The Only Religion Is the Religion Of Life
“Germanic light religion was not idol worship and barbarian cult. Where could the eternal reveal itself to Germanic man purer and mightier than in that power that wrestles daily with darkness and yet again and again remains victor, which gives earth life and fertility and human beings light and bread! And what is the yearning for light and for life other than the yearning for God! It was not the sun as a fireball that Germanic man admired in sacred reverence, rather the eternal force that the sun gave him, which works behind and above light, around which his being and yearning orbited. Hence he built no temples and gave it no face. Not out of inability, rather out of piety. And in all of us there still live a piece of the light faith of the old, of the faith that was born in nature, out of the blood. Which was strong and plain, which irradiated millennia and will be the roots for a new piety out of German nature. This faith is more genuine and divine than the constructed savior doctrine.
We do not say, pray to the sun and awaken forms that are already long dead and gone. Today we do not live in a Stone Age. We are human beings of the twentieth century, the age of motors and machines. But we can receive one thing as legacy: To again think more simply and believe more plainly. We Germans must again think more with the heart.
We must no longer believe the pastors so much. We must no longer cling to their words so naïvely and loyally. We must pick up the nature of their language. We must listen for the genuine, original. We must again become human beings who are at home on the earth, who stand in the world firmly with both feet and elevate their homeland to holy land. We always think only about how we are masters of machines. We often forget that we are children of God’s earth, which gave birth to us. But that can never make us feel small and servile. That makes us sure of the world, safe in the earth.
We refuse to argue about God. He was, he is, and will be in eternity. We human beings are too small for the concept “eternity”. We do not want to advise, rather in reverence remain silent, surmise in the heart and speak in faith.
We believe in that God, the foundation of all existence, the secret of all life, who reveals himself in nature’s eternal becoming and passing. Who constantly strides up and down through history. Who appears in the thunder of battles. Who roars in the storm over seas and through forests and calls us to be strong. We believe in the God who put us human beings on earth so that we may live for our folk. Who gave into our blood the strength to struggle and to believe. We believe in the God who laughs toward us from children’s eyes. Who lives in the mine-works and factories and everywhere the breath of work blows. Who shines in the stars and blazes in the flags.
God stands over us, high like the sky. He works around us. And we carry him ourselves in the heart as a sacred, pure possession, which does not elevate us above him. This makes us tremble before his greatness and plain truth. This obligates us to live, that means, to live and to shape ourselves. In our hearts he calls and creates. Only many people do no hear him, because they had been educated for Sunday religion, which one finishes in church. Because one did not lead them to the religion of life, which is rooted so healthy and deep in the genuine that it seems to us too simple and self-evident. We believe in the living God. For us it is the godless and superficial to banish the eternal Almighty in letters and make him speak in a “holy scriptures”.
We fetch our faith not from books and empty commandments. We draw it from daily life, from the experience of folk and history, from race and blood, from homeland soil.
Many may call that frivolity and arrogance. We call it German piety.
Our piety – if we want to call the relationship man to god so – demands no intermediary. Our path to god is a straight and direct one. It is a sign of the rigidity of our time that one seeks God in books and sermons, when he steps before us a thousand-fold in life.
Who thinks about the “holy scriptures”, if he is silent at night before the expanse of the universe and his heart trembles in reverence. A gaze at the stars tells us more than a thousand Bible words.”
–excerpted from God and Folk – Soldierly Affirmation. Translated from the Third Reich original which was published by the Theodor Fritsch Verlang in Berlin. The author is not named.