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It is hard not to see the chaos and unrest in our current world. How many times have I heard people in the checkout line at the local grocery store commenting to one another about what is going on? There seems to be anxiety and discomfort in our society right now. Certainly, the political scene has bombarded us with promises and priorities. What is happening? Where is God in all of this? This isn’t God upsetting society; it’s human selfishness, one kind or another: greed, power, single vision, and forcing others to conform to a pattern of thinking.
This brings me to another time in the last 100 years when societies were challenged. I am talking about the 1930s and 40s in Germany. I am speaking of the rise of Nazism. Adolf Hitler would pursue not only a military and power structure but also a new set of societal structures that would purify the race and build a society to dominate and leave the Western world behind. We all know these ideas cost millions of lives and brought endless suffering. But how does this relate to us today?
There are two people who followed the Nazi's in a historical sense, and both asked the same question: "What happened to the German People, a Christian nation?" How could the holocaust take place in a Christian land, and thousands and thousands of civilians be executed? How could thousands of ordinary people be complicit in helping the Nazi willingly accomplish these inhuman acts against other human beings?
The two outstanding people I refer to are Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Both asked, "How could a Christian nation turn into the society it did?" Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister and would end up being executed several months before the end of the war by the Nazi regime. Hannah Arendt would write about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a high Nazi official responsible for thousands of deaths. Both Hannah and Dietrich were German nationals questioning what had happened to the people of Germany. Bonhoeffer wrote letters before he was executed and believed that what happened in Germany was that people were governed by emotion rather than truth. He felt the truth took time to think about and required reasoning. He found that the majority of society found it easier to comply with the powers that be than to question and seek answers. He called it "Stupidity," a term meaning a lack of intellectual reflection. He saw people who did not think or seek the truth but, by complying, felt emotionally satisfied to belong and obey an ideology. In short, they were not evil, but emotionally more satisfied to be complicit; that was easier. Let us turn to Hannah Arendt, a well-educated philosopher and writer; her most famous book is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). In this volume,
she argued that chronic lying erodes the capacity to believe, think, and judge, leaving people vulnerable to divergent pathways from the truth. Perhaps for us, her most observant work, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Hannah was fascinated that this person, Adolph Eichmann, who was responsible for thousands of deaths, was just an ordinary man doing his job. (This is what he claimed.) He was complicit and very efficient in what he did. Hannah calls this the "Banality of Evil". It was more comfortable and easier to follow the party line.
Why would I take my time and yours, the reader, through this information? It seems we have forgotten the wisdom these two people gave us. Germany was a Christian country that a power structure took over, seeking ultimate control not only of the army, but of the people it ruled. No one thought about right or wrong; the party line ruled, and people didn’t have to think. No investigation or questioning was allowed. For the Nazi Party, it was loyalty to the state and Hitler. To follow you meant giving up thinking and seeking the moral truth. Individuals had to comply.
Jesus Himself has given Christians a path. We are individuals before God, given reason and the ability to seek the truth. Sometimes it is not easy; sometimes our beliefs shut us out of opportunities. But we are children of God; we have a soul, and our destination is heaven. Community is where we live, but we have an obligation to call out emotional living and seek the truth, not only as our right but as our charge as Christians. Our times challenge our Christian faith. To keep hope, see the dignity of our humanity, and love our neighbor. What if the German people of Hitler's time had done this? If they stood up for the Truth, millions of people would have been saved.
But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John3:21)
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