Thinking Anew: Confronting a legacy of human depravity from Hiroshima to Ukraine

Oppenheimer is the title of a recently released film about the so-called father of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer. It tells how he came to create a weapon that would change the world and him. After witnessing its destructive power, he quoted Hindu scripture: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Paul Tibbets was captain of the B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped that first atomic bomb on Hiroshima 78 years ago tomorrow (August 6th). Like many of his generation, he was directed to do things that he would never have done in peacetime, but war, by its nature, corrupts people The decision to drop the bomb was taken by the US president, Tibbet’s commander in chief, who, it is claimed, had only two choices: a land invasion costing millions of American lives or drop the bomb.

Tibbetts named his plane Enola Gay after his mother, a distinction many mothers perhaps would be uncomfortable with because it is difficult to argue that this bomb was anything other than evil; it was indiscriminate and certainly crossed a line in terms of scale, but it doesn’t stand alone in the annals of human depravity. Taking the 1939-1945 war period alone, we can add other names to Hiroshima – Nagasaki, Belsen, Auschwitz and many more. Human depravity observes no limits of time, season or nationality; witness Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and of course Ukraine, where nuclear threats are heard today.

We see these things as horrors because not one of them was inevitable. Human beings make choices, and to say that implies that other choices are available. We are not doomed to evil, we are seduced by it.

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It is a supreme irony that August 6th is not only the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, but also, for Christians, the Feast of the Transfiguration, that mysterious mountaintop event with a simple message, “listen to Jesus” – the one who wept over Jerusalem because its people did not recognise the things that belonged to their peace.

‘All men desire peace,’ wrote Thomas à Kempis, ‘but very few desire those things that make for peace’

Archbishop Rowan Williams makes a connection between the two events. “The apostles Peter, James and John saw what a human face could be. They knew that humanity could be the face worn by God. And whatever terrors, crimes and catastrophes might follow, nothing could extinguish that eternal light. Humans remain free to turn back to that light; to do so they need all the love and grace that Christ’s life and death and resurrection and Spirit can give, but it is never impossible. We can turn from greedy self-interest, we can say no to the glamour of violence and domination, we can listen to God’s Son and follow his way of hope-full vulnerability.”

In tomorrow’s gospel reading, we are reminded that Christian discipleship is about making such choices. Jesus is faced with a seemingly impossible challenge – feeding thousands of people. The disciples are overwhelmed and want to give in: “Send the crowds away,” they say, “so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” In other words, don’t ask us. But Jesus insists that they be fed. The church today often makes the same mistake – giving up because the task seems too great, and we feel we lack the resources. The basic Christian resource is love, the key ingredient of peace and reconciliation. We are called to live it and share it within our own circles and so make the world a better place right where we are and, beyond that, it is God’s gift to the world, to be accepted or rejected. “All men desire peace,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, “but very few desire those things that make for peace.”

Paul Tibbets, who had no regrets for what he was ordered to do, believing that it ended the war, did acknowledge that his actions were controversial and so directed that when he died there should be no funeral service or burial place to avoid anti-nuclear protests. He asked to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the English Channel.