Death, yes death.
They fear it so much, these new people who have awakened me
and put me to work remembering a life I would just as soon forget. Yes, they
fear it, and yet they obsess about it. Imagine, 700 pilgrims were killed in a
stampede in Mecca yesterday; today all the news is about exactly how it
happened. A woman is interviewed talking about the death of her husband—we see
her tears, her wails.
Not one of them can say it, but who will harm me, and why
should I care if they did? I know perfectly well who died in Mecca, and it was
the infidel. They had not accepted Christ, they had clung to their old beliefs
and religions, they had amassed like lemmings—is it any wonder they had
suffered the same fate?
And so, according to their beliefs, they were called to make
the hajj in Medina and Mecca at least once in their lives, no matter from where
they lived. Why? In all the German towns I lived in, the townsfolk were
expected to attend church, but was there ever any talk about going to Lourdes
or Santiago de Compostela, or—God forbid—Rome? Of course not, that was papist nonsense,
mere superstition; hadn’t Martin Luther freed us of all that? Hadn’t we moved
on from all the processions, the ritual floggings, the hysterical beating of
the breast and speaking in voices, and all those other effluents of the devil?
Death was all around us in Germany in the 18th
century, and death could be desired, surely, at the end of a long life, a life
of service. A man marries, and he takes the life of his wife in his hands, as
does she. They have children for whom they must care, and who must care for
them as the end nears. But now, 700 people have died, and the news is
questioning—was it the fault of the Saudi government? Or was it the will of
God?
It was neither. It was the fault of those 700 people, and
the people who encouraged them to put themselves at harm’s way. But the roar
that arose when I tried to say that, yesterday! I was insensitive, I didn’t
understand the need for respecting different religions, I was lacking in
something called “multiculturalism!”
Indeed? Am I then to say that the ignorant who chose to
remain with the Roman church are as worthy, as much to be respected as our own
reformed church? Of course not—else why would the reform have been necessary?
And necessary it was, as anyone who knew the story of simony and indulgences
and the scandalous ways of the clergy living in the gilded palaces could
attest.
700 people? No, 700 people did not die yesterday, but rather
untold thousands, since what man or woman lives without a family, a spouse,
children and aged parents? And now, all of them today live, but are they not
dead as well?
And why did they go? Their religion told them, their Koran
told them, that it was their duty and their privilege to make the trip;
stupidly, they believed.
I grew up in the very place where Martin Luther had lived,
and where he had formed his great beliefs, the beliefs that led to the
Ninety-five Theses for the faith in 1517. And what did Luther believe? What
gift had he given not only me, but the millions of other people who came to
believe as he did?
The Roman church had told him—it was only through the
intercession of the church that a man could attain eternal life in heaven. And
how was that to be attained? By paying church taxes for everything from a
baptismal record to a death certificate—including everything in between. By
purchasing an indulgence, which would shave some years off your time in
purgatory. Lastly, by dying in a state of grace, and who controlled that? The priest,
and by extension, the entire church.
And what a revolution it was, when Luther stated the
obvious—the Roman church was a painted whore, seducing the gullible and
beguiling the corrupt. Salvation was between man and God; it was scripture and
each man’s reading of it, not the church, that determined one’s spiritual
resting place. Nor is it good deeds that lead to salvation, but quite the
opposite. Salvation is God’s gift to us, and believing that God could be bribed
by a gift or by sacrifice—or by throwing seven pebbles against a wall—was
abominable. And also, I would add, supremely disrespectful to the Lord himself:
what judge would not be affronted at the covert display of money and the
knowing wink in his courtroom?
And so I believed. I feared God, I dreaded his wrath—for had
he not tested me greatly? I lived until I was sixty-five, but my parents? My
first wife? And don’t forget, the Black Eeath regularly scourged us: God’s
revenge for the wayward and godless paths that so many of us had taken.
Yes, he scourged us, he sent his punishment upon us, but it
was He—not his church, not his priest or his mullahs—who through his direct
contact with each man favored us with heaven or struck us down into Hell. A
man, then, was freed the tyranny of a church or a priest; a man stood with
dignity before God. Lesser, oh very much lesser—but still a man, standing on
his own two feet.
They will tell you that I dedicated every AMDG—Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, to the greater glory
of God. Indeed, but never did I do it because the church told me to, or to
curry favor of God, or to impress the people who saw the acronym on my scores.
No, I did it because God had favored me; God had given me great gifts and great
tribulations. For what family was greater in music than mine? What family had
had such reunions, when everyone was playing music, laughing, joking, singing
the most vulgar street songs and then devising ingenious impromptu variations
on them? For every one of the blows with which God had struck me, he had
caressed me with his infinite blessings ten times as often. I lost a child? I
took my sorrow to church, and there did He comfort me.
I did not take myself off a thousand miles away from my home
and family, only to die crushed in a foreign land. And am I to say that any man
who does so is the equal of a man who, like me, toiled yearly for his family,
and who left them with something other that wails and penury?
And now, the reports are that the Mussulmen are flooding out
of their countries, trekking thousands of miles and crossing the seas on the
flimsiest of rafts. Indeed? And what are they in search of, except for refuge
from lands awash with—all too often—religious strife, unthinking devotion,
ignorant and mindless obedience leading to fanaticism and mayhem. They bomb
themselves to enter heaven—am I to respect that?
Ah, we are told, that is the few, the tiny minority that in
any affair captures the attention. True, of course. And so hyper acute is the
media attention that these modern men that they seem to know everything about
what happened before it happens. But how different it was in my day! We
had the church, the local dukes and duchies, the universities, the town
governments. And how they all seemed to work together—all of us speaking in one
tongue, joining in prayer at one church, paying dues to one system. But these
people—what do they bring to my beloved Thuringia? Will there be a mosque next
my church? Will their foreign cookery assault my nostrils? Will the beer be
wrenched from my hand, the pipe from my lips—and will I be told I must face a
religious court, so displeasing is my conduct to Allah ?
Never, when alive, did I feel that my life was any different
than my neighbors. What will happen when the fabric of the community is rent,
and we must “respect” the tatters?
