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LONG-DISTANCE DEATH ON OMAHA BEACH

There was an exceptional article that recently appeared in the official weekly magazine in my denomination, the Adventist Review. And the title by Miroslav M. Kis is this: “Who Is My Enemy?” That’s a twist, of course, on the parable where a man asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?”

Professor Kis, who teaches theology and ethics at Andrews University in Michigan, comes from an Eastern European background in the Ukraine, and he leads into his article by describing how his family used to live in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia. And he didn’t find any huge differences — comparing the 25 years he lived there to the 30 years of peace and prosperity he’s enjoyed in the West. In fact, he writes:

“All we remember are the different cultural expressions of kindness.”

In other words, people are people. There’s good everywhere and bad everywhere. Bombs and bouquets in all countries. But he goes on to describe what makes an enemy, what makes a grudge. The kicker to his article is this line: “Dismantling the walls that divide us.” Well, what ingredient most builds up that wall? And his answer is one word long: distance.

“Distance is of the essence in creating and maintaining animosity,” he writes. “It is nearly impossible to kill someone at ‘close range.’ Closeness is almost always an antidote to enmity.”

That’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? I don’t know if you saw the wrenching war film, Saving Private Ryan, which came out a few years ago. Talk about a portrayal of enmity, of bloodshed! Those first 25 minutes are probably the most brutal, most biblically accurate cinematic picture of the horror of war ever filmed. But most of the time, it was bloodshed from a distance: a machine gun raking the sand and the water at Omaha Beach, Normandy, June 6, 1944. You looked through your gunsights and saw a distant figure, and you squeezed the trigger, and that figure toppled over in the red-soaked water. A character named Daniel Boone Jackson was a sharpshooter GI from Hickory Valley, Tennessee. You may remember that he would quietly whisper a prayer — “Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight,” quoting from Psalm 144 — as he picked off one German soldier after another. There in the final battle scenes, this American sniper was up in a church bell tower, praying and firing away until a Tiger tank got him. But it was long-distance death, anonymous warfare.
Far more horrifying was a mercifully brief scene where a German and an American were locked in mortal combat in the upstairs of the bombed-out building there at Ramelle. Now the distance was gone. They were eyeball to eyeball, gouging, tearing at each other. And then, finally, slowly, the German leaned into his enemy with a knife, snuffing out a farmboy’s life from just six inches away. And that was the worst — because that kind of closeness is in stark, horrible contrast to the distance one usually needs in order to hate and fight and main and kill.

In this magazine article by Dr. Kis, he tells us that the Bible word, oyebh, in Hebrew, doesn’t just refer to an enemy, but specifically means an enemy or assailant who “comes from outside to inflict personal or national injury.” Someone who comes in from “out there,” from a distance, to hurt you.

And you know, in our own personal relationships — even if you and I live a long way from Bosnia — it’s this same problem: distance is what fuels our grudges. We allow our anger to put many miles — at least emotional ones — between us and that person we’re angry with. Where once we saw eye to eye, and felt close to each other, and talked and openly shared, a drifting away happens . . . and soon it’s easy to hate them. Dr. Kis tells us — and remember, he teaches both religion and ethics, so this is a field of up-close study for him — that the first stage in “enemy-making” is this: identity.

“Our search for identity often moves in a negative direction,” he writes. “Our self-affirmation comes at the expense of another.”

And then, going on in the article, we’re told that this negative quest for identity takes us down four bad roads: “The distance of difference,” “The distance of derision,” “The distance of defamation,” and “The distance of indifference.” First I notice the things that are different; maybe I slip into a pattern of telling ethnic jokes. Then I begin to ridicule this person I used to have as a friend. Then it goes to defamation — open name-calling. And finally, the distance of indifference. I stop caring at all. Kis reminds us that the first grudge in the Bible ends up with God asking Cain: “Hey, where’s your brother? Your brother!” And Cain shrugs. “How should I know? Am I his keeper? Leave me alone!” Speaking of Saving Private Ryan and World War II, Kis quotes from Albert Speer, who served as Adolf Hitler’s minister of armaments.

“If I had continued to see them as human beings,” Speer confesses, “I would not have remained a Nazi. I did not hate them. I was indifferent to them.”

That made it possible for the Nazis at Auschwitz to bargain with a nearby chemical company, I. G. Farben, which wanted 150 women to use in an experiment. They wouldn’t pay more than 170 marks a head. Notice: not a “person,” just “a head.” A few weeks later, another memo was sent.

“The tests were made. All subjects died. We shall contact you shortly on the subject of a new load.”

Chilling, isn’t it? And it begins with distance. These weren’t women, or even prisoners. Just scribbles on a sheet of paper. 170 marks a head. The “subjects.” We need “a new load.” Friend, when you permit yourself to bear a grudge, to allow distance to form between you and an enemy, this is the direction you head in. You begin to steer your tank toward Auschwitz and the ovens.

I’ll be the first to confess that “distance” and enmity are rather comfortable things for us. It’s easy to push someone away because you hate them, and then hate them because they are far away. It’s hard to go to someone, when you’d just as soon have a few oceans separating you, and say: “Look, enough is enough. I was wrong. I don’t want to hate you or have you hate me. I don’t want to be an oyebh, an outside enemy, or keep thinking of you as one. Can we get close? Or at least take a step toward each other, try to understand each other?”

I want to read a Bible passage to you, and let me share it from this great paraphrase by Dr. Eugene Peterson, The Message, because it explicitly mentions the idea of distance. This is a great, great chapter: Ephesians 2, and then verses 13, 14. And of course, you recall how Jews and non-Jews just didn’t get along very well in the first century A.D. “Distance” was their favorite word back then, just as we continue to embrace it now, not only in the Middle East but in our own neighborhoods. But listen:

“The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this” — God’s great salvation plan — “both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then He started over. Instead of continuing with two groups separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, He created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.” Here’s a bit more: “Christ brought us together through His death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through Him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.”

That’s some mind-boggling theology, isn’t it? But think with me about that person you hate so much, and about the Grand Canyon grudge that’s standing in the way. Is that person saved by the Cross — just like you? Yes. Does that person have access to the Holy Spirit — just like you? Yes. Equal access to the Father — just like you? Yes. Does the Father love him as He loves you? Did Jesus die equally for him as for you, shed His blood for the both of you, despite this current barrier? And of course, that family genealogy chart in your old King James Bible tells you clearly that any two people having the same Dad . . . are brothers. Or brother and sister.

So Paul writes: “Christ brought us together through His death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace” . . . at least, it’s supposed to get us to embrace. It sounds brutal to say, and I look with shame into my own heart, but friend, there should be no grudges — none, not a one, zero — among the people of God. To have a grudge is to deny the power of the Cross. It’s as plain as that. May God have mercy on us all, as we aim away from Auschwitz and toward Calvary.