now my first thought was, Whoa, wait a minute!  Is he going to rob me?  But my friend was somewhat overweight and was a poet, not a fighter.  And anyway, I'd had a few beers.  Dutch courage, as they say.

At the end of the alley was a wall about chest high.  He pushed me over the wall and I pulled him over after me.  And there it was in the summer evening light.  A small cemetery packed with tombstones, enclosed by walls and the surrounding city buildings and shaded by chestnut trees with ivy growing up the trunks.  Most of the inscriptions were illegible, but on a few could be made out Hebrew inscriptions and dates of deaths.

Old Jewish Cemetery, Gliwice

On the city map that I posessed, the space where this cemetery was located was shown only as a blank space between buildings.  My friend said that he was shown its location by another friend of his.

We walked around for a while in the hushed atmosphere examining the tombstones and then quietly climbed back over the wall and left.

It's common throughout Poland to bump into reminders of the past: plaques on walls comemmorating houses where famous writers, musicians, scientists or politicians lived, or locations where Poles were murdered by Nazis; monuments to and statues of national heroes like generals or rebels or the previously listed artists, scientists, etc.

Even here in the village where I live there is a tiny cemetery where 52 soldiers from the First World War are buried.

The United States may not hold as much history as European countries, ours being a much younger nation; yet we sometimes found Indian arrowheads in cornfields in rural Wisconsin.

Before the Second World War, Gliwice was called Gleiwitz and was on the German side of the border dividing Germany and Poland.  Germans, Poles and Jews all lived there.  Jewish people are typically very aware of their own history.  And since it has often been a tragic history they tend to keep a wary eye on events happening in the larger world around them.  And yet history was played out amongst them as well.  Henrietta had a long running feud with her neighbor Emma.  Max cheated Simon in business.  Nathan lusted after his friend Isaac's wife.  It has often been remarked that the battle line between good and evil is not "out there somewhere."  It runs down the middle of my own heart.  And your heart.

Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933.  The last Jew was buried in the Old Cemetary in 1937. 

In 1939 Hitler was looking for a pretext to invade Poland.  In August a handful of prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp in Germany were killed by a handful of other men who planned, ordered and carried out their murders and their corpses transported to Gleiwitz.  On August 30th, a local German known to sympathise with the Poles, Franciszek Honiok, was arrested by the Gestapo.  On the night of August 31st, a group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms, seized the Gleiwitz radio station, locked up the German staff in a room and broadcast short anti-German radio messages.  The "Polish" invaders fired off a few rounds from their weapons to mimick the sound of a gun battle.  Poor Franciszek Honiok was brought to the station dressed as a saboteur, killed by lethal injection and given gun shot wounds and left at the scene along with the corpses from Dachau, likewise dressed as saboteurs.  Nobody outside Germany believed this ruse, but Hitler had his pretext for invading Poland.  (Afterall, you can't plan a massive invasion of a large country overnight!)

At about 4 a.m. on September 1st, the first day of the school year in Poland, German troops crossed the Polish border.

The point of history

East Asian cultures view history as circular; as a repeating cycle of events.  Western cultures view history as linear; as a line progressing from A to Z.  The true Christian view of history is as a center with lines reaching out in four directions; as a cross. 

Many clever people have commented that the ancient pre-Christian myths often contain the same themes that Christianity does.  There are creations and destructive floods.  There are the vegetable myths of death and rebirth and of gods who die and rise back to life.  "Christianity is not original, " they say, "but co-opted these existing myths." 

Christians such as C. S. Lewis counter this by arguing that God, who is eternal and transcends human history, broke into human history via the Incarnation of Christ.  This, they say, is the true center of human history and everything that happened before and after this event are oriented toward this event.  So the pre-Christian myths are an echo or shadow of the story of Jesus Christ; foreshadowings, as it were.

And if one were to compare closely these ancient myths with the Christian story, it's obvious that the ancient myths are a very, very pale shadow of the Christian story.  In the ancient myths, gods come to earth to seduce humans sexually or to take revenge on some human offense.  In none of those stories does a god come to earth seeking humans out of genuine love and submit itself to humiliation and debasement out of love for humans and without taking revenge; all in order to redeem fallen, broken mankind and to raise it up to God's own level in order to spend eternity with Him.

The end in the beginning

In the beginning God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Genesis 1:26  (notice the first person plural - "us" and "our")  Many theologians have speculated that the angels, as pure spirits, must have been in great awe at these material creatures made in God's own image.  One of them, Lucifer, apparently one of the most beautiful of the angels, for reasons we don't exactly know, rebelled against God and enlisted a third of the angels in the rebellion. 

Since God is eternal and transcends human history, it's been speculated that God sees all of human history from beginning to end as one can see an entire parade, beginning to end, from a great height.  In that case God foresaw the fall of the human race through Adam and Eve and intended to redeem it through Christ, the second person of the most Holy Trinity ("Let us make man in our own image.").

Perhaps Lucifer was jealous and thought the task of redeeming the human race should have been his.  At any rate, he turned against God and strove to corrupt and destroy God's creation.

We all know the story of the serpent in the garden.  Then the Lord God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life.  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;  He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." (Genesis 3:14-15) 

Christian commentators have recognized in "the woman" more than just Eve and her "offspring" are significant, too.  A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.  Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems.  Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth.  Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.  She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod.  Her child was caught up to God and his throne.  The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God, that there she might be taken care of for twelve hundred and sixty days.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed.  For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night.  They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death.  Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them.  But woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury, for he knows he has but a short time."

When the dragon saw that it had been thrown down to the earth, it pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.  But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly to her place in the desert, where, far from the serpent, she was taken care of for a year, two years, and a half-year.  The serpent, however, spewed a torrent of water out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with the current.  But the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth and swallowed the flood that the dragon spewed out of its mouth.  Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God's commandments and bear witness to Jesus.  (The Book of Revelation 12:1-17)

 

G. K. Chesteron wrote a brilliant book titled The Everlasting Man, a sort of supra-historical biography of Jesus Christ.  I've read it three times and highly recommend it.  In the hills of Judea are many caves that shepherds used as stables to house their livestock at night or during bad weather.  There is a widespread tradition that Jesus was born in such a cave (caves were used as tombs as well - note that).  In his book, Chesterton gives a dramatic depiction of the baby Jesus lying in a manger in a cave, with Mary and Joseph, while overhead are heard the sound of the pounding hooves of horses as King Herod's soldiers race to Bethlehem to destory the newborn king.

 

Nobody gets to be Switzerland

 

And there we are, the Christian view of history.  God, a Holy Trinity of loving relationship, created humans out of love.  He loves us, seeks us high and low, wants us to be spotless and holy like Him, wants to wash us clean so that we can spend eternity in heavenly bliss with Him.  Satan, the destroyer and father of lies, like some of the gods of ancient mythology comes to seduce us for his own hateful and selfish designs.  And we stand among God's army, or Satan's.  We cannot be passive bystanders while evil is comitted in our midst because then we ourselves become part of the evil.  Nobody gets to be Switzerland.*

 

 

*You might like to know that even the Swiss are armed to the teeth and the Swiss Air Force shot down 11 German aircraft that had intruded into Swiss airspace during Germany's invasion of France in 1940.