From Tears to Laughter
Jürgen Moltmann, the German scholar acknowledged as “the most widely read Christian theologian of the past 80 years,” died on June 3 at the age of 98. In one of history’s ironies, the former teenage soldier passed away the very week that the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that would assure the defeat of his homeland, Germany. In a further irony, Moltmann is remembered for his “theology of hope,” which he developed in a prisoner-of-war camp.
Moltmann was planning on a career in quantum physics until Hitler’s war broke out. At age 16 his entire high school class was drafted to assist the anti-aircraft batteries defending Hamburg.
What began as a schoolboy adventure turned into a horror show as waves of U.S. and British aircraft fire-bombed the city, killing almost 40,000 civilians. He saw his friends incinerated, and he only survived by clinging to a piece of wood in a lake surrounded by fire. Two questions haunted him: “Where is God?” and “Why am I alive and not dead?”
Serving on the front lines in 1945, he soon realized that he and other poorly trained recruits were mere cannon fodder to keep Hitler alive for a few more months. Hands in the air, he approached a trench full of startled British soldiers and said in English, “I surrender!” From there, Moltmann spent the next three years in prison camps in Belgium, Scotland, and England.
When the Third Reich imploded, exposing the moral rot at its center, he saw how other German prisoners “collapsed inwardly, how they gave up all hope, sickening for the lack of it, some of them dying.” As he learned the truth about the genocidal Nazi regime, Moltmann felt an inconsolable grief about life, “weighed down by the somber burden of a guilt which could never be paid off.”
Moltmann had no religious background. He had brought two books with him into battle—Goethe’s poems and the works of Nietzsche—neither of which nourished much hope. But an American chaplain gave him an army-issue New Testament and Psalms. “If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,” the prisoner read. Could God be present in that dark place? As he read on, Moltmann found words that perfectly captured his feelings of desolation. Had not Jesus himself cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” He became convinced that God “was present even behind the barbed wire—no, most of all behind the barbed wire.”
Moltmann also found something new in the Psalms: hope. Walking along the perimeter of barbed wire at night for exercise, he would circle a small hill in the center of the camp on which stood a hut that served as a chapel. That hut became for him a symbol of God’s presence in the midst of suffering, and out of that symbol grew hope.
Later Moltmann was transferred to an educational camp in England run by the YMCA. The local population welcomed the German prisoners, bringing them homemade food, teaching them Christian doctrine, and never adding to the burden of guilt the prisoners already felt over Nazi atrocities. “They treated me better than the German army,” Moltmann said.
Upon release, Moltmann began to articulate his theology of hope. Humanity exists, he concluded, in a state of contradiction between the cross and the resurrection. Surrounded by evil and decay, we nonetheless hope for restoration, a hope illuminated by the “foreglow” of Christ’s resurrection. Faith in a God who has promised to make all things new can transform the present—just as Moltmann’s own hope of eventual release from prison camp transformed his daily experience there. Reminiscing, he mentioned three things that helped lift the darkness and give him hope: a cherry tree blossoming in the prison camp, the humanity of the Scottish workers, and the Bible he received from the chaplain. “These three things convinced me to love life again.”
On a visit to Virginia in 2015, I spent an evening with Moltmann, who was lecturing there. I was surprised by his charm and his wry sense of humor. He made some witty comments about US politics, and talked easily about popular culture and current events. Clearly, he sought to apply theology to real-world issues in our broken world.
Through all of Moltmann’s dense theological works run two themes: God’s presence with us in our suffering and God’s promise of a perfected future. If Jesus had lived during the Third Reich, Moltmann noted, very likely he would have been shipped with other Jews to the gas chambers. In Jesus, we have lasting proof that God suffers with us, as Moltmann explains in The Crucified God.
At the same time, Jesus gives a foretaste of a future time when the planet will be restored to God’s original design. Moltmann describes Easter as the beginning of the “laughter of the redeemed…God’s protest against death.” A person without future faith may assume from the suffering on this planet that God is neither all-good nor all-powerful. Future faith allows us to believe that God is not satisfied with this world either, and intends to remake it.
Only the final defeat of evil will allow the kingdom of God to take shape in all its fullness. In the meantime we establish settlements of that kingdom, always glancing back to the Gospels for guidance. Moltmann notes that the phrase “Day of the Lord” in the Old Testament inspired fear; but in the New Testament it inspires hope, because those authors have come to know and trust the Lord whose Day it is.
In a single sentence Jürgen Moltmann expresses the great span from Good Friday to Easter. It is, in fact, a summary of human history— past, present, and future: “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”
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18 responses to “From Tears to Laughter”
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About Philip Yancey
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him.
Dear Philip, thank you for writing this heart-warming, as well as ‘thought-provoking’ piece. I wept, thinking of the wars in Israel and Ukraine. How devastating is war–to all who participate in it and particularly for those who do not know our God–I can only imaging how hopeless the reality of life is for them. I am just beginning to scratch the surface of the big topic of suffering and redemption in and through it. Moltmann’s life is a beautiful story of God redeeming a such a life lost in sin and despair caused by the war and aftermath–and how that redeemed life has become a beacon, holding out that redemptive hope to others. l pray many will your post and also be blessed with hope. Thank God for saving Moltmann.
Thank you for sharing such a wonderful story!
This was just what I needed this evening. Thank you again for your hope and grace filled gentle words. I love the Moltmann quote…
Dear Philip, as you know, pastors and churches in Evangelical America have paid a steep price for sharing in Moltmann’s hope that God would in fact, as promised in Revelation 21:5, “make all things new.” In almost all “evangelical” denominations this hope is seen as heretical and Grace is only amazing for those inside a particular box defined by the institution. Do you have hope that we, the American “Evangelical” Church, might be on the verge of embracing Moltmann’s theology? I hope so. It seems that we are being unmade and I continue to pray for a reformation. Thank you so very much for writing this blog.
Love the Moltmann quote! Just finished reading your revised edition of “What’s So Amazing About Grace.” Read original 25 years ago. Have 12 of your books in my library. I am almost 74. I consider you one of my spiritual formation life mentors. THANK YOU SO MUCH – FOR SO MUCH!
A truly up-building blog with God’s view of history and the back-story of Moltman of which I was not aware. Truly a feast for the soul. Thank you.
My sister has been struggling with the death of her daughter a year ago. Her daughter struugled during her short life of 41 yrs. My sister is still in the fire as the first death anniversary just passed. I will seek out this book for her as she needs the encouragement and hope. To God be the Glory. Thank you Philip for all you do in the name of Jesus Christ.
Thank you so much for this it comes at a time when things are changing for me and my husband. I just love, as others do, the phrase ” God weeps with us so that one day we may laugh with Him.”
Love the blogs!
As Timothy Keller’s “Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering” reminded me about a year ago (in a chapter about Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace), God is with us in the fire. And it’s not just that He is with me in the fire, as if He’s abstractly within me or beside me as I go through the flames (as I’ve apparently always visualized it), but He is in the fire with me. It burns Him. He feels the pain, not just indirectly as He sees it hurting me, but directly, on His own skin (so to speak). There’s a sense (beyond my understanding) in which God actually hurts.
Thank you, Philip, for speaking to our very human need for hope.
As always, I’m inspired and moved by your post/story – thank you Philip – you and your writing is a gift to the world.
Oh how beautiful!!
Thank you Philip for sharing and in sharing his story, also strengthens our hope for a glorious future, laughing with God!
As a survivor of sexual abuse from my biological father, I settled my questions about “Where was God?” by the idea that “God was right there, suffering with you.”
And I first found that specific formulation of God’s involvement with us in Mr. Yancey’s book, Where is God When it Hurts? Which perhaps was informed by Moltmann’s wonderful sentence: “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”
Glory to God and thanks to Mr. Yancey and Mr. Moltmann.
Thank you, Philip, for sharing such an amazing story of hope and grace. It is quite an encouragement!
May the Lord continue to bless you so you can keep sharing stories like this – we need them!
Oh Philip Yancey! Thank to for writing your thoughts on hope from Moltmann I needed t read and be reminded of his clinging truth of God’s grief and God’s laughter for means the rest of humanity.
Simply thank you.
In our present times of war, chaos, deception, and the sadness I feel about this poor old world, Moltmann’s theology of Hope reminds me to look up, and to entrust myself once again to our God who holds all things in His hands. Pray without ceasing for the return of the rightful King who makes all things new, forever!
Preaching as an 80byr old on July 7th from the book of Revelation on HOPE. TThanks for the blog of Moltman’ words of hope.
.I’ll include your uplifting words & message
Thank you so much for this. Inspiring.
Talita, Namibia.
An uplifting, poignant reminder during this time of violence in various countries, that our triune Lord is in the midst of all the turmoil and suffering and continues to guide us-if only we listen and follow His leading.