I’m finally getting around to putting some thoughts to the keyboard after spending several days watching high school girls play soccer in Florida. Soccer culture is a topic worthy of its own long post, but for now, I’ll mention it as a strange contrast—an oddly artificial pursuit when compared to the World War II setting of The Hiding Place, a phenomenal spiritual memoir by Corrie ten Boom.
During my week of travel, I’ve read this book on the plane, in my hotel room, and in various stolen moments. I’ve heard of The Hiding Place countless times; I’d even picked it up and abandoned it for various reasons—its somber setting deterred me, for one thing. Last night, I finally finished it, and I can confirm that it’s every bit as sad as I’d suspected, but far more beautiful than I could have imagined.
In case you’re not familiar with this book, here’s a quick summary: It’s the story of a Dutch Christian family’s sacrificial care for Jews under the German occupation, culminating in risky underground efforts that would eventually cost many of them their lives. Many of us read The Diary of Anne Frank in school; we remember the grey heaviness of Anne’s war-torn adolescence. The Hiding Place is full of transparency and detail, too—some quite amusing—but leaves its reader stunned by the otherworldly hope shining through it. Anne Frank died while still affirming her belief that people are good at heart; Corrie died knowing that we are not. Corrie learned that in both times of sunshine and times of depravity—and in her own struggle with sin—only the God of the Bible is unfailingly and wholly good.
For years, the family’s beje—a multi-level, narrow apartment—had been known for its watchmaking owner, Casper ten Boom, and his warm family. The ten Booms were not wealthy, but they were spiritually rich; Casper read the Bible aloud daily, his wife and daughters made big pots of soup, and they welcomed even strangers into their stacked-up cobble of rooms. Under the German curse, this home—already trained in everyday faith and hospitality— turned into a secret haven of hope for Dutch Jews. When informants uncovered the operation , Corrie and her family were carted off to a concentration camp in German captivity.
As I worked my way through her story, I was laid low by contrasts. My life couldn’t be more different from Corrie’s, and our culture reeks of decadence. I read the book during downtime at a hotel in Florida—an unimpressive place with thin walls and stale smells that draw many soccer mom complaints, yet a thousand times more luxuriant than the brutal squalor of the Ravensbruck concentration camp. My daughter was in a balmy city playing soccer games under sunny skies—a blue and breezy expanse that Corrie could only glimpse through a small window in her lonely prison cell. One afternoon, I was engrossed in the miseries of Corrie’s loathsome work camp while my clothes spun rhythmically in the hotel’s dryer—a drab chore in a small room—but far easier than marching barefoot and numb in subzero temperatures. I complained about stained carpet and poor lighting, but it’s lush compared to life in Corrie’s cramped dormitory, where hundreds of wasting bodies crowded onto lice-infested, damp and putrid bunks.
By the end of the book, my life felt almost shamefully easy, and my faith less muscular than I imagined. Her response to the 1940’s moment stands as both inspiration and rebuke for those of us providentially planted in 2024. Although Corrie’s day was unique for its concentrations camp brutality, the same spirits of coercion and tyranny are visiting us now. How will America’s faithful react and respond?
I wondered if my own family might one day be rounded up for suspected political crimes, or if we would crumble under the continual press of a state-sponsored killing machine. If our worst national ears were realized, how would our culture’s thin sampling of self-help books and inspirational coffee mugs carry us through the flames? Would a Corrie ten Boom be found among us?
Some among us still think little incursions and compromises won’t devour our precious territory. Including “new voices” and “building bridges” in schools and churches are popular (and unbiblical) ways to invoke unity and hope while giving shelter to the left’s foot soldiers. As a result, well-meaning but undiscerning people—charmed by this appeal—fail to recognize that the enemy is at the gate. Oddly enough, this naive optimism was also prevalent among Haarlem’s townspeople, even as they received regular reports from the war’s European front, and even when Jews closed shop and suddenly disappeared.
In chapter four, as she writes about life in the family’s watch shop, Corrie describes their illusion of distance and safety:
“…or when letters to Jewish suppliers in Germany came back marked ‘address unknown,’ we still managed to believe that it was primarily a German problem. ‘How long are they going to stand for it?’ we said. ‘They won’t put up with that man for long.’”
Just prior to this, German brutalities had seemed improbable to Corrie; the Netherlands were neutral and would surely never feel the war horrors reported by its unluckier European neighbors. Skies were still clear in the Netherlands, or so it seemed. Even when Hitler’s advances slowly strangled Poland, Denmark and Norway, the optimistic Dutch assumed that the Germans would somehow end this menace. The evil was so obvious, so intolerable—surely someone would stop it!
This hopeful-sounding denial should sound familiar. Just twenty years ago, I didn’t know my two-year-old would one day be asked to write a DEI statement on an employment application. I didn’t think it was possible to see a man in lipstick—posing unconvincingly as a woman—serving as a federal official. I didn’t know our churches and private businesses could be shuttered under “emergency” powers. I didn’t worry about my phone “listening” to me and feeding me ads that—coincidentally—contained the very phrases I’d spoken that day. I didn’t imagine churches hosting drag queen performers.
Fifteen years ago, to proclaim that our government—so caring—could strangle or betray us was an embarrassing position for some; it meant you were a conspiracy theorist, tin hat and all. Criticizing “marginalized voices” wasn’t just dissent, it was discrimination. Our pluralistic world soon agitated for a marriage of radical inclusion and technology to counter those stubborn, traditional American instincts. (The really bad stuff couldn’t happen in the South, though; we had rural sense, country boys, churches, SEC football and conservative governors to keep us safe—or so we thought.) Yet here we are, more godless, compromised, and chaotic than ever, and—as a result— weaker than ever.
Far more dangerous is the great spiritual poverty to which most Americans—including some in my own family—are exposed. While today’s Christians are passing time with sports, news, or fluffy inspirational books, they are often doing so at the expense of reading God’s word—the only immutable wisdom fit for any epoch. The American church has been infiltrated by those who are convinced that scripture isn’t sufficient for today’s challenges—psychology, “cultural literacy” and other nuanced approaches are demanded instead, so the flock is malnourished and scattered.
We must recognize these great vulnerabilities and ask ourselves hard questions. What enabled the ten Boom family to refuse evil, risk their lives and courageously bring the light of Christ to victims of the darkest cruelties of human history? Where will our generation draw courage when the unthinkable threat materializes?
For the ten Booms, it wasn’t influential friends, second homes, or inclusive teachings that held them fast; it was a long habit of soaking in scripture. When life was still blue-skied and free, Corrie’s family had been faithfully building a repository of truth that would later sustain them in their concentration camp wilderness. By the time the distant German threat occupied their own streets, Corrie and her family had a catalogue of scripture in their minds; what wasn’t memorized was available in one of her greatest prison treasures, a tiny bible that she kept hidden under her clothes.
It is no secret that our skies have darkened, and our children face evils that seemed unlikely in previous generations, or even just ten years ago. Therefore, we are moved to pray for all sorts of solutions—better leaders, better economic policies, and better schools. We pray for revival—transformed hearts, and maybe a final chance to stem the rising tide.
Yet we don’t know what God will permit in the process of proving his children and sifting the nations; even now, those once-distant evils stand at our door. Should they visit us in fury, what catalog of truth will form our resolve? May we prepare our families by committing God’s precious promises to our memories; may we, like Corrie, find that God’s word is our only hiding place.
“You are my hiding place….” —Psalm 32:7
This is one of several reasons I subscribe to you~This article has reinforced and strengthened my resolve to hold steadfast in my deep faith in Jesus and his Word of Truth. It seems to grow stronger as these times grow darker.
Amen! “For the ten Booms, it wasn’t influential friends, second homes, or inclusive teachings that held them fast; it was a long habit of soaking in scripture.” Corrie came to Viet-Nam and visited my family home in Saigon when I was seven years old. I remember her sitting next to me on our living room sofa, and I warmly felt her loving grandmotherly love for me. Thank you!