They Were People Just Like Us

How does one start writing about the Holocaust?

In fact, how can I write about it at all? I wasn't there. I can't even begin to know what it was like. I can only know that it had to be horrible beyond my imagination.

There is something I do know about it, though. It can happen again.

Nazi Germany wasn't a freak accident of nature. Those who participated in the torture of millions of people were often "good" people, by all accounts. In the famous Milgram Experiment in the 1960s it was found that the majority of subjects - ordinary people - would shock a person to death (they thought) in the name of Science. A repeat of this experiment forty years on led to similar findings.

Ordinary people are capable of being extraordinarily cruel under the "right" circumstances.

That means ordinary like you and I. Make no mistake, "good" people like you and I have the potential to plunge to the absolute depths of depravity unless we have the right kind of "goodness". They (the Nazis, the Milgram experiment volunteers) were people just like us. Not raving psychopaths accidently released from maximum security prison - just people... just like us.

The Bible - which incidentally recounts many examples of humanity at its very worst - tells us that "there is none that it good, no, not one" (Psalm 14:3) The prophet Jeremiah, who had the unlucky privelege of witnessing a Judah hell-bent on it's own destruction, wrote:

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself;
It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps. (Jeremiah 10:23)

We each face the choice of either attempting to direct our own steps towards our own idea of goodness or of submitting ourselves to God's guidance. The words that Moses spoke to the Israelites were written down for all people to read:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. (Dueteronomy 30:19-20)

Even now, as men direct their own steps, little girls are sold as sex slaves, small children are chained to machines to make carpets, babies in the womb are cut in pieces at the command of their own mothers, child soldiers are trained to kill other children, third-world farmers are reduced to abject poverty for the sake of first world profits...

Did I say the holocaust could happen again? Look around, it is happening. And the people driving it are people, just like us.

There is a way that seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Do You Love God?

Really??

Do you believe in God? Do you trust Him? Do you love Him? More than your friends and family? The way He wants to be loved? Really? Really truly?

Jesus Christ who came to earth and died for our sins was the I AM of the Old Testament (He said so to the Pharisees in John 8:58) - the I AM who thundered to the Israelites in the wilderness and commanded them to kill those who had worshipped the golden calf (three thousand died that day - Exodus 32:27-28). This Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8)

So if you discovered that Easter and Christmas are pagan holidays, would you stop keeping them since God hates idolatry and pagan worship? Even if it really upset your sister? Or your kids? Or your husband? Are you sure you really love God? Or would you rather pretend to worship Him while enjoying the pagan rites of the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia?

What if you read in the Bible that it says that God hates lying - would you stop telling your kids about the tooth fairy? Even though it's "just for fun"? Would you?

If you discovered that the seventh day Sabbath was never changed or "done away with", would you give up Saturday football for God? Would you go to church then, even though your friends thought you'd gone a bit weird? Do you really love God?

Do you love God enough to read His whole Book? Without filters on? Not just bits and pieces but the whole lot, beginning to end - really paying attention to the details? Without finishing His sentences for Him, but reading what He is actually saying?

Do you love God enough to see you've been wrong and change? Do I? Because we've all been wrong and we've all got to change in some way. Do we really love God that much? If we don't ask ourselves that question, He will ask it for us some day. Are you ready for the answer?

I recommend watching God's Love Language to delve further into these questions.

What Is Wrong Here?

A few months ago, a couple of news items caught my attention. One day I heard about the tragic death of a little boy hit by a train when he was playing on the railway tracks. The next day I heard that onlookers had rushed to the rescue of a swan being attacked by teenagers. The swan later died.

I am still overwhelmed with pain for the family of the young boy when I think about these two stories. People rushed to the rescue of the swan, but while witnesses had seen the child alone by the railway line, no one rushed to rescue the child. Some might argue that these events were sensationalised by the media and the news didn't tell the full story, but I have twice seen a frantic parent looking for a lost child and no one else helped - even though there were plenty of people around.

Truthfully, I am sickened and disgusted by this society that values an animal (with no thoughts or true feelings - values it so much that people will risk their own safety to protect it) above a human child created in the image of God. I am shocked that someone else's child in mortal danger is seen as none of our business. Shame on us!

If we keep on rejecting God's values and replacing them with our own, we will pay a terrible price in time. Just yesterday I read what that price will be in chapter 28 of the book of Dueteronomy in the Bible.

God put many laws in place to protect the weak and helpless. These were all part of the "golden rule" explained by Jesus Christ: "Love your neighbour as yourself" (and He then went on to explain through a parable that "neighbour" means everyone). I know what I would want others to do if they found my kid playing alone next to a train track - would I do the same?

We have a simple choice to make: will we start to live the give way, day by day; or will we insist that God prove His existence by pouring out the curses of Dueternomy 28 on us? Even now, the clock is ticking.