Good Bye Lenin and the Parallel Universe

By Mario Ribas

The movie Good Bye Lenin , directed by Wolfgang Becker, provides an analogy to how well we are able to accept change and to not deny reality.

The film tells the story of Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass), her son Alex (Daniel Brühl), and her daughter Ariane (Maria Simon). Miss Kerner lives in East Berlin in the late 1980s with her children, and after her husband leaves home she gets deeply involved with the Communist Party, as she believes it is the best political option for eastern Germany. Then, on the day that she sees her son, Alex, taking part in a march for political reforms, she suffers a heart attack.

During the time that Christiane Kerner is in a coma, the Berlin Wall falls, and eastern Germany is invaded by capitalism. Life changes completely, in way that will be unrecognisable to Kerner. Then the unexpected happens: Miss Kerner wakes up from her coma. Her doctor urges her children to make every effort to avoid her having any more emotional distress, so both find themselves reconstructing their lives as if nothing had changed during the long time their mother was in the hospital.

Alex, helped by his friend Denis (Florian Lukas), finds himself in a frenetic search for goods that were typical of the communist era, and are no longer available in the new supermarkets. They also hunt for old furniture and pictures, which have been replaced in their home by modern ones. Their hardest task is to reproduce television and radio programs to re-create an environment that no longer exists. It is all done to prevent a fragile heart from having another stroke.

The church has been, for me, like Christiane Kerner – long ago it suffered a “heart attack” with the rise of secularism and the challenges it faced in the Enlightenment period (if not before). The church has tried to reconstruct the surrounding world as if nothing had changed.

This movie offers many possibilities for reflection on our own individual lives, but I would rather use it to consider the reality of our church today. The church has been, for me, like Christiane Kerner – long ago it suffered a “heart attack” with the rise of secularism and the challenges it faced in the Enlightenment period (if not before). The church has tried to reconstruct the surrounding world as if nothing had changed. The church's heart is too fragile to cope with reality and accept that the world has indeed changed, so instead, it often insists on recreating the past.

In fact, there are so many ways that the church denies reality that I often wonder for what reason the church exists. Often we confuse its traditions with the maintenance of old social paradigms that no longer fit into the modern world. In this process, our time is wasted in recreating a parallel universe that withdraws the church even more from the reality it is supposed to serve.

How many people are able to realise, without suffering a heart attack, that the Berlin Wall fell? How many are able to realise that things have changed in our world and that the church, by lapsing into a coma, has lost many of its members? Why do people in the church want to build a new version of the Berlin Wall – to separate those who took the challenge of accepting and including diversity from those who want to live in the shadow of the past?

Wording that has been used in the recent debates in the Anglican Communion expresses well the kind of segregation that is going on. A psychological wall is being built to isolate a world that is different, that people neither want to face nor relate to. The Berlin Wall fell, but we are constantly building new walls, recreating a universe that no longer exists, because we are too fragile to face new challenges and to learn to live in a new reality. This reality is constantly transforming itself, and offers new possibilities of life and the ways of interrelating with its diverse elements.

It is easier for the Israelis to build a wall than to make room for the Palestinians; it is easier to break communion with another part of the church than to make room for those who do not fit into our belief system and way of life. The past seems to be better, and safer, than the present, but it was not.

The challenge is that people find it is easier to isolate than to make room for differences. Making room involves getting to know the way others think, and to allow them to think and live in that context. It is easier for the Israelis to build a wall than to make room for the Palestinians; it is easier to break communion with another part of the church than to make room for those who do not fit into our belief system and way of life. The past seems to be better, and safer, than the present, but it was not. Each time presents challenges to us that we cannot ignore. We cannot go back into the past thinking that way of life was better.

The Berlin Wall separated communist Germany from the capitalist one. That is the way the world was polarised for many years. When we thought the polarisation of the world was overcome by the fall of that wall, new ways of polarising it again were created. George W. Bush has presented a successful way of polarising it again through his discourses on terrorism. He has separated the world into evil and good: the evil one involves mostly the Muslim world, while the good one relates to those who agree with his politics.

It is easy to demonise those who do not agree with us, instead of trying to understand their point of view. However, these walls that separate one point of view from the other, one reality from the other, as often happens, will one day fall down and we will have to face the uncertainties of the new reality and to learn to live with it. And when those walls fall we also will realise how much each one lost for not being in contact with the other, how many relationships were affected, and how many human lives were lost for the sake of human stupidity and unwillingness to listen and make room for what is different. We, as church, should avoid going the same way as the world. We must face the new realities instead of trying to recreate the past, and rebuild the walls that are separating those who were created to walk together.

Some of us may believe we have “ultimate truth” in certain matters facing our church and the world. We will have to break through this aura of self-righteousness in order to break down the walls that are dividing us. Building bridges is hard work, but it is the essential work of the church.

The Rev. Mario Ribas is a priest in the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, who has served parishes in Sao Paolo and elsewhere. During 2004 he is studying and working in Cape Town, South Africa, and may be reached by email at mfribas@yahoo.co.uk .