QUESTIONING
OUR ETHICS
Devin Ames, FASPE
I found myself saying “O God” and then unable to proceed. This was the only prayerful utterance I could muster. In this space and time, I couldn’t help but focus on the horrendous cruelty and brutality that occurred at Auschwitz. I felt the weight of the truth that this place was not a remote location run by
a few fanatics but rather a site made possible by the complicity and complacency of millions.
It’s important to remember that Auschwitz didn’t just appear out of thin air. It took the decisions and indifference of millions of people to lay the path to what would become the location of so much death. And while people from the nearby town were expelled when Auschwitz was built, other camps were very much connected to citizens’ daily lives. There were not just a few camps but, as
I learned from a map at the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin, over 44,000, ranging from work camps near factories to camps for political prisoners and camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, which functioned as both a work and extermination site. They were all over. At that same museum, I learned the stories of many people who worked to oppose Nazi policies and programs, many of whom were executed for their efforts. Everywhere we traveled, I was constantly reminded of the people who said nothing and of the people who spoke and worked in favor of genocide.
As a Seminary fellow, I thought extensively about how religion was at work. I thought about an image of a pastor blessing Nazi soldiers. I thought about how many Christians in Germany threw their support behind Adolf Hitler. I thought about how religion was forbidden within the camps because it could be a source of hope. I thought about how the latrines became sites of group prayer because they were too disgusting for SS soldiers to check. In the midst of this, I also thought of Martin Luther, many of whose theological writings have brought me to know God as loving and full of grace but who also wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, a horribly antisemitic work that was lauded and used by the Nazis.
Since returning to the United States, I’ve thought deeply about those utterances of “O God.” Why did those words come to mind? Why couldn’t I find anything else to pray? Were they a cry of despair, a mournful whisper, an angry shout, a reaction to an unbearable weight? Yes, certainly all of those and probably much more than that.
I also keep thinking about the phrase written on the cover of the notebooks FASPE gave us: “Question Your Ethics.” A statement both open-ended and quite pointed. A call not simply to submit to any ethical system but rather to spend time thinking about the foundations for, and implications of, any ethical reasoning.
“O God” and “Question Your Ethics,” continue to percolate in my mind. Currently, I see both phrases as calls. I see “O God” as me calling to God, as my calling with all that I felt as I stood on the grounds of Auschwitz, as a calling that persists as I continue to think about how my learning experiences will shape me and what
I am called to do with that today. I look at the world around me, and I find myself wondering what would happen if, instead of scrambling for the right answer, we could find a way to sit with a simple “O God.” Sometimes, those are the best words to speak.
“Question Your Ethics,” feels like a calling and a plea. A sometimes pain-filled and pressing thought in an increasingly divisive world, one in which we dig in our heels on issues so quickly and vilify those who disagree with us, seeing ourselves as champions of the “right way.” What would happen if we consistently and honestly looked at our grounding principles, our ethical foundations, and considered how they may need to shift depending on their impact on other people?
As I began working on this reflection, I wasn’t sure I was ready to share my thoughts and experiences of these two immersive and intense weeks with FASPE. But then I thought: maybe this is just living in the reality of “O God'' and “Question Your Ethics.” There’s always going to be a level of uncertainty, and that’s okay, perhaps even preferable. It’s freeing not to have to dig my heels in so deep, to remember that I can know where I stand in the moment while remaining open to how that
On a walking tour through Auschwitz, I noticed my normally talkative group had gone stone silent, not asking our guide even a single question.1 At a few points on the tour, I felt an urge to pray, to pray while standing on the ground where countless atrocities occurred not even a lifetime ago.
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