Thoughts on Religion, From a Former Hitler Youth Worker

I am on a crusade to de-clutter my house, which means that there is a lot of sorting and evaluating going on in my life right now. One of the biggest sources of clutter in my life is books. I love books. Almost any genre, any subject, any age. I like to hold them, touch them, smell them, and read them. I can’t stand electronic readers … there is something about the smell of calfskin and paper and spine-glue and ink, the feel of the boards in your hands, and the susurration of a turning page that adds immeasurably to the joys of a good story well-told. But, because I like the actual, physical book, I have a lot of them. A LOT.

 The last time I tried to count them was in 1996, just before I got married. I thought it would be nice to have a list of all of my books in a spreadsheet, so that we could add his books to the list, and easily identify and eliminate duplications in our library. I got to 10,000 before I ran out of time. And I still had boxes and boxes of books to catalogue. And I know I have added hundreds—maybe even a couple thousand—more books to my library since 1996.

Marriage and babies and divorce and career and illness and, well … life, really, have prevented my continuing the attempt to catalogue. Until now. Now I am using LibraryThing and I am going through my books a box at a time, a shelf at a time. Because you simply can’t have twenty or thirty thousand books in an 1100 square-foot house in which three people are trying to live—especially when two of them are teenage boys. It’s not possible.

 Now, the lovely thing about this project is that it gives me a legitimate excuse to read books I have never read, or that I haven’t read in years. The only way to decide if a book is a must-keep or an I-won’t-miss-this-one-much is to read it.

 I have hit a cache of books about World War II and the Nazi regime, specifically, survivors’ stories. And I have found a book I forgot that I had. I first learned about this book from a Spire Comic  when I was about 12. (Are any of my readers young enough to remember Spire Comics? I had a huge collection—and probably still do. It would be nice to find them in a box sometime soon; they’d be good for my kids to read.) I was so fascinated by the story that I bought a copy of the book from which the comic had been adapted. And I was so glad I did.

 Hansi, the Girl Who Left the Swastika is one of the most compelling autobiographies I have ever read. Maria Anne Hirschmann’s life-journey from nominal childhood Christian to dedicated Hitler Youth worker to dedicated adult Christian is a compelling and heart-wrenching story of God’s love and His relentless pursuit of those He loves.

 Now, you can’t have read this blog for very long without realising that I am going through some deep waters these days. My faith is all that keeps me sane, and reading these biographies of imperfect Christians and their faith-journeys undergirds my hope in a very real and tangible way. They are so often full of perfectly-expressed truths that touch a specific chord in my life. (Funny how God does that, innit?)

 I want to share an excerpt from Hansi. I hope it will touch my readers’ souls as deeply as it did mine when I read it this morning for the first time in about 25 years. It really doesn’t need a lot of commentary; it speaks for itself (though I did add the emphasis at the end).

 And then it hit me like a thunderbolt. The Man on the cross! I had never faced up to him. From the time I decided it was only decent to serve God in return for all his kindness, until the present moment, I had simply exchanged allegiances and gods. As a child I had lived by my mother’s God-concepts and tried to obey her; later I gave my loyalties to the Fuhrer, worshiped him and obeyed his word. When I had become willing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Great Ruler of the universe, I had served him mechanically … I was now trying to earn my way to heaven. But I had never trusted the Jew from Nazareth as my personal Savior!

 Yes, I talked about Jesus; prayed to the Father in his name, read about him in my Bible, and confessed him. But he was far away in heaven and I was on earth, and I thought it good to keep that distance.

 …. I had heard about Jesus’ life; I was talking about it. I thought it admirable, but I didn’t want to live it—I couldn’t!

 There were two things I couldn’t give up—my pride and my hate!

Not give up my pride? Hadn’t I humbled myself willingly, down into the dust, ever since I joined a Christian church? Yes, and I was proud of it! How deceitful can the human heart be! I had accepted Christianity as if it were a change of garments—from the filthy rags of a social outcast to the cleaner church outfit of good works and better behavior—but I had not sought Christ’s robe of righteousness for my soul. How often religion is only an exchange of sins—from the coarse sins of immorality and arrogance to a respectable set which permits spiritual pride and anger under the cloak of lip service to Christ!

Tags: books, Christianity, cleaning, clutter, decluttering, encouragement, Hansi, Hilter Youth, Jesus, LibraryThing, Maria Anne Hirschmann, Nazi, Philosophy, Religion, Spire Comics, True Stories, works salvation