If You Lived in Germany Shortly Before and During World War Two, Would You Have Sworn an Oath to Hitler?

A rule I established for my family and me as our children grew up was that we didn't talk about television or movies in public.  I had several scriptural reasons.  I also made certain exceptions for myself, almost like the highway patrol that passes the speed limit sometimes.  If I talk about a film that doesn't mean I don't give it a certain disclaimer nor give my endorsement of the movie industry.  I had read about the film, A Hidden Life, from director Terrence Malick, and decided to watch it with my wife here at home in shelter-in-place, which tells the true story of Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter.  Since I had never heard of it, I would call it a little known story.

Jägerstätter grew up somewhat irreligious with a wild reputation, but not after he married a very religious, Roman Catholic woman.  His life changed.  I don't believe he was truly converted, an actual biblical Christian.   However, his behavior and views reformed based upon his reading the Bible and studying stories of Catholic "saints" (all believers are saints in scripture).   Within just a few years, he and his wife, Franziska, bore three daughters.

After his marriage, Jägerstätter was instated as a requirement in the German army, trained as a soldier, but allowed to go home as a farmer.  In that short experience, he ascertained the doctrines of the Nazis and their purpose of war, and he rejected it.  He knew that if drafted, they would require him to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

Jägerstätter brooded intensely over what seemed a sure future decision.  His entire small, close-knit village in the mountains rejected and persecuted him and his family over his conviction.  What impelled him according to his testimony was God and the truth.  An oath would make his life a lie.

Franz Jägerstätter weighed the probabilities.  He would be executed and leave an elderly mother, a wife, and three daughters alone to survive without him.  His wife urged him to capitulate.  He got an appointment with his bishop, who did not support him, under pressure himself to acquiesce, so he used Romans 13 and Jägerstätter's responsibilities as a father to persuade him to relent.  He wouldn't.

The draft came, Jägerstätter reported, would not take the oath, was imprisoned, sent to Berlin, tortured, and then finally executed at age 36 by guillotine on July 6, 1943 in, as an irony for me, Brandenburg, Germany.  His death was not mourned by his village.  Over two decades later, only a few knew of his sacrifice for the truth, and his village still maligned him.  In 2007 the pope declared him a martyr and then he was beautified as a saint in Roman Catholicism.

You know I repudiate Roman Catholicism.  I doubt the salvation of Jägerstätter, so why use this story?  It presents a scenario I want to shift to those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.  As a true Christian, would you like him have refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler?  It's easy to sympathize now and embrace the story with deep empathy.  Let's not be impressed with what you feel and testify of deep feeling and without willingness to really sacrifice.

The sacrifice today is just the feeling about the movie, stating that you like the story and feel sorry.  You don't like Hitler.  Hitler bad.  The Lord Jesus Christ calls for lesser sacrifices that shrink in comparison to Jägerstätter.  You won't sacrifice for your church.  Hitler is easy to oppose in almost any environment today.  It means almost nothing anymore.  You barely to never even preach the gospel.  You would rather sacrifice your parents than to give up your sensual, worldly pop music and immodest and androgynous dress.  You can't have the worldly, secular crowd make fun of you, and yet you would profess alliance with Jägerstätter.

I wish someone had preached a true gospel to Jägerstätter.  His martyrdom won't save him from sin.  However, true Christians have a cause worthy of greater sacrifice.  The world doesn't require an official oath, but it does of sorts.  It requires your capitulation, so that you won't miss any of its superficial rewards, what Paul called wood, hay, and stubble.  It's all going to burn, but you still love it more than you do a true Jesus or the Word of God.  Jägerstätter held no illusion that he both could believe what he did and could also make an oath to Hitler, despite the complete rejection of his entire village, including his own priest and bishop.

If you can't even give up your wordly desires and justify them according to a perverted view of the grace of God, don't tell me that you would die like Jägerstätter did.  You already prove that you will throw godly people under the bus to keep your worldly, God-denying and blaspheming, friendships and approval.  That is your god.  If you had to die for those things, you would give them up too, but you don't have to.  You get their temporal rewards, that will pass away with the lust thereof.  It's much easier to appear woke and sympathetic then to actually sacrifice for the truth.

Jägerstätter stood alone.  This is what is required even to be a Christian.  It's not give me the world and give me Jesus too.  It's take the world and give me Jesus alone.  Jesus said in John 6, labor not for meat that perisheth.  That's a requirement for salvation.  You have a choice.  No man can serve God and mammon.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.