Expel Guilt by Irreverence

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.

Basically nothing in life is essentially sacred.

In fact, many who use this escape mechanism suggest that guilt is a conditioned response orchestrated principally by religion. They argue that religion is a hangover from pre-modern times and nothing falls into an actual category of right and wrong. Guilt should be erased from our society’s lexicon and jeered out of existence.

Television today indicates that we have licensed the wholesale ridicule of things once held sacred.  Are we beginning to erase?

Ravi Zacharias mentioned that he knew of a Jewish journalist who made the comment that Christians would be the Jews of the 21st Century.  Because there is little doubt that no other major religious voice in this world cries out for people to deal with sin, to repent, and to come to God for forgiveness than the Christian voice.  Hate and anger vented against the Christian gains momentum with a society that wants to live life without restraint - just look at our school system response to the Bible.

To expel moral law may seem very cavalier and liberating, but understand that irreverence is just another word for self-worship and the destruction of all that stands in its way.

The killing of Abel by Cain was such an effort. Abel symbolized acceptance before God; Cain, rejection. Cain’s final solution was to silence the voice of the one whose life reflected sanctity.

Joseph represented the special favour of God. His brother’s final solution was to do away with him.

John the Baptist presented to Herod a judgement that was inevitable. Herod’s final solution was to decapitate him.

Elijah warned Jezebel of history’s warning when decency is mocked. Jezebel’s final solution was to pursue him until he wanted to die.

Jesus represented the voice of God to a corrupt priesthood and to power-mongering political authorites. Their final solution was to send Him to the cross.

To silence the voice that reminds us of our guilt is always the “final solution.”

The Cry of a Guilty Conscience

The Sunflower’s central concern is revealed to

the reader when the author recounts a particular

incident that occurs while he is on a work detail at a local hospital. He is summoned to the bedside of a dying Nazi who wants to make a confession for his participation in a crime in which two hundred Jewish men, women and children were herded into a house which was then set on fire: ‘amidst screams from within the house and fire leaping from one floor to another, rifles were readied to shoot down anyone who tried to escape’ (p.40). The soldier then recounts: ‘Behind the windows of the second floor, I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothes were alight. By his side stood a woman, doubtless the mother of the child. With his free hand the  man covered the child’s eyes … then he jumped into the street. Seconds later the mother followed’ (p.42). The soldier shoots them. Later, in combat with the Russians and ordered by his superiors to fire, the solder finds himself unable to move: ‘In that moment I saw the burning family … they came to meet me. No, I can not shoot at them a second time’ (p.51). In his moment of hesitation, a shell explodes by the soldier’s side and the injuries he sustains will ultimately lead to his own death.

Images of the family continue to haunt him. In the soldier’s words: ‘I have longed to talk about it to a

Jew and beg forgiveness from him’ (p.54). Simon Wiesenthal listens to the confession, at times even

offering acts of kindness. But he leaves the room without any reply to the soldier. Simon Wiesenthal then begins to question himself, and his fellow prisoners, as to whether or not it was right to refuse a dying man forgiveness. 

The Sunflower chronicles their conversations. Then we discover that the author is not only telling a

story of a tragic time in the history of Jews or his own life. He is also creating a context for the reader

so that the reader may respond to a question that is both personal and political. He says: ‘You who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the crucial question, ‘What would I have done?’’ The question invites the reader to consider his/her own ethical and moral traditions. These traditions of thought which influence our actions in response to crime, justice, compassion, and individual and collective responsibility, are then made visible.

The issues raised in this consideration are, at the same time, historical (the Holocaust) and contemporary (e.g. Bosnia, Rwanda).

Check the entire article at:

http://www.narrativetherapycentre.com/Documents/Simon_Wiesenthal_Review_R_Pluznick.pdf