While Oskar Gruening was an SS soldier at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1942 to 1944, 300,000 Jews were killed. He kept his past to himself until he heard people deny the Holocaust. Now Mr. Gruening, 93-years old, is on trial. “It is beyond question that I am morally complicit. This moral guilt I acknowledge here, before the victims, with regret and humility,” he said. “As concerns guilt before the law, you must decide” (New York Times, April 22; A1, 8) What’s it like to be a prisoner of your past?
Americans were shocked in May to hear that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was indicted for banking irregularities that allegedly covered up sexual misconduct as a high school teacher and coach, 1965 to 1981. If that is true, the same question: What’s it like to try to live a normal life with something terrible in your past?
Paul was public about his past, “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” of Jesus and His church, but took comfort in forgiveness. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:13, 15-16).
So there you have it, three other people accused of terrible things in their past. Three other people? Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Paul said of himself that he was the foremost of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15); he said this specifically at the point where he was speaking of his service as an apostle. There can be no genuine acknowledgement of sin that does not lead to this extremity. If my sinfulness appear to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. (Life Together, p. 96) “God, I thank you that I am not like other men?” (Luke 18:11)
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