I saw Oppenheimer. The movie was really good, really hard, really long. I thought how ironic it was that several blogs ago I wrote about the bombing in relation to my Uncle, and now I watched its history unfolding.
In the dinner that followed the movie, my companions and I talked about evil, and discernment, and what was justice and what was not. We disagreed about when Oppenheimer realized the true repercussions of what he was doing and how he displayed his discomfort. I thought about how hard it is to make moral and ethical choices in our world, then and now.
Hard Decisions
Most hard decisions are not dualistic, with two clear choices and one that a good person would obviously make. When I said I was a pacificist, how many times has someone said, what would you do if it was your family being hurt? I have always responded that I hoped I would make the right choice in the moment, whatever that seemed to be. You can have standards and grasp that they aren’t always practical. They are called hard decisions for a reason.
But this movie is not about the moment. It is about war, and the horrors of war. It is about genocide and torture and protecting people from the worst of us. This movie is not about a split decision testing your scruples. It is about what you are willing to sacrifice for the good of the whole. And what that sacrifice might ask of each of us.
At What Cost?
Dinner conversation turned to Dietrich Bonhoffer. He was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in the middle of Nazi Germany. He wrote about the cost of discipleship. I have always struggled with his decision to try to assassinate Hitler. He failed of course, and he was killed because of it. I have always thought that the cost of discipleship for him was a willingness to lose his own life, to die for his friends.
But now I am wondering if the cost was his principles. Are there situations of evil potent enough that we have to give up what we hold to be true and just in order to pursue a bigger justice? Just war theory would tell us yes. Maybe I have never had a deep enough compassion to sort that out. I’m not sure what is right.
I come out of the film wondering about my own conviction and what it would take to offer it as a sacrifice. I hope never to be tested like that. But if I am, I pray to be courageous and deeply prayerful in my offering. I pray that God’s will be done.