Faith Without Action is Dead: The cowardice of a pastor in the face of Nazi terror

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" (James 2:14)

It is often only in times of testing when the rubber hits the road and when faith is put to the test that we truly see whether one's faith is a living faith accompanied by action or a dead faith.

The Bible records numerous accounts of heroes of faith, well-known and relatively unknown, who have stood against evil even when it cost them dearly. The genocidal impulses against the Hebrews or the Jews have always been strong and, on many occasions, godly men and women stood against the tide. For example, there were the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah, who disobeyed Pharaoh's order to kill the Hebrew newborn boys (Exodus 1). There was Esther, who stood against Haman's edict seeking to exterminate the Jews.

The pastor, from the film The Hiding Place (1975)

In our own not-too-distant history, the evil one has not relented in his efforts to destroy God's people. In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom records an account where she was looking for a place where she could hide a Jewish mother and child from the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo. With the scourge of Nazi Germany and its genocidal impulses, arrest would almost certainly mean death:

And the very next morning into the shop walked the perfect solution. He was a clergyman friend of ours, pastor in a small town outside of Haarlem, and his home was set back from the street in a large wooded park.

“Good morning, Pastor,” I said, the pieces of the puzzle falling together in my mind. “Can we help you?”

I looked at the watch he had brought in for repair. It required a very hard-to-find spare part. “But for you, Pastor, we will do our very best. And now I have something I want to confess.”

The pastor’s eyes clouded. “Confess?”

I drew him out the back door of the shop and up the stairs to the dining room.

“I confess that I too am searching for something.” The pastor’s face was now wrinkled with a frown. “Would you be willing to take a Jewish mother and her baby into your home? They will almost certainly be arrested otherwise.” Color drained from the man’s face. He took a step back from me. “Miss ten Boom! I do hope you’re not involved with any of this illegal concealment and undercover business. It’s just not safe! Think of your father! And your sister – she’s never been strong!”

On impulse I told the pastor to wait and ran upstairs. Betsie had put the newcomers in Willem’s old room, the farthest from windows on the street. I asked the mother’s permission to borrow the infant: the little thing weighed hardly anything in my arms. Back in the dining room I pulled back the coverlet from the baby’s face.

There was a long silence. The man bent forward, his hand in spite of himself reaching for the tiny fist curled round the blanket. For a moment I saw compassion and fear struggle in his face. Then he straightened. “No. Definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child!”

Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. “Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said.

Father held the baby close, his white beard brushing its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”

The pastor turned sharply on his heels and walked out of the room.

So we had to accept a bad solution to our problem. On the edge of Haarlem was a truck farm which hid refugees for short periods of time. It was not a good location, since the Gestapo had been there already. But there was nowhere else available on short notice. Two workers took the woman and child there that afternoon.

A few weeks later we heard that the farm had been raided. When the Gestapo came to the barn where the woman was hidden, not the baby but the mother began to shriek with hysteria. She, the baby, and her protectors were all taken. We never learned what happened to them.

Such was the cowardice of the pastor. Indeed, faith without action is dead.