Mass Murder Makes it Hard to Think Straight

Still more reverb over Williamson, the Holocaust Denier. Some chuckleheads are demanding the Pope retire for the sin of trying to reconcile sinner with the Church. Still others are using the ocassion to spread silly lies about Ratzinger the Disciple of Hitler and all the usual rot. On the other end of the spectrum, the smell of Jew-hatred in the air has brought out the usual small but vocal cadre of kooks in tinfoil hats with the “HoloHoax” rhetoric.

Also, linked to it are the people with more current agendas who seem to have no power to decouple the question of the Holocaust from the present actions of the State of Israel. On the one hand, you get the people for whom Israel can do no wrong who are sometimes rather quick to link any criticism of Israel with the Holocaust. Having been informed on several ocassions that any–and I mean *any*— critique of Israelis makes you vehemently suspect of wishing for the destruction of Israel, I can appreciate the fatigue which can set in when the Holocaust is endlessly wielded as a club with which to smash the skulls of people who have real difficulties of conscience with Israeli violations of Just War doctrine–or jiggle ads.

But just as the reality of the Holocaust does not automatically anoint Israel as sinless and immaculate, so the sins of Israel do not justify the kooky denial of the abundantly documented murder of millions of people. Those who do indulge in this denial are, I think, guilty of the assassination of memory and in grave danger of what Jesus warns about in his sermon on the mount: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.”

We kill in our hearts as well as with our hands. The assassins of memory mean to erase from existence all the rapes, all the murders, all the thousands of children gassed, or slowly strangling on a rope because they were too small for the noose to break their necks. All the families standing naked and then cut down like cordwood. All the victims of experimentation. All the roomsfull of corpses packed against the door, struggling to escape the Zyklon B. Of all that, they mean to say “Those people never existed.” The goal is to do more than kill them: it is to leave them without memory in this world, to kill them a second time if it were possible. If that’s not participating in murder from the heart, I don’t know what is. Such people stand, I believe, in grave danger of the fires of hell, if our Lord’s words mean anything.

But, at the same time, we cannot appoint ourselves as judges claiming to know their destiny and we emphatically cannot declare (as one person did yesterday): “To trivialise the scope of such an atrocity the way Williamson does is a sin of such gravity that his carcass deserves no forgiveness.”

That’s not because Williamson *does* deserve forgiveness, it’s because *nobody* deserves forgiveness. Forgiveness is, by its nature, an act of mercy bestowed in creatures who do not deserve it. So, to say, “Forgiveness has to be earned, it requires concrete, reconciliatory actions and gestures on the part of those who’ve erred” is to profoundly misunderstand the entire meaning of the gospel in just about the deepest way it can be understood.

For forgiveness *cannot* be earned. That is absolutely impossible. Forgiveness of sins is *entirely* the gift of God. Indeed, our very ability to receive it is a gift of God. The real picture of forgiveness is not of Williamson crawling up to some Holocaust survivor and groveling sufficient so as to “earn” forgiveness. It is of Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross for absolutely no reason whatsoever but the perverse malice the twisted race of naked apes that stands jeering at him, and saying “Forgive them.” Paul really sums it up when he says, “God commends his own love to his in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Forgiveness is extended, unilaterally and without condition, to the very people who labored to nail him to the cross. We are obliged to do the same, which is why Jesus tells us “whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25).

“Anything against anyone”. That’s a tall order and can only be done by the grace of God.

So am I saying “La di dah! Williamson’s off the hook!” Of course not, if Williamson is to benefit from the mercy extended him by God and those he has wronged, he has to receive it and if he refuses it, he will get what he wants: no mercy. But his actions do not determine *our* actions as disciples of Christ. We are commanded to extend forgiveness whether or not he ever receives it for any sins he has committed which touch us. We can’t wriggle out by claiming “he never sinned against me” because if we are angry at him, then his sin has affected us. We can’t wriggle out by saying that we are not bound to forgive people who don’t repent because of Jesus command in 11:25 (“anyone, anything”) and because the biblical model is so obvious. Both our Lord and Stephen forgave their impenitent murderers. We must do likewise.