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Helping like Joseph

Church history in general, and the history of pietistic, Evangelical, and pious streams of faith have been deeply characterized by ever new Christian movements bringing hope for all layers of society and acting as particular advocates for victims of sin, regardless of whether it was their own sin, the sin of others, or collective sins. One can think, for instance, of the Evangelical anti-slavery movement, Methodism, the Salvation Army, diaconate mother abbies, the Blue Cross or the Black Cross and prison and rehabilitation ministries.  Christians have for instance become engaged around the world in the fight against alcoholism and drug addiction and have not shirked the painstaking work of offering the victims – whether they are themselves guilty or not or somewhere in between – opportunities for rehabilitation that might take years. It would appear clear that for the cause of global development there are opportunities to be like Jesus and offer hope to each individual wherever they are in the world, regardless of how many other people have written them off.

I recently published a German book together with Kurt Bangert of World Vision entitled HIV/AIDS as a Christian Challenge (HIV/AIS als christliche Herausforderung). Efforts against HIV and AIDS, for those who have contracted AIDS as well as for those who are AIDS victims in the broadest sense, is nothing other than action against other social and medical catastrophes encountered in the past, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, blindness, and incarceration.

The German book The Fight against Poverty (Der Kampf gegen Armut), which has just been released, is an endeavor of the Evangelical Alliance that I have published with Andreas Kusch. It is a type of theological justification and reflection on the Micah Initiative  and in the process takes up a matter similar to the aforementioned book.

The Old Testament role models of faith are found in Joseph and Daniel, who helped their countries and cultures and saved many lives. Joseph drafted a gigantic program that saved the lives of the Egyptians and others, although they believed in another god. Joseph and Daniel did not wait until the world around them corresponded to what they as god-fearing people desired to see. Rather, they won the respect of everyone, because they became involved for all people – though not in a way that led them to compromise their faith in the one true Creator and Savior.

Our task as Christians is not to wait for a world which pleases us more or to get the world into a manageable shape before we do something. Rather, we are to act in the world as we find it here and now, proclaim the love of our God, and concretely bear witness to it at that point.

My Great Grandfather’s Confession of Faith

My ancestors were Reformed Hugenots, who came from Salzburg to Prussia and finally settled in Danzig and Königsberg. My great grandfather Friedrich Schirrmacher (1790-1827), who was the director of the Petrischule (Petri School) in Danzig, left behind the following handwritten confession of faith, which is also my own conconfession:

My Confession of Faith
From the beginning the Evangelical church protested and must continue to protest, but first of all from a positive basis, namely that of unconditional belief in the free grace of God in Christ, and namely as it has been revealed in absolute form for all times in the writings of Paul, Peter, and John. And secondly, it protests on purely religious grounds and only against that which alters the basis for faith in some form.
Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher
born September 14, 1790
in Königsberg in Prussia

[Handwritten entry by Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher on the first blank page, or flyleaf, in a copy of Das Vater Unser: Ein Erbauungsbuch für jeden Christen (The Lord’s Prayer: A Devotional Book for Every Christian) by the vice president and senior court chaplain Christoph Friedrich von Ammon, D. Ch. G. Kayser’schen Buchhand lung F. Beyer: Leipzig, 1839 (in my possession)]

His son and my grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1824-1904) left the following lines in the Danzig Reformed Songbook, which I also want to make my own:

Eins nur wünsch ich mir hienieden,
Jesu, Deinen Geist und Frieden,
Und von dem Ruhm an meinem Grabe,
daß ich Dich geliebet habe.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher

(There is only one thing I wish upon this earth,
Jesus, your Spirit and peace,
And from any luster at my grave,
that I loved you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher)

[Handwritten entry in a songbook (Kirchen Gesang-Buch Der Evangelisch-Reformierten Gemeinde in Dantzig ( Church Songbook of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Danzig). Thom. Joh. Schreiber: Dantzig, 1745) in my possession. The first entry in the songbook is from September 14, 1777 by A. V. E. (presumably not a relative of the Schirrmacher family). On September 14, 1854 “Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher” dedicated the book to his son Friedrich Wilhelm, who wrote the quoted dedication without a date. The book in turn made its way via his son Leo Schirrmacher to his son Klaus Leo Schirrmacher, who on March 16, 1968 passed it on to “my loving brother Bernd Schirrmacher” upon the occasion of Bernd Schirrmacher’s birthday. Bernd Schirrmacher, my father, passed in on to me with the dedication “Christmas 1989.” (Compare to this Franz Kessler. Danzinger Gesangbücher 1586-1793. Einzelschriften der Historischen Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung 15. Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk: Lüneburg, 1998. pp. 65-70 our songbook; also pp. 3-7 on the Reformation and pp. 6-7 on the Reformed in Danzig.)]

I have republished two of my grandfather’s books and provided introductions to both which carry the same wording. In a similar form the wording has appeared in the Biografisch-Bibliografischen Kirchenlexikon (Biographical-Bibliographical Church Encyclopedia) in German:

“Über den Verfasser.” pp. 5–28 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Briefe und Akten zum Marburger Religionsgespräch (1529) und zum Augsburger Reichstag (1530). Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 21. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher”. pp. 5–23 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Die Entstehung des Kurfürstenkollegiums. Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 22. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1825–1904)”. pp. 142–151 in: Thomas Schirrmacher, Klaus Schirrmacher, Ingrid von Torklus (eds.). Baumeister bleibt der Herr: Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag von Prof. Bernd Schirrmacher. VKW: Bonn, 2001

“Schirrmacher, Friedrich Wilhelm”. 1226–1235 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, Traugott Bautz (eds.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Bautz: Herzberg beginning with vol. I, 1975, here vol. XIX, 2001

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