Posted from Christianity is Jewish. This message also available on podcast.
Some years ago, at a Christian school where I taught, we had the privilege of hearing a Holocaust survivor come and speak to us. His stories, as you can imagine, were horrific. It was though a time capsule had been opened, transporting one of the most surreal and evil moments of all of history into my very presence.
But while this man was sharing his story, talking about his struggle to survive and to forgive, something was going on outside of the auditorium. One of the students at school was walking around, drawing swastikas and other hate messages around the grounds and on the side of the buildings.
If you’re like me, you probably find it difficult to understand how someone could be so void of compassion, that he would write hate messages on the day a Holocaust survivor – an elderly man – came to visit. I mean, hasn’t this man been through enough? How could someone dare do such a thing?
Something else happened just today. Someone, apparently a Holocaust denier, posted a couple of messages on our Christianity is Jewish Facebook page. He said some things about the Holocaust being a hoax, and how we’ve all been duped. I ended up deleting the messages and banning him, but I’m just astounded. How can someone deny the Holocaust?
When I think of the Holocaust…. when I think of the 6 million Jews that were annihilated along with 5 million others… when I think of the men, the women, the little boys and girls, and babies that were sent to death chambers… that’s the question I always seem to begin with. “How could someone…?”
The answer is evil. Absolute, sick evil.
Not too long ago, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum down the road in Washington D.C. If you’ve never been, I can’t tell you how graphic it is. Seeing the piles of shoes that once belonged to real people. Articles that were removed from prisoners before they were cremated. Videos of bulldozers pulling up mass graves. Images of men reduced to nothing but skin and bones. Videos of people shamed for being Jewish – shaved, stripped naked, and forced to walk the streets. Testimonials of people whose neighbors lined their doorway as the Nazi’s pushed them out of their home. They weren’t there to say goodbye. They were there to loot their belongings.
It’s a glimpse at evil. Absolute, sick evil.
If there is any doubt that evil – that Satan himself exists in our world. We need not look far. The Holocaust is not so distant that it is left to history books. There are still some that walk the earth today who lived through such hell. How could such terrible things happen in the mid 20th century?
The answer is evil. Absolute, sick evil.
But I think today, this Holocaust Remembrance Day, is not just a day to remember evil but to remember good. I admit, it seems difficult to think of good thoughts in the midst of such horrific genocide. But if all we remember is evil, then evil has won a legacy. After all, those that do evil don’t care for what they’re remembered but only that they are remembered.
At the end of the Holocaust Memorial Museum is a section dedicated to all those who helped the Jewish people. Oscar Schindler, Corrie Ten Boom, the list goes on and on. Some lived to tell the tale. Some were discovered and faced the same fate as those they tried to help. But it serves as a reminder that in the midst of evil, good still existed. And in the end, good prevailed over evil.
For me, and this may seem odd to you, what the Holocaust reminds me of is a living and faithful God. I know (believe me I know) that many lost their faith in the midst of the concentration camps. I can’t say I blame them. But from my vantage point, and one of luxury in comparison to those who experienced such horror, I think about how much the holocaust proves that a good God exists.
Let me explain.
We have a word for darkness. Yet darkness is not a real thing… at least scientifically speaking. It is only the absence of light. Yet we identify it. We name it. It’s real to us.
There are many that deny God. Many that say, “He doesn’t exist. He isn’t real.” And yet, 99% of the world would look at what happened to the Jewish people during the Holocaust and say, “That’s evil. Absolute, sick evil.” While they may struggle to acknowledge God, there is an overwhelming consensus regarding His absence. It’s called evil. Absolute, sick evil.
The presence of evil demands the presence of God. Dare I say we know evil because we know good. We can identify darkness because we know what light looks like, and when it is gone, we call it something. Is it any wonder why the Scriptures use the word light to describe God? Corrie Ten Boom, a holocaust survivor wrote, “In darkness, God’s truth shines most clear.”
Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I know why God allows bad things to happen. Why God allowed the Holocaust – why He allowed evil to prevail (for a time) is a mystery to us. But the fact that it stopped… the fact that daylight came, even hours beyond its hopeful arrival, speaks of a God.
We have lots of words to describe Adolf Hitler. He was a maniacal, narcissistic, arrogant, destructive, racist, masochistic, monstrous dictator. He was the incarnate of absolute, sick evil. The fact that he is no more, demonstrates that even the most horrific evil comes to an end.
I hate to say this, but Hitler was not the first of his kind, and I’d be a fool to think he would be the last. Even today, there are those who deny the Holocaust and once again threaten to annihilate the Jewish people.
And in the midst of contemplating how many have tried to exterminate the Jewish people, I have to pause and ask, “How is it possible that these people still survive?” They were enslaved and their were babies systematically executed in Egypt, they were constantly at war, constantly threatened by neighboring nations. They were attacked by the Assyrians and Babylonians and carried off into exile. The story of Esther chronicles a man named Haman who just about carried out the plot to wipe them off the face of the earth. They were tortured by Antiochus and the Greeks. The Romans, after occupying their land, destroyed their capital and expelled them from their own country. They existed without a homeland for nearly 2,000 years, and most places they went, they were not welcomed.
Many people tried to carry out Satan’s plan to be the one who would wipe out God’s chosen people. Adolf Hitler was just one of the devil’s many pawns.
And yet evil, even in its most persistent and sophisticated form, did not prevail.
Perhaps the greatest evidence of the existence and power of God is the Jewish people. Think of all the nations that are listed in Scripture – the Philistines, the Amalekites, the Amorites… they no longer exist. And even the great empires – the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Romans have all disappeared into the historic moonlight. Their kingdoms fell, their national identities faded away. Nazi Germany, as vast as it was, has come and gone. But the Jewish people? They still remain.
Those that oppose Israel now may seem fierce and problemsome. But if history continues to repeat itself, as it has for some 3500 years, they too will vanish.
Evil may be great. But God is greater. Light always overcomes darkness.
At the beginning of Hosea’s prophecy, God told the Northern Kingdom of Israel what would become of them because of their perverse idolatry and unfaithfulness. But even amidst the cry of judgment, God says, “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God’” (Hosea 1:10).
God’s faithfulness is so relentless that He would look at the adulterous sins of His most beloved and remember His promise to their father Abraham.
To me, the fact that the Jewish people still remain, the fact that they have retained an identity even while the rest of the world has faded into forgotten irrelevance, speaks of a living and faithful God. In remembering the darkness of the Holocaust, we see a God who will not let even the most horrific evil forever eclipse His luminous glory or His beloved children.
What young boy hasn’t stepped onto a baseball field, stood beside home plate, and pretended to swing for the fences? We picture ourselves in the pressure of batting in the 9th inning, with two outs, the bases loaded, and then knocking the ball out of the park to win the game in clutch fashion. We dream of living that moment depicted in the movie the Natural starring Robert Redford. However, more often than those dramatic moments, baseball games are won through the small details – the sacrifice flies, the executed bunts, the hits and runs. Instead of telling their player to swing for the fences, crafty managers will sometimes ask players to hit the ball in a way that will get the batter out while advancing the runner. It’s a strategy known as small ball.
Who doesn’t love winning the championship? Who doesn’t tie their cleats in April dreaming of holding the trophy in October? At the end of the season, when only one team celebrates, there’s a peculiarity that emerges. The new players are excited, jumping up and down, showering each other with champagne. They’ve completed quite the feat. But the veterans, especially the ones that have waited their whole careers for that moment, they lift the trophy like a giant weight off their shoulder. The way they cry over it, the way they kiss it, the way they cherish it – their long suffering produces an unmatched appreciation. They haven’t just played the season for that moment. They’ve played their entire careers for that moment.