“What does Christianity mean
today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius
capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their
place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon, National Socialism will be
the religion of all Germans. My party is my church, and I believe I serve the
Lord best if I do his will and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of
slavery. That is my gospel.” From his
diary on Oct 16, 1928.[1]
Goebbels first asks about
Christianity in his day. The main problem is its outmoded rituals, so a
religious reformer is needed to put new ones in their place. National
Socialism, Goebbels’ “church,” has the potential to become the latest
incarnation or reform of Christianity in his day if traditions and rituals
could only be added by a “religious genius,” or reformer.
In referring to “the Lord,”
Goebbels reveals himself as a theist and willing to do God’s will. Although
Goebbels does not mention Jesus explicitly, liberation theology is clearly
evinced in Goebbels’ interpretation of God’s will as liberating the oppressed
(German) people from slavery. The sort he had in mind is most likely economic,
for the World War I reparations being paid at the time by Germany were causing
unemployment there. Like liberation theology, the economic structure itself
wherein Germany was being made to pay reparations, is not only unfair, but also
against God’s will. If only God’s will could be known so concretely as to be
evinced in certain socio-economic structures that are presumably “sacred.”
Goebbels was assuming he knew about God than he could as a finite being. This
criticism applies to believers in liberation theology more generally too.
In Goebbels’ case, the
assumption of God’s will being to liberate Germans from their economic poverty
strangely co-existed with the assumption—presumably also part of God’s will—that
Slavs, Jews, and homosexuals should be exterminated as if from natural laws
that God had established. Some Christians in the last quarter of the twentieth
century had no problem believing infallibly
in sacred economic (e.g., the rich and poor being less unequal) and social
(e.g., anti-prejudicial) structures, just as Goebbels’ had had his beliefs in
God’s will being just as concrete. In both cases, the Kingdom of God was
confined to earthly terms, whereas Jesus of the canonical gospels preaches of a
kingdom within and giving to Caesar what is his. In other words, liberation
theology errs in neglecting Jesus’s point that the Kingdom of God is not of
this earth. Ignoring this point allows ideological agendas to gain more
authority and force than is deserved and merited. The notion that some
ideologies are better than others morally speaking is doubtlessly true, but
even the best can easily become encased in self-idolatry. When such idolatry
hits the sordid ideologies, the result can literally be quite dangerous.
In short, applying religious belief to economics, politics, and
social structures give certain of the latter too much certainty and force at
the expense of self-critique. The want of a check on the ego and its designs
amplified to divine plans renders partisan platforms as sacred, and thus others
as evil. The resulting imbalance is itself unstable, and yet it is entombed in
ideology-made-sacred (and evil). Dr. Goebel could have been a lot less certain
of the religious sanctioning of his economic and social ideologies—which would
have required humility. Similarly, resisting the temptation to put God’s stamp
on liberation theology by rendering certain political, social, and economic
structures as inherently sacred requires a good dose of humility as well as a
recognition of the sheer distance between God’s kingdom and even human finite
creatures. We should not presume too much about ourselves in relation to God,
including revelation.
