Claus was not a big churchgoer. He did not talk about god. Any dogmatic principle was foreign to him. He had more questions than answers, like my christians who do not belong to a church. About possible religious experiences he did not speak. And of the Lutheran Church of Germany he has mixed feelings. About the so-called Old Testament he did not hear until he was an adult. Officially that book did not exist in the Third Reich. And that Jezus was a Jew was kept a secret, and not just there.
In his later life Claus sought contact with that missed book and got it. He recognized the big biblica story.
In the beginning there was the word. Which word was in the beginning?
Who looks at the Jewish explanation tradition of the bible, one gets to here that in the beginning the Torah was with god, even before he created heaven and the earth. Torah means the word that points people into a direction so that their lives will have been worth living.
In the beginning there was the word is not a philosophical quote but a prophetic voice that tells us that we should respect each other and live a humane life: love the person next to you. Love is not meant as a warm feeling but as a practical solidarity: that one does not let another person down, leaves that person in the cold, starve, torture, let disappear. "Love the foreigner living among you is the specific explanation of the word about caring for other people.
The stranger/foreigner is the "other person" who one has to love and take care of. Do not hunt him, do not chose her away, so it has been written. They have the same rights as you (Leviticus 19, verse 34)
Without this Torah there will be no humane future which will be worth living. "Light" is a synonym for the future, "for a world where people live with dignity. God said in the beginning, let there be light.
The word god is being said during church services much too frequently. Do we know who they mean with that? We could agree that with the word "god" we mean the one, found in the Jewish bible and in the writings about Jezus who speaks for the refugees, people who were banished, of people who's rights were violated; who want solidarity and justice rather than adoration and nice songs. As it is written (Amos 5, verse 21-24) in that book that is the basis for all christian faiths and should be the benchmark.
Claus understood very well that this voice of this book should not be heard in the years of his youth (Nazi regime). And he found it miraculous that it still exists, that vision of truth and justice. He tried his entire life to give concrete meaning to these large ideals and words and was creative and tireless in pursuing that goal.
