Opposing Evil 2,
Radio, August 4, 2009
Christian people have often failed in their responsibilities to their fellow man. This is not terribly surprising. After all, we are human.
• And Jesus, in a couple of his parables suggested that as many as half of us who call ourselves by his name will fail, finally and completely.
• And in the end, none of us can escape the judgment that will fall on us for how we live and act in this miserable society.
Perhaps you have never heard of Adolph Hitler?
• Hitler was possessed of what Ron Rosenbaum and others called, “a primitive hatred.”
• It was primitive in that it preceded any cause or grievance.
The date that few remember is April 1, 1933. It was the beginning.
• On this day a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned shops took place.
• Members of the Brownshirts picketed the shops to see to it that the boycott was successful.
• The hostility toward Jews grew day by day. Many shops and restaurants began to refuse service to Jews.
• Placards: Jews not admitted, Jews enter at their own risk.
• In some parts of Germany, Jews were banned from public parks, swimming pools and public transportation.
• Germans were encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers.
• Jewish civil servants and teachers were fired.
• Under the Nuremberg laws, 1935, Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany, and it
was illegal for Germans to marry Jews.
As troubling as all that was to me, what was far worse was coming to realize that throughout this
period, Leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches remained silent.
• A handful of young pastors resisted, provoked in part by “the decision by Adolf Hitler to
appoint Ludwig Muller, as the country's Reich Bishop of the Protestant Church.
As much as I have read about this, somehow, I had never heard of this man so I looked him up.
• Somehow, Muller had become state bishop of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian
Union and Reich's Bishop of the Protestant Reich Church.
• He had been associated with Nazism since the 1920s and was an antisemite. He supported a revisionist view of "Christ the Aryan" as well as a plan of purifying Christianity of what he deemed "Jewish corruption," including purging large parts of the Old Testament.
• You have to consider that Paul said plainly that “Our Lord sprang from Judah.”
• So to maintain Christianity, it was really necessary to cast off the Jewish Messiah.
• There is an incredible irony here.
“ the Nazi regime's plan was to "coordinate" all 28 separate Protestant regional church bodies into a single and unitary Reich Church. Müller wanted to be the head—the Reich's bishop of this newly formed entity.”
• This pathetic little man became the German Judas. He remained committed to Nazism to the end. He committed suicide in 1945, soon after the Nazi defeat.
You may ask your self how the German Christians could allow this sort of thing to happen to them?
I will give you two things to think about.
• Most of those young pastors who resisted ended up arrested and executed.
• How much evidence is there that American Christians have any more backbone than the German Christians?
Moreover:
• There is a timidity that seems to pervade some Christian thought.
Perhaps it derives from Paul’s description of Love in 1 Corinthians 13:
• (1 Corinthians 13:6-7 NIV) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. {7} It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
But can that explain the silence of the German Christians to the antisemitism that was so rife in Germany in that era?
Before I go on, there is something that must be said:
I am appalled that some Christians, realizing that they must oppose evil, resort to violence like bombs and shootings.
Unless they are in a position of authority, violence is forbidden to them.
• Let me repeat that.
On the other hand, If they are in a position of civil authority, violence may be demanded.
(Jeremiah 48:10 NIV) "A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 KJV) To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: {2} A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; {3} A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
It is probably shocking for me to suggest that the Lord’s work may involve the shedding of blood.
But you should know this about that. The law of God forbade that any man should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
• So if you are ever called to serve on a jury, don’t be timid about it.
• You have a civic duty to perform. Take it very seriously, and don’t confuse your role as a private citizen with your role as a judge under the law.
Why am I persisting in a pair of programs titled, “Opposing Evil”?
It is because it is the Christians who are the only ones who cam truly oppose evil without becoming evil themselves.
• To those Christians not in positions of authority, Jesus had this to say:
• (Matthew 10:16 KJV) Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
But being harmless doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do.
Sad to say, we live in a generation that knows next to nothing about Adolph Hitler, easily one of the most dramatic exemplars of evil in the history of the world.
• Some would, no doubt, like to forget him. Others work day and night to see to it that we don’t forget.
• That Hitler was an embodiment of evil, everyone seems to accept.
• And, having decided on one explanation or another, we put him aside as no longer relevant.
• “The evil that beset Germany could never happen here.”
• I feel that way myself.
• But then, the German Christians didn’t think it would happen there either.
IN the movie, Judgment at Nurembourg:
Spencer Tracy is the lead judge, Dan Haywood, as the judges of the German Reich are tried at the end of the war.
One of the greatest of the German judges, Ernst Janning, made a statement near the end of the movie, speaking to Dan Haywood, the lead judge:
“You have to believe me: I never thought it would come to this.”
Judge Haywood replied, “It came to this the first time you sentenced an innocent man.”
It was a powerful line, but in fact, the die was cast a long time before, and the people who had the moral authority to stand in the gap . . . did not.
• The question of why they didn’t still rankles.
• Was it because they were afraid? God knows they had reason to be.
• Was it because they couldn’t see it coming?
• Sometimes, you know, you have to oppose evil before everyone sees it as evil.
• How do you do that?
• This was the problem the German Christians faced. Even those who spotted the evil on the horizon were simply not believed.
In the last chapter of his book, (and I have to think he positioned it there deliberately), Ron Rosenbaum inteviews Lucy Dawidowicz.
• She believed the decision by Hitler to eradicate Jews from Germany and anywhere else he could, was conceived as early as 1918.
• Not merely to drive the Jews out, but to murder them en masse.
• Lucy reminds us that Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that he decided on his war against the Jews in 1918
• I would say that she felt the “primitive hatred” we have talked about in Hitler, began at a moment when he learned of the end of the war and the armistice.
• He wrote Mein Kampf in 1924, so we know he was purpose on murder by then.
Lucy Dawidowicz believed that Hitler made another decision when he decided to enter politics the following year: A decision to conceal his ultimate goal.
“How does one advocate publicly an idea or a program whose novelty lies in its utter radicalism.”
• No matter how anti-Semitic the Munich of that era was, you couldn’t covert a slogan like, “The Jews must perish” into a practical political program.
• Lucy went on to note that “In this situation, Hitler availed himself of a time honored device— the use of esoteric language.
In all periods of history, she noted, when government puts limits on public discussion, those who
wish to escape censorship resort to esoteric language. “To outsiders the language is
unexceptional. But to insiders who know how to interpret the language, the message is
revolutionary and dangerous to the status quo.”
• Most of the Hitler explainers think of a Hitler who evolved.
• Lucy Dawidowicz thinks he was what he was from the earliest years, but that he covered up his intent with his language.
• I suspect politicians do that a lot. They have a hidden agenda which if made plain would doom them.
• So, they tell us what we want to hear, until it is too late.
• A lot of the explainers take Hitler at his word, and taking a man like Hitler at his word is
a risky proposition, Ron R. observed.
• This, he continued, is especially true since there are documented occasions where Hitler disclosed his deliberate use of disingenuous and deceptive language.
• And we have one incontrovertible fact to deal with. Hitler actually carried it out.
• “Ordinary people don’t orchestrate mass murder, but some fanatics have, and Adolph Hitler did.”
• “How does one advocate,” Lucy asks, “an idea whose novelty lies in its utter radicalism? One disguises it.”
This is precisely where a lot of Christian folks made a big mistake in Germany. They had every reason to know what Hitler was up to by what he was doing.
But they took him at his word. And some of them doubtless voted for him.
Hitler had loads of code words he used for Jews. Usurers, profiteers, exploiters, Big capitalists, the international money power.
Perhaps you will understand why my blood ran cold when I heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright condemn at the top of his voice, “Rich White People.”
Surely that couldn’t be a code phrase for Jews. Could it?
I call to your attention the ongoing tension between blacks and Jews in this country, when one would think they could make common cause.
• Antisemitism lives on, even when you think it has been defeated.
• No one knows that better than the Jews.
Now I told you all that to explain what I meant when I said that sometimes you have to oppose evil before everyone recognizes it as evil.
• That means two things:
• You have to have your eyes open, and you have to be prepared to call it what it is.
• You may have to oppose it at some risk to yourself.
One of the psalms gives us a strong reminder.
(Psalms 12 KJV) To the chief Musician upon Sheminith, A Psalm of David. Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. {2} They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. {3} The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: {4} Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? {5} For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. {6} The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. {7} Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. {8} The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.
• It is the least we can do that we not exalt vile men.
• Even today, Christian folk will vote for the worst of the double dealing politicians.
• Why? Because they tell them what they want to hear.
Grab a pad and pencil. I want to give you a free offer, and when I come back, I have one more crucial thing to say.
• Evil shows up in many forms. It is almost as though there is an invisible power bent on destruction and ruin.
There is in the law of Moses, a statement that seems strange on the surface:
(Leviticus 20:2-6 NIV) "Say to the Israelites: 'Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him.
• Mind you, not without due process. That is covered elsewhere.
{3} I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. {4} If the people of the community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to Molech and they fail to put him to death, {5} I will set my face against that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech.
• Why would anyone close his eyes to that kind of evil?
{6} "'I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.
• They were not allowed to close their eyes to evil.
• Bear in mind, they were not allowed to do violence as vigilantes. The law required due process, just as it does in our law.
• But why was this so damning?
• The children of Israel must have understood it when it was given to them.
• But we don’t hear of it actually happening until rather later.
• (2 Kings 23:10 KJV) And he [Josiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.
• This is part of the general cleanup ordered by Josiah.
• It didn’t hold, though. Much later:
• (Jeremiah 32:35-36 KJV) And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. {36} And now therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence;
Scripture does not describe in detail what they did. After all, it is a family book.
• But child sacrifice was done.
Has it dawned on anyone that, while Hitler killed six million Jews and started a war that killed 30 million people, we have done worse?
The number of human lives snuffed out before birth has now passed 50 million.
• The only real difference between modern man and the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day was the name of a foreign God.
• Could this happen in this country if Christians were united in opposing it?
• I am surprised that American Catholic Bishops do not deny communion to political figures who openly support abortion.
• I am surprised that many Christians vote for them.
• Why do they? Perhaps because the politician promises them something they want?
• That just makes it all the worse.
John Donne wrote in 1623,
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
(Psalms 50:18-19 NIV) When you see a thief, you join with him; you throw in your lot with adulterers. {19} You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit.
Scriptures to support that people are complicit in the crime if they don't speak up. Would any of these help:
1 Samuel 3:13 Eli's sons were vile and Eli restrained them not.
Matthew 27:17 Pilate in the death of Jesus
Acts 7:58 Paul in the stoning of Stephen
(Proverbs 29:24 NIV) The accomplice of a thief is his own enemy; he is put under oath and dare not testify.
(Romans 1:32 KJV) Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
(2 John 1:11 KJV) For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.