Please Overlook our Founder’s Little Faults

This morning I was reading Larry Huch’s The Torah Blessing, and I was somewhat startled by some quotations he produced.

Martin Luther said the Jews were “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine.” He also said, “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the crucifixion.

“Avenging”? We’re supposed to punish them for the single most beneficial act that has ever occurred? An act God himself put in motion? An act for which every sinner (including Martin Luther) bears responsibility? Maybe we should also “avenge” the parting of the Red Sea or the provision of manna in the wilderness.

I will never understand this idiotic line of reasoning.

I don’t know why the Lutheran church continues to use the name “Lutheran.” Surely it’s obvious that this man was not worthy of honor. Isn’t uniting in his name a little like putting a sign in front of your church which says, “We hate Jews”? If I were a Lutheran bigwig, I’d be agitating to drop his name from the church. The church is the bride of Christ, not the bride of Martin Luther the Jew-hating loony.

Why don’t Christians talk more about this? This twisted, corrupted character should be unceremoniously removed from the pantheon of honored Christian thinkers. A certain amount of error can be excused, but saying we are sinning by not exterminating the Jews is beyond any realistic hope of rehabilitation. Maybe he was right about some things. But then Hitler was right about Volkswagens and superhighways.

The problem with defending this miserable, benighted person or hiding his faults is that we’re the only ones doing these things. I’m sure the Jews are highly aware of his bigotry and hatred. I doubt they run around making up excuses for it, the way we do. How can we build bridges between Jews and Christians if we’re not willing to let embarrassing idiots go?

To me, this is like the Confederate flag. I’m a Southerner, and I used to think the flag was neat, and then I thought about what it represented: a regime that supported slavery. Whatever the merits of the Confederacy might have been, there is no way to excuse resisting abolition. You can’t say, “Well, it’s okay that we flogged the flesh off other human beings, bought and sold them, broke up families, and held them captive…because we also wanted tax reform!”

So I’m on the side of people who want to take that stupid, shameful flag off of state buildings. If you’re determined to celebrate your Southern-ness, make yourself a flag with Elvis on it, or maybe a bucket of chicken.

Luther wanted to confiscate Jewish property. He wrote a book called On the Jews and Their Lies. Continuing to use this nut’s name is a great way to help Jewish anti-missionaries. Without even checking, I’ll bet he is featured prominently in their materials. I’d be all over that, if I were an anti-missionary.

Huch cites other anti-Semitic Christian figures. We need to renounce these buffoons and their poison. Jesus died a Jew, as did the Apostles. Our faith is fundamentally Jewish. It’s strange that some people who claim to be sincere and knowledgeable Christians feel entitled to slander and threaten the root on which we were grafted.

Most non-Catholic Americans don’t really know much about the older churches. We don’t know the more vile and disgusting parts of their histories. We don’t know about their ongoing failures to renounce the disgraces of the past. I feel certain religious Jews know about these things. Those of us who belong to denominations that recognize our debt to the Jews should make an effort to distance ourselves from the bile and excrement certain Christians have exuded or embraced in the past. It’s harder to ask this of people who belong to older churches, but they need to get with it, too. God has told us that in order to approach him, we have to make things right with other human beings. He won’t answer a husband’s prayers if the husband doesn’t love his wife. He won’t receive an offering from someone who deprives a creditor or mistreats a parent. He won’t pay attention to communion if we don’t forgive and seek forgiveness. How, then, is he supposed to work unhindered in a church that hasn’t repented of slandering Jews?

We like to use the words “Antichrist” and “anti-christian” all the time. The Antichrist is a figure who will arise and persecute the church. “Anti-christian” refers to the broader phenomenon of the persecution of God’s people.

This stuff is based in the spirit realm. Satan and his subordinates cause these things to occur. They sow the seeds. They fan the fires.

What most Christians don’t realize is that the same spirits that drive the persecution of Christians drive anti-Semitism. It’s all about thwarting prophecy and preventing God from carrying out his plan. Various Old Testament villains tried to destroy the Jewish race, as did Hitler. Pharaoh tried to prevent the birth of Moses. Herod tried to prevent the birth of Jesus. The Romans murdered Christians as though they were roaches and termites. Sooner or later, someone will try to kill off the Jews so the 144,000 mentioned in the Revelation can’t be born. It’s all the same thing. There is no difference between anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Christian hatred, because to Satan, we’re all in the same camp. The fact that he often gets us to fight each other is irrelevant. That’s just part of his program; it’s always a good idea to get your enemies to save you work by attacking each other.

Christian anti-Semitism is driven by anti-Christian spirits. If you persecute the Jews, a spirit of antichrist is in you. If more of us realized that, we would be a lot less eager to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for being clever enough to recognize the true Messiah. What fools we are, to think we are inherently superior. Our forebears conducted the Inquisition. If we’re so smart and so righteous, how did things like that happen?

Thinking we are smarter or more righteous than the Jews, who gave us everything that matters, is shockingly arrogant and moronic. It is completely contradictory to the obvious evidence before us. We’ve done a great deal of evil. We have nothing to crow about. Every good thing we have done happened because the Holy Spirit overrode our natural inclinations, which are as malevolent and misguided as everyone else’s.

I don’t know if I would endorse everything Huch says. I haven’t finished the book yet, and it seems to verge on legalism, but the bit about Martin Luther really grabbed my attention.