On August 6, 1945, a new epoch began. The bombing of Hiroshima, followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki, is more than just one more atrocity among many other atrocities in modern warfare. For the first time, nuclear bombs were dropped on two crowded cities. Tens of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children were killed in one instant, and for many decades, many more Japanese citizens have continued to die because of the radioactive fallout. With abysmal clarity these two atomic bombs have demonstrated that weapons of mass destruction can bring our world to a sudden and horrible end. And yet most of us choose not to look too closely. A history of denial has set in that lures people into thinking that the danger of global self-destruction somehow does not exist.

The Japanese people, shaken to the core by the massive death of so many fellow citizens, took a step that was as unprecedented as was the bombing itself: they made the possession of military forces, and the preparation and execution of war, unconstitutional. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution renounces war and puts a stop to the possession of aggressive military forces. The preamble of the Constitution affirms that all peoples of the earth have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.

Those of us around the globe who are committed to peace are listening with sadness to growing discussions in Japan that are aimed at the revision of this unique Article 9. It seems impossible to imagine that the Japanese nation should be willing to forget the lesson learned in August 1945 amid so much anguish and horror--namely, that peace is the one and only precondition for life on this planet.

The two bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were primitive compared with the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction that have since been developed, tested, and stored in the earth, in submarines, and in the holds of battleships. As a matter of fact, the development of ever more "intelligent" nuclear weapons is still going on.

Never in their history have human beings acquired this kind of power, namely to undo or "uncreate" themselves and most organic life on this planet. This is the power that has ushered in a new and ultimate phase in human history. The well-known German theologian Jurgen Moltmann concludes:

Hiroshima 1945 fundamentally changed the quality of human history: our history has become time with a time-limit. . . . This time of ours, when humanity can be brought to an end at any moment, is indeed, in a purely secular sense and without any apocalyptic images, the "end-time"; for no one can expect that this nuclear era will be succeeded by another in which humanity's deadly threat to itself will cease to exist.(1)

The furies of the Cold War successfully prevented human beings from coming to terms with this scary reality. Rather, the confrontation between the two "superpowers" fathered the hectic development of more and more destructive nuclear bombs until a situation has been reached in which all of humanity and most of the organic life on earth can be annihilated many thousand times over.

After August 1945, it took more than twenty years for groups of men and women to realize the gruesome impact of this end-time threat. During the 1970s and 1980s a strong antiwar movement swept around the globe. It was capable of producing enough pressure for the leaders of the superpowers to negotiate treaties of nuclear disarmament. Hiroshima Day became an important reference point for the global peace movement around the earth.

To a large extent, these peace movements have become silent, however, while the nuclear race continues unabated. In spite of the nonproliferation rhetoric, the number of states trying to gain the ability to produce nuclear weapons keeps growing. The argument goes that having them is a matter of security, even if the assurance is given that they will never be used.

As the years go by, the process of forgetting appears to be growing. With the increasing uneasiness of the nations over access to, and control of, the world's essentials, we see the return of nationalist politics. Today it is not the clash between two superpowers that must serve as an explanation but the "war on terror." Both the Cold War and the "war on terror" fail to grasp the true character of our end-time era. As a matter of fact, they betray its urgent message.

The failure to comprehend the real, if hidden, character of our time is more than mere unwillingness. It is a kind of blindness that prevents us from seeing the unprecedented newness of our global condition. Admittedly, it is very difficult for us to comprehend something for which we do not have any reference points in the past. For many millennia, human beings lived with the endlessness of the world. They saw themselves as victims of nature's violent powers. Never did it occur to them that their activities might upset the carrying capacities of this world, whose resources seemed to be inexhaustible.

To be sure, wars have always been seen as terrible, albeit unavoidable, catastrophes, but there was always the hope that life itself would go on. Somehow, when the fighting had ended, the people would scramble to their feet, begin to rebuild their homes, to tend their fields, and to raise their children. Wars were the interruption; life itself was forever.

This fundamental experience is reflected in all of the world's cultures and religions. It is this basic experience, however, that is being challenged by the dire facts of our end-time condition: life, at least as we know it, is not forever. It is not endless. It can be wiped out, in its entirety, in one instant, not by outside interference, but by human beings themselves.

The self-annihilation by nuclear weapons is invisible to most of us. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, are the only places where a part of humankind did experience how it feels to be reduced to "point zero." In this sense, these two Japanese cities are unique reference points for our end-time situation. They need to remain part of our remembering. What happened to them can be part of our future if we fail to learn their lesson.

During the last few decades, an additional end-time factor has arisen: the threat of self-made ecological disaster. In a few decades, large parts of the earth may become permanently uninhabitable. The map of the world will have to be redesigned. Again, this surpasses our understanding. Our minds cannot really comprehend the threat until the catastrophe hits us directly. And then it is often too late.

In sum, it is easy to use the term "unprecedented," but it is difficult to grasp its full impact in everyday life and politics. To deal creatively with facts and trends for which we have not enough experience to guide us does pose enormous challenges to our intelligence and our emotional capacities.

One troubling factor has to be added: the end-time character of our era has been brought about by human beings. Its terrifying threats are, therefore, a matter of human responsibility. To be more precise, the most powerful nations and their leaders are the ones who must be held accountable. This accountability borders on guilt.

Guilt, however, is a reality that human beings do not like to admit. Our political leaders are no exception. This applies even more to guilt on such a massive scale.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the United States of America--the first and only nation thus far to have used atomic bombs--has consistently denied the guilt aspect of what it did to the Japanese people. In 1995, the American researchers Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell stated:

From the start [of the atomic age], Americans were not shown the human effects of the bomb. This reinforced the psychological resistance to taking in the horror of Hiroshima. Nearly fifty years later, the same impulses were at play in the Smithsonian dispute. Curators, under pressure, removed from the exhibit nearly every photograph of dead or badly wounded Japanese civilians. There remains today a reluctance to face squarely what America did, or excuse it, perhaps even to wish it away.(2)

The situation in the United States has not changed much since then. Especially after September 11, 2001, the government of President George W. Bush has consistently emphasized the moral superiority of the United States. As a consequence, patriotism and nationalistic zeal have increased.

This is for me a significant example of massive denial. Instead of living up to failure and guilt, the "official America" prefers to regard itself as the champion of goodness and decency.(3) The backbone of such denial is to be found in policies of national security that go hand in hand with heavy growths in military spending. In this way, massive denial further increases the end-time threats of our age.

But it will not do to point fingers only at the United States. My own country, Germany, has been tempted to go into denial over its role in causing the two World Wars and the Holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe. It is difficult for the German nation to remember both the good and the cruel things of its past and thus to resist the temptation of building its policies on false assumptions of its role in the world.

My impression is that denial over its historic role in large parts of Asia can also be found in Japan. Denial seems to be the option to save a sense of pride. In fact, it takes much more critical courage and patriotic love to accept the ambivalence of one's past. It is a sign of political wisdom to remember not only the great things but also the pain and the suffering.

Perhaps it has proven to be somewhat "easier" for the two biggest losers of World War II, Germany and Japan, to integrate defeat into our national identity. Our nations have experienced what it means to bring war to other peoples and what it means to have war come to our own lands with utter devastation. We know firsthand the price of military arrogance: humiliation and unconditional surrender. "Nie wieder! (Never again!)" was the deeply felt motto of Germany's postwar years. We dare not forget it. Never.

To remember both the good and the evil things in our history is a way to have empathy with those who had to pay the price of our wrongdoing. This is what I call deep remembering.(4) It leads to the insight that the well-being of humanity transcends the particular interests of particular peoples and nations. Deep remembering, therefore, is a prerequisite of end-time politics.

It was an act of prophetic realism for the Japanese Constitution to advocate, in its preamble, the right of all human beings to live in peace and without want and, as a consequence, to commit Japan to an antiwar policy. Sixty-one years later, this commitment is even more urgent than it was at the beginning of the atomic age. It would be a tragic error to reverse the pro-peace component of the Constitution on the grounds that it is idealistic or impractical. On the contrary, it was always realistic and practical. Rather, the return to policies of national security politics and the emphasis on military solutions are idealistic in the sense of illusionary and impractical. Under end-time conditions, no nation can be secure without a global system of sustainable peace.

Japan's Constitution should serve as a powerful antidote to the recurrent tendencies of nations and their leaders to deny our end-time situation. Its Article 9 is a healthy and much-needed reminder of the heavy, indeed unacceptable, risk of self-destruction by modern warfare. Japan has a powerful role to play in the world not simply in economic terms or in the financial markets but also in the sense that the immense suffering of Japanese civilians can best be honored by working for situations that shield all human beings all over the world from similar horrors. Peace is the precondition for dignified life.

It goes without saying, of course, that peace is more than the absence of open warfare. Peace begins in the hearts of human beings and protects them from self-destructive passions. Essential havens for learning to live together in peace can be found in our close communities, such as the families, the neighborhoods, the schools. We also need to be on the alert with regard to the fascination with violence in the world of "militainment," the war games and videos of the entertainment industries. Furthermore, there can be no peace on earth if we do not work for peace with the earth. Human beings are "earthlings," and we need to learn how to be proper economists and trustworthy keepers of the earth's resources.

With all of their various cultural and religious traditions, all of the world's peoples are earthlings. All of us depend on the same clean air, on the same pure waters, and on the Earth herself to yield her fruit. In spite of all the forays into space, this Earth is and remains our only home. The future of us earthlings depends on whether we have the wisdom to develop and sustain economic and political systems that remain safely within the carrying capacity of our earthly home. What we need is a new empathic intelligence that enables us to create systems of sustainable neighborhoods among the peoples, cultures, and religions of this earth. Such neighborhood systems will not be without many tensions. It would be naive to expect total harmony. Peace is the art of keeping such tension productive. As the biologist A. L. Kroeber said: "Peace is the highest state of tension that the organism can bear creatively."(5)

Article 9 of Japan's Constitution points in this direction. It is a piece of wisdom that all human beings, not just the Japanese people, need to treasure.

Notes

(1) Jurgen Moltmann, Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 205-6 (italics in the original text).
(2) Robert. J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1995), p. xv. This study was inspired by the way an exhibit planned in 1995 by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima had been censored and ultimately stopped by associations of war veterans and officials of the Clinton administration.
(3) I have addressed this in some detail in my book America's Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
(4) See Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz, The Art of Forgiveness (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1997).
(5) Quoted in Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), p. 219.