From the Laundry Room to the Holocaust

This morning, as I walked toward the door to the dining room, my shoes squished on soaking wet carpet. I looked up. Water dripped from the ceiling. It happened before. In the laundry room above, three washers simultaneously unloaded, overwhelming the drainage system.

Our breakfast conversation began with laments over the problems with plumbing, moved on to talking about too many people using the same laundry room. I mentioned that I do laundry on Sunday afternoon. My breakfast companion said, “The Bible says Sunday is a day of rest. I was brought up never to ‘work’ on Sunday.”

The lady admitted she, too, sometimes washes clothes on Sunday, “In an emergency.” The Bible sets the rules for her life. She said, “The World would be a better place if everyone were Christians.”

I grew up in a family with the same traditions. My mother would not sew a button on a shirt on Sunday. I remember the shock of sneaking out to go to a movie on Sunday and seeing our church’s music director buying a ticket. Going to movies on Sunday was almost as grave a sin as playing cards or dancing. A game of rummy might lead to gambling; dancing incited lustful thoughts.

Most of the people we knew were Baptists. My father was convinced that anyone who did not “believe and be baptized” would have no moral restraints, and all the non-Christians would be rapists, thieves, and murderers. One of his best clients was a florist, who was alwys giving flowers to Mother and me. What beautiful gardenia corsages he gave me to wear to formal occasions while I was in college. Didn’t Daddy realize that kind man was a Jew?

In college I studied the Bible from an historical perspective. The story of the Hebrews’ theological development is very different from insisting, “Every word was dictated by God (in English, of course) and must be taken as law without question.”

Throughout history passions over religion – “Our religion is right; your religion is wrong” – caused suffering and death. Christians killed Christians, Protestant against Catholic. People were burned at the stake for reading The Bible. In Germany during the Thirty Years War women and children burned to death when churches where they had taken refuge were set afire.

In our own time good Christians in Germany killed six million Jews just 60 years ago.

Yet my breakfast companion maintained, “The World would be a better place if everyone were Christians.”

Some of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I know are bigots. To maintain “My religion is the only true religion” is an assault on humanity. A bigot is a bigot, whether he/she is a Catholic, Protestant – or a Muslim.