{"id":69770,"date":"2025-02-10T16:33:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T21:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=69770"},"modified":"2025-02-10T16:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T21:33:30","slug":"to-prevent-what-we-know-can-happen-from-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2025\/02\/10\/to-prevent-what-we-know-can-happen-from-happening\/","title":{"rendered":"‘To prevent what we know can happen from happening’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You may have seen the viral video that prompted this article from the Houston Chronicle,<\/em> \u201cViral Texas knife shop owner talks about rejecting \u2018Nazi bulls\u2013t\u2019<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnathan Sibley,\u00a0an East Texas\u00a0bladesmith and co-owner of\u00a0The Blade Bar in Edom, was simply doing his job when a man and woman asked him to work on two knives. But the 20-second interaction between Sibley and the couple,\u00a0captured on video, has quickly made Sibley a viral sensation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we wanting to put on them?\u201d asks Sibley after being shown the knives. The woman tells Sibley that they\u2019re Hitler Youth knives, and she wanted Sibley to transfer the diamond emblem on one knife to the second, which had a visible engraving.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I won\u2019t do it,\u201d Sibley says, pushing the knives back to the woman, who asks why. \u201cNo Nazi bulls\u2013t.\u201d The woman pauses for a moment, then accepts Sibley\u2019s answer. He then says that he would put a modern German forestry seal on the knife. \u201cI will denazify s\u2013t, but I won\u2019t re-nazify s\u2013t.\u201d The woman says \u201cNo problem,\u201d and she and the man walk out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apart from the cussing, Sibley is remarkably polite and even, in a way, kind<\/em> to the couple. He explains what he can and cannot do for them and offers them a face-saving invitation to do better, but does so without any moralistic condescension. He\u2019s demonstrating moral clarity, but not imagining that this affords him moral superiority.<\/p>\n

Because, after all, \u201cNo Nazi bulls\u2013t\u201d is such an absolutely minimal moral standard that nobody deserves to congratulate themselves for clearing that bar. That\u2019s what Sibley thinks, anyway, which is why he seems genuinely disappointed at the praise he\u2019s gotten for what he correctly thinks ought to be an unremarkable act:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be worthy of the attention it\u2019s getting. It should be standard practice,\u201d Sibley said. \u201cI thought we had an agreement on this s\u2013t 80 years ago.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We did. But part of the reason we came to an agreement on this 80 years ago is that we were unable to come to that agreement 90<\/em> years ago. At that point, \u201cNazi bulls\u2013t\u201d hadn\u2019t yet been fully exposed for what it was or for what it required or for where it led. We reached \u201can agreement on this s\u2013t\u201d only after the horror of its consequences were fully revealed.<\/p>\n

We learned from that. We learned the hard way, but lessons learned the hard way are too hard-earned to be easily forgotten. Or, at least, they should be.<\/p>\n

Masha Gessen puts it this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We are not any smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived ninety years ago. We are just as likely to needlessly give up our political power and to remain willfully ignorant of darkness as it\u2019s dawning. But we know something they didn\u2019t know: we know that the Holocaust is possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, this knowledge doesn\u2019t make us better than \u201cpeople who lived 90 years ago,\u201d but it does give us an advantage they did not have. And it gives us an obligation to make the most of that advantage \u2014 to act on it as \u201cstandard practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

That advantage can help us to succeed where they failed. It gives us the opportunity to prevent that which is possible from happening again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And sure, yeah, if we succeed at that, I suppose you could argue that does make us \u201cbetter than\u201d those people or \u201cmore moral\u201d than they were. But, again, you don\u2019t win any prizes for that or earn any congratulations for being \u201cbetter than\u201d mass-murdering racist Nazi bulls\u2013t \u2014 for being \u201cbetter than\u201d the people in the photo above. That\u2019s the absolute bare minimum. Anybody seeking praise<\/em> for that has lost the plot in a dangerously delusional way.<\/p>\n

Dangerous because, as I\u2019ve written here before, \u201cThe surest way to become a monster is to imagine you\u2019re a hero<\/a>.\u201d Or, in terms of 90 years ago: \u201cThe surest way to become Martin Niem\u00f6ller is to convince yourself that you\u2019re already Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The only way to become Bonhoeffer is to recognize that you\u2019re far more like Niem\u00f6ller than you want to admit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why the humility expressed by both Sibley and Gessen is part of the \u201cagreement\u201d \u2014 part of the lesson that, if learned, enables us \u201cknow something they didn\u2019t know.\u201d It\u2019s the humility that allows us to learn prevent the killing of the prophets instead of standing around congratulating ourselves by fantasizing about how \u201cIf we<\/em> had lived in the days of our ancestors, we<\/em> would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Matthew 23:30 \u2014 part of a passage<\/a> in which Jesus notes that it\u2019s just exactly the sort of people who go around saying \u201cIf we<\/em> had lived in the days of our ancestors, we<\/em> would have done everything right and nothing wrong\u201d who are, right now, at this very moment, killing and persecuting the prophets, just exactly as their ancestors did. Pride tempts us to chase after \u201cbetter than\u201d and thus to fail at \u201cgood.\u201d Or even to fail at \u201cabsolute bare minimum.\u201d This is the end result of Satanic baby-killerism in all its forms \u2014 becoming so obsessed with \u201cbeing<\/em> better than\u201d that you\u2019re unconcerned with and incapable of doing<\/em> good, choosing<\/em> good, or acting<\/em> good. (No, I don\u2019t mean \u201cwell.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But this humility does not entail ambiguity. It does not allow<\/em> for ambiguity.<\/p>\n

\u201cShedding the blood of the prophets\u201d is Bad<\/em>. It\u2019s Evil. Our ancestors ought to have known that. We ought to know it. We have less excuse not to because we have the advantage of knowing something our ancestors didn\u2019t know and of learning from their morally disastrous example. Humility allows us to learn from them, and what we learn from them is clarity. Humility allows and requires us to say \u201cNo Nazi bulls\u2013t\u201d without hesitation or qualification.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also what allows us to say, following Gessen: We are not any smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived 130 years<\/em> ago. But we know something they didn\u2019t know: we know that Jim Crow segregation is possible.<\/p>\n

This knowledge, Gessen argues, entails an obligation: \u201cTo prevent what we know can happen from happening\u201d again.<\/p>\n

That obligation means saying, like Sibley, \u201cNo, I won\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because we had an agreement on this s\u2013t 80 years ago. And because we had an agreement on this s\u2013t 60 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humility and clarity from lessons learned the hard way. “I thought we had an agreement on this s–t 80 years ago.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":69821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n'To prevent what we know can happen from happening'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Humility and clarity from lessons learned the hard way. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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