Living in a WWII Movie

I grew up in the years following the Second World War. All the dads in our neighborhood served in the military during the war, including mine. We used to watch World War II films in movie theatres on Saturday afternoons – films like The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Guns of Navarone, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. We watched WWII shows on television like Hogan’s Heroes, Combat!, Twelve O'clock High, and McHale’s Navy.  

We lived and breathed the war of our fathers. We imagined what it would be like to have lived back then. We played with air rifles in the fields around our homes, pretending we were fighting Nazis. It was a time when everyone could distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. But it was all make-believe. The war was over. The Nazis had been defeated by the Greatest Generation.  

These days I feel like I am living in a WWII film. To be more exact, it feels like the years leading up to WWII. Germany in the 1930’s. The neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is on the rise in Germany; Elon Musk was a speaker at their recent rally. Members of America’s Far Right groups, who raided the Capitol and attacked police officers, were pardoned by our president and called patriots. 

It feels surreal. It can’t be happening again, can it? Have Americans really forgotten the lessons of the twentieth century so quickly? There are still a few veterans of that war and survivors of the concentration camps living among us. It was not so long ago. How could this be happening again? What happened to the pledge: “Never Again”? 

How could Americans be bad-talking democracy? How could they be willing to betray the Constitution? How could they make heroes of thugs who tried to overturn a national election? How could they oppose people fighting for democracy in other lands and lionize tyrants who are fighting against them? It feels bizarre.  

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong. Maybe this is all leftist propaganda and Socialist disinformation, as the right says. I wish that were true. I want it to be true. Then I could lean back and enjoy my retirement, knowing the country is in good hands. But the more fact-checking I do, the clearer it becomes. I am not mistaken. 

As I look at our nation today, there is the same blind loyalty to a charismatic, yet clownish, leader. The same ultranationalism. The same verbal bullying and Nazi salutes. The same book banning and book burning.  There is the same demonizing of the same people: communists, socialists, unionists, the disabled, and homosexuals. There is the same racism, the same Christian nationalism, the same antisemitism. The only difference is that for many Americans one ancient Semitic people has been substituted for another.  

I am old and have lived my life in freedom in a free land. What happens to me does not matter. I am concerned for my children and grandchildren. I am concerned for society's outsiders. I am concerned for the Church, which I have served all my adult life. The Bride of Christ has become the Harlot of Babylon, whoring after another antichrist.   

It feels like the prophecy of Micah quoted by Jesus: “a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” I do not know what the future holds. It feels a lot like pre-war Germany. When we were kids we pretended we were fighting Nazis. I never imagined that I would live to see history repeat itself. 

When we grew older we wondered what we would have done if we had lived in Germany or in German-occupied countries in those days. We hoped we would have had the courage of Bonhoeffer, Schindler or Corrie Ten Boom. We no longer have to imagine. We are living in those days again.  

I know this historical drama of good versus evil is simply the working out of a Divine Reality that transcends good and evil. Yet while we live these human lives, we all must play our parts. There is no neutrality. We cannot hide behind a sense of spiritual superiority or moral indifference to suffering. We all play our roles and choose our sides. And just like when I was a boy, there is no question what my role must be.