I’m shocked and amazed, Zizzle-Zotians. Yesterday’s post garnered 11 comments, which I’m pretty sure is a new record. Good work.
I had originally planned a humorous little article today, a playful jab at the entertainment industry, but it will have to wait. As I read through the discussion on yesterday’s post I see some fascinating ideas, and would really like to keep the conversation going. So if you all don’t mind…
First off, welcome to Zizzle-Zot, etc., Mr. Antagonist. It’s always good to hear a new voice and a different perspective, and you have thus far been a great addition to the blog (any guesses to Mr. Antagonist’s real identity? I have no idea.)
P Corcs, thanks for initially bringing some historical perspective on the plight of the German people leading up to the rise of the Nazi Party. It’s really important to keep this perspective in mind when we are trying to understand how people could let anything like the Holocaust happen.
I'm familiar with the Milgram experiment that Mr. Antagonist mentioned. It demonstrates an interesting side of the human character. Another one to look at is the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. Tests like these shows that normal, “good” people, put in certain circumstances, will to some extent lose sight of morality and ethics.
I like your analogy of the fight, Mr. Antagonist. I, too, typically see myself opening up a can even though I have only been in one fight, when I was 12, and I lost.
The question this brings to the surface is: would we really have the courage to stand up to a force as powerful as Hitler when he has already indoctrinated our friends, our families, everyone around us? Would we ignore the threats of death to stand up for what we believe to be right? Speaking for myself, I'm not so sure. In my idealist vision of myself as the heroic figure of my own life story, of course I'd like to think that I would bravely defy an empire.
Maybe I would, in fact, be morally against Hitler and the Nazis, but would my resistance amount to anything more than apathy? Would I ever take action?
The truth is, my courage has never been tested (at least not to this extent). Very few people have had their courage, their moral fiber, put to the test in such extreme circumstances, and I can comfortably assume that no one reading this blog has. So how can we KNOW that we would be willing or able to make the sacrifice necessary to aide the Jews in defiance of the Nazis?
Werd brings up the argument that as people of faith we would have the fortitude to stand against an evil empire. I’m not totally convinced. Remember that the Pope and the Catholic Church failed miserably in this regard (and have been apologizing ever since). Remember that for a good part of America’s history Christians condoned slavery. We can all think of countless examples where Christians have failed in the face of evil. I don’t think Christianity necessarily guarantees moral courage.
Please respond to these preliminary thoughts. I look forward to the discussion…
Thanks for reading.
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8 comments:
I agree Gruber that all Christians do fall and I don't want to make it sound like ANY Christian could stand up for what is right. Using the example of the Pope and the Catholics, well we know they aren't really Christians so they are already beat(jk). But seriously, we all fail and there is really no way of possibly knowing what we would do, BUT we can believe.
I can fully trust God and would pray to God for the stength and courage to stand up for what I believe is truly right. What helps me is that I know it IS possible, so knowing that, I would try to get in the mind set of nothing can tear me down. No doubt it would take so much faith and courage, but it can be done.
I think to truly feel that you can accomplish this test of courage you need to go into it with pistols drawn. In other words, you can't question yourself saying, "I have never been in a situation like this, could I really do it?" If you question yourself before it happens you are already beaten. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
I don't want to make it sound like it will be easy, but this gives me more courage to think like this. I 100% believe in Him and what He can do, so I will put all my trust in him and from that point on, he is my strength and my shield.
I think one thing that we are maybe not considering is... Are we, or would we, be ready to die for what we believe in?
I would like to say "yes." But would I?
Consider the girl at Columbine who when put in a situation to either declare her faith as true and die, or not and maybe live, who chose death. She chose to die knowing that she stood up for what she believed to be true. What would you do?
Also, I am sure there were many people in Germany at the time who rebelled. However, there rebellion got the killed. So... are you really going to rebel against the evil Hitler and his tactics when your best friend died yesterday because of it?
The truth is, to us, our life on Earth is very important. We have people we love and people who love us. We have people who rely on us and people we don't want to disappoint. It would be hard when put in a situation knowing death awaits if we say the wrong thing to actaully say that thing that would kill us.
I am not saying I would definitely fall into the Nazi trap... I don't want people to think that. I just wanted to bring out another perspective.
I hope this doesn't divert the conversation too much...
There are rarely times in our life, or times throughout history, where 'evil' prevents itself in an easily recognizable form. What would I do in the face of pure evil? I don't know. I think there are more interesting questions to be answered.
The first question I ask myself is whether or not I too could be seduced by madness. I haven't forgotten how passionately irrational I became in the days after 9/11. Is there any dispute that the next 'evil' this world faces will be cloaked in something ultimately positive like patriotism or religion?
The second question I ask myself is this: In asking how we would respond to the presence of evil, do we really need to think in hypothetical terms? If you consider aborition to be murder, are you not standing idlly by? If you thought that the upcoming war in Iraq was a huge mistake, did you march? Did you chain yourself to anything? These examples are not nearly as extreme as the Holocaust, but like I said, few 'evils' are.
This isn't a lecture...I'm just saying that there comes a time when all of us say "not my problem, I've got a living to make."
Damn, I have so much more to say...maybe I need my own blog.
Gruber, First of all I'm pleased with your blog. I was wondering if you were getting your ideas out nto the public arena. This is a tough question to reckon with. I agree that in an idealistic sense of course I would stand against evil powers like the Nazi's, but there have been to many times in my life where I have failed miserably when the rubber meets the road. However I do think that ones religion will play a huge part in the way they react to the evil going on around them. Christiany in particular calls it's followers to be citizens of two kingdoms. One being heavenly and eternal the other being earthly and temporal. God rules over both of these kingdoms and weilds the sword of justice in both (Romans 13, Revelation 18-22). However it is the earthly kingdom that gets confusing, becasue God weilds his sword of justice through sinfull and fallible men. Therefore I think that even though we are called to come under the authority of those over us (Matthew 22:21), we still have to put these leaders up to the litmus test of Scripture (God's revealed word), and if they fail in upholding the moral law of God and or call us to defy this moral law then we must rebel. One point of qualification, I do not think that we should only obey "Christian" leaders. God can and does execute justice and keep rule through pagan leaders (such as Caesar). Thereofore I think our relgion does play a big part in how we react to evil around us.
That was a lot of rambling and I'm sure that I have only stated the obvious. One more thing about the impact religion has had especially in the context of WWII. While it is true that the Pope dropped the ball during the war and according to some people the Nazi parties hate of the Jews was allowed to flurish because of some of the writtings of Martin Luther; we must also not forget the many Christians that stood against the Nazi's. Such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was a part of a plot to kill Hitler) and Karl Bart; there are also stories of small villages mostly comprised of Huguenot Christians who protected many Jew's during the war. Some reporters went to this village to ask what heroics it took to protect so many Jews and the people responded, "What heroics? This is just what Christians do" A mindset that we should all have.
Hello my friends, Yes I know I have been quite the stranger to all of you Zotians, but life is regaining normalcy for me. I was on the road for 7 days, broken down for 3 of them, and finally made it in to Pasadena, CA last tuesday. Since then I have been trying to establish a life here in this tremendously large and busy city. It's been and will continue to be quite the challenge. Classes start this monday and I plan to spend much of time blogging in Zot world in my new office (the Fuller Seminary Library). I look forward to getting back in to the discussions and debates. I want to thank mr. Zizzle himself for providing a way for me to keep in dialogue with all of you while I spend this year out in California. I love your heated responses and congratulate you all on the new 11 comment record day! I miss Minnesota and all of you guys!
Late Night
Sorry I couldn't Join the conversation sooner, there wasn't much time on Friday night because of Charlie's wedding.
Welcome back late night. I have been missing your viewpoint on these last topics.
Anyway, what i would like to say is that looking at the people of germany, the vast majority of them didn't even know what was going on. I'm sure they were aware that there were camps for Jews, but I'm sure they were told what Hitler wanted them to know: which was that the Jews were a threat to Germany and were just being held in the camps until the war was completed.
Don't forget that during WWII the USA had similar camps designated for German Americans and Japanese Americans. Even if they were citizens of the USA. Granted we didn't torcher them and kill them, but if you do some research, a lot of them weren't treated very well all the time. How many Americans new about that when the war was going on and how many today even knew that there was such a thing?
What I am trying to get to is that the German people knew only what Hitler allowed them to know. And that was that they were always doing well and winning the war (even when they weren't) and that the Jews posed a threat and needed to be housed in camps. How could the treachery of the concentration camps be know unless it was told by the people in them? So it wasn't until after the war that the general public began to understand what was truly happening.
Not only that, but pretty much every available and able male in Germany was pressed into service, so most of the country was either fighting in the war, or too worried about it because there fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, etc were fighting in it. They believed in there cause. they had already been dumped on once and didn't want it to happen again. How could they have any time to try and figure out what Hitler was really doing or why would they even want to since he was the savior of their country.
Now, to address the question of what would we really do if put in a situation where we had to stand up for our beliefs. First of all like I have tried to show, a lot of germans, christian or not probably had no idea of what attrocities were really going on during WWII. This is something to think about. You can look back from the 21st century on all the things that have happened in the past and say, "Well I would have done that differently and stood up for what is right." But how can we say that? We don't really know what it would be like to be living in the situation as it is going on all around us. Would we be naive like I believe a lot of the Germans were? Would we think that it isn't such a big deal? Would we be brainwashed by years and years of media, leadership, and friends telling us that a certain thing is right or okay? Would we know what is happening but be too scared to do anything? Would we know what was happening and be powerless to do anything? Or, would we be able to resist that vast majority and make a stand and make a change?
Well, for me at least I think the last option is probably the least likely if things are on such a large scale like the Nazi's. There are just too many alternatives. Yeah it feels great to think we could be the King Jr's or the Schindler's if we were faced with a situation like what happened, but that might not always be reality.
The best thing we can do is try to do our best to do the right things in our own every day lives in situations that we can control. And maybe these will in turn become something bigger. We must build up our strengths now because if a time every came it would be too late and we would be too weak to do anything.
Sorry it is so long.
Good conversation everyone. I've got one more thought, particularly pertaining to P Corc's last comments about many of the Germans being naive, and Mr. Antagonist's comparisons to 9/11.
In reality, aren't places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib comparable to the concentration camps? The government tells us these people are a threat, locks them up without trial, subjects them to harsh conditions. And wouldn't we rather just not know about it?
Maybe a little extreme, but in some ways America right now is comparable to Nazi Germany.
That's all I have on this topic for now. New post on its way.
Situations like what happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are unfortunate. These go back to the point of the ideal of how they should be used vs. how they have been or are used. Ideally I believe we need prisons like this in war time because of how ridiculous our justice system can be at times. Where things go wrong is when corrupt indiviuals abuse their power.
The difference is that these systems do have some checks and balances, like the media. The situations were exposed and there are consequences.
It was very bold to do a comparison of these Gruber. A handful of people who at worst are wrongly imprisoned, embarrased, or made to live in hard conditions and at best are hardened criminals who need to be caged. Compared to millions starved, torchered, burned, shot, etc. I don't know if I would make that comparison.
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