Anne Frank

There’s a photo of Anne Frank on your refrigerator because she’s the reason you don’t believe in hell. 

The summer after college you reread The Diary of Anne Frank, where as a teenager hiding during the Holocaust she writes, ‘In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good.’

The tradition that raised you doesn’t share her starting point. She believes you begin good and it believes she begins rotten, yet you’re the one with the golden ticket? 

She doesn’t save you from hell, she saves everyone you’ve ever known or will ever know from hell. She removes from you the burden of saving and thereby saves you, as if to say, ‘See all the people who don’t need your saving? See their goodness?’ 

‘To be born again,’ the language your religious heritage uses for conversion. Your rebirth is informed by scholars and activists and religious leaders from various traditions, but it is midwifed by Anne Frank.