Read what she wrote:
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ’survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes.
Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature.
“Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn. -by Sophie Scholl.
I was impressed by this. This is what I think. This is how I see the confines of what my fellow Christians would squeeze me into when I don’t toe the line on saying the expected Christian thing. Holding to the expected Christian tone.
I admit to the admonitions of scripture, but I find it difficult to make congruent the smallness of those who will reject me on the basis of their ‘civilized sensibilities’ and the call to something greater than our own little self-interested worlds.
We don’t want to allow for messiness, but not for reason of excellency; instead for reason of our smallness… our need to control our environment.
In this, I am struck. Absolutely struck by the similarity to what we so decry in legalistic religions such as Islam.
The tight knit little societies of so-called Christian isolationists are going to undergo some intense pressures. Not all pressures of the devil, either. Because I think that religion as we have known it is breaking. And religion as a living force, as life springing up is the only one that will survive the onslaught of what I would call either gutting of true religion or neutering. Take your pick of terms.
And I agree that it is the self-preserving “honest [ones] who just want to be left in peace.” who will most contribute to the steamrolling of injustices that seem to be coming upon us.
And I have a word for you who desire to take on your mantle of seeking and standing for truth: you will not be loved for it.
Just remember that …. and you should be all right.