Strange Pals
And all who believed were together and had all things in common. (Acts 2:44)
History regularly makes me say, “If this situation weren’t true, it would be too crazy to be believable.” Sinclair McKay’s book Berlin draws my attention again with a surprising story. In the aftermath of the Nazi’s destruction and the newly developing dictatorship in East Berlin, there remained a few brave people who spoke out against the Communists. What makes the story so outrageous is that McKay’s examples of the few courageous and just individuals who would not allow Stalin’s Communists to win without a challenge were East Berlin’s Lutheran clergy and local punk rockers. Not ordinarily groups who were ideological pals.
The Lutheran pastors remained influential because the Communist leaders did not want to upset the local German people as they tried to assimilate them into their new Communist culture. The Lutheran pastors seized upon their limited strength by supporting another outlier. The punk rockers in East Berlin were a large group of young people organized around their unique culture. The communists also did not want to alienate such a large group of young people, so they gave them more freedom than others in the hope of ingratiating the punks to Communist ideology.
Many found the pact between the clergy and the punks shocking. The clergy opened their church basements to the punks. Now, the punks had a free and safe place to gather and play music. The pastors developed a meaningful rapport with another group in the city that did not affirm Communism. The religious leaders and punks knew they were stronger together as a team than trying to make their way separately. As the church and the punks learned to trust and respect each other, they became a lasting influence on their city.
It would have been easy for both groups to scoff in derision and write the other group off as ridiculous. Instead, the two groups looked upon each other with value and worked in a respectful tandem. Today, consider those individuals and groups who are very different from some of your values and ideas. Prayerfully ask God to provide the wisdom to envision other groups as potential allies in the greater struggle for peace, justice, and equality. When working on divine values, differing people become part of the more prominent family of the household of God.