Do You Agree?

Several years ago, I was riding with three other people, on my way to church, and we witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Each of us made a note of the license plate number of the car that was at fault, we called for police, and called an ambulance for the victim, and ended up showing up late for church. The accident became embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute, and no one came to take our statements for several weeks. When they did come, they wound up with four different license plate numbers. The first three turned out to be completely fictitious—those numbers had never been issued by the state. The fourth turned out to be a vehicle that was reported stolen several hours before the accident. No wonder he didn’t stick around to talk to the police. The four license numbers were close to the same, but three of them were remembered incorrectly. Does this make us liars? No, of course not, none of us intentionally provided false information. For most intents and purposes, it didn’t really make any difference—after all, the vehicle in question was a stolen car, even the correct license plate number didn’t help track down the people that caused the accident. Sometimes details just aren’t important.
Some people have made a big deal about differences in the four gospels. If they were all accurate, shouldn’t they all say the same thing? On the other hand, if they all said the same thing, what would be the point of having four of them?
For the most part, the inconsistencies are minor: I’ve posted before about the different accounts of who went to the tomb on Sunday morning; there is also an account in Matthew 20:30 that says Jesus healed two blind men, and another account in Mark 10:46 that says Jesus healed a blind man; Mark says that Jesus prophesied that “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30) and that, in fact, the cock crew once after Peter’s first denial (Mark 14:68), and again after the third (Mark 14:72), Matthew says the rooster only crowed one time (Matthew 26:34, 74) (I’ve even known people to really stretch the point by comparing the prophecy in one gospel to the fulfillment in the other), Mark 15:27 says that Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, Luke, being less sure of what the other two men were convicted of, simply refers to them as malefactors (Luke 23:33). Details. Does it really matter if Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with a group of other women? Does it really matter if Jesus healed one blind man or two? Does it really matter if the rooster crowed once or twice? I have to admit, I think Mark’s version of the story is more powerful: Here is Peter, caught up in the moment, and at his first denial, the rooster crows one time. At some level of Peter’s consciousness, that had to have registered as a red flag, but he was so concerned about the immediate situation, that he didn’t stop to think about what the significance of a rooster crowing might be. It happens every morning, doesn’t it? But there was that nagging thought that there was a particular significance to this particular rooster. After the third denial, the rooster crowed again, and for whatever reason, the people around him decided to drop the issue. With the pressure off of him, Peter realized what it meant, and even realized that if he had been paying attention, he could have stopped himself after the first denial.
What’s really interesting is that the minor differences in the accounts shows that these men wrote down the best of their recollections, or the best they knew of what they had learned from the actual witnesses; they didn’t sit down together and concoct a story—then the four gospels would all say exactly the same thing. Critics of the gospels point out that when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas, the High Priest, that, as bad as Caiaphas wanted to see Jesus put to death for something, he couldn’t get two witnesses to agree on anything (Mark 14:59). Now if this man, who wanted to convict Jesus, wouldn’t go to trial with witnesses that didn’t agree, how dare we, as Christians, expect people to believe gospels that don’t agree? Unfortunately, the Gospels only record one of the accusations made against Jesus, that, He said, if the temple be destroyed, He would build it again in three days; to people who didn’t understand what He was saying, that would have sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a criminal that needed to be put to death. I suspect that the real problem here is that they would have like to have had Him convicted of insurrection, but when one accused Him of saying that Jews shouldn’t pay tribute money, another witness spoke out and pointed out that He said, “Render to Caesar…” This is the sort of contradiction that Caiaphas was complaining about, not minor details that wouldn’t have made any difference. Jesus called that straining at a gnat.

You Judas!

I find it interesting that in the Gospels, Judas Iscariot, the traitor, lived with the other Apostles and they never even suspected what he was. Jesus knew, of course, and He never let on that He knew until the Last Supper. No one else even suspected. John 13:29 tells us that Judas 'had the bag,' meaning that he was the treasurer for this little group; that's a position of trust. Jesus didn't have to trust him, because Jesus knew exactly what Judas was doing, every step of the way; but every one else did. Matthew 26:22 tells us that, when Jesus revealed that one of His disciples would betray Him, the other eleven each asked the question, "Is it I?" Think about that for a minute: Judas was so trusted by the eleven that each of them found it easier to believe that he himself would betray Jesus than that Judas would. In John 13:26, Jesus pretty much told them that Judas was the traitor, and yet, they still couldn't bring themselves to believe it. Why not? Were they stupid? I don't think Jesus chose eleven faithful imbeciles and one clever traitor. It's just that Judas was so good at playing the part of a committed Christian that no one could believe that he would betray the Lord. They had traveled together for three years, and Judas had always kept his agenda secret from the others (of course, it's possible that Judas really was a committed Christian for some of those three years...). God knew, of course, but God had a plan, and Judas was an important part of that plan.

I have heard a lot of criticism in the last few years of churches that find themselves in awkward positions. What is the proper procedure if the leader of a congregation is accused of improprieties? In retrospect it seems clear that, if the allegations are serious, this man should be removed from his position, at least until the allegations can be investigated. Of course, it is somewhat understandable if the church doesn't take allegations seriously when those accusations are accompanied by a lawsuit. It's easy to side with the minister if the person making the accusations stand to profit financially from the situation. On the other hand, just because someone feels that they have a right to restitution for their legitimate pain and suffering, doesn't mean that they haven't suffered wrong. How does one tell? Unfortunately, those decisions are ultimately made by people that know the accused--usually other clergy that trust this minister just as much as the eleven trusted Judas. Why he can't possible be that kind of a man, I've known him for years! So, what often happens is, a man who is very good at playing the part of a man of God, but is secretly the worst kind of monster, gets moved to another church--often without so much as a warning (oh, by the way, he was accused of misbehavior at his last church, we don't think he did it, but we are investigating. If we find anything out, you'll be the first to know).

Now, granted, sometimes this is done to protect the church's assets. There is a fear that an admission of guilt will trigger more lawsuits. The church goes into damage control mode, using the philosophy that, if we cover up what has happened, no one will know, there will be no more lawsuits, people will continue to come to church, we can continue to do God's work. This is particularly easy if the other clergy don't really believe that the reported incident actually happened. Sometimes churches will pay off families just to get the allegations to go away, without ever really considering that the accusations might be true. Of course, the thought of the damage that could be done to the church if the allegations are true makes it easy to go into denial, also.

Unfortunately, the damage done to the people in the congregation being led by a man who is not being faithful to God can be nothing short of devastating. We, as Christians, can not allow this to happen. I have spent a lot of time trying to explain why this does happen, but I don't mean to suggest that it's okay that it does happen. It's not. We need to trust God, and let Him show us what to do whenever there are indications of improprieties within the church.

The Holocaust

I was just reading that they have recovered a diary of a Jewish girl killed in the holocaust. They are calling her the Polish Anne Frank. NPR has an article about it here.
There are a lot of people that don't believe the Holocaust actually happened, or, if it did, it wasn't nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. There are various reasons for this:
First, let's face it, the Germans during the Third Reich weren't really very much different from Americans during the same time period. We survived the Great Depression without committing genocide, why couldn't they? For starters, we didn't have a madman in charge (Adolf Hitler was very charismatic, and he was able to bring about a number of changes in the German economy that made life better for a lot of people. Some have said that 'he was a good man--at first,' others have said that he was just building his power base. In any case, by the time he started publicly doing things that normal people would recognize as insane, a lot of Germans were already fiercely loyal to him--and the rest were very much afraid of the Nazis). For another thing, who would we have exterminated? The blacks? Granted, Americans of African ancestry weren't very popular, but most of them didn't have any money. To be fair, a lot of European Jews didn't have any money either, but there was a lot of Third Reich propoganda about how they were all rich, and they had gotten their money by cheating good Aryans. There was also a lot of propoganda pushing the idea that just the presence of the Jews weakened the power of Germany. That would have been a much harder idea to sell in a country that had long taught that our strength comes from our diversity--even though so many were willing to overlook the contributions of darker-complected Americans. Keep in mind also, that Germany suffered through the Great depression while making 'reparations' for World War I. Many of their largest industries were either shut down or severely limited as part of the peace treaty--we didn't want them building up their military again. You may have heard horror stories about how the Great Depression affected the US ecomony--Germany was much worse off.
Second, some people are bad at math--or, just haven't looked at the big picture. There were over 6 milion Jews in Poland before World War II, less than 200,000 after. There were about 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Obviously, not all 6 million of the Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust--some of them escaped to England, or the United States, or even to Palestine. That's true. And, I have to admit, it does seem like an odd coincidence that the number of Polish Jews that escaped matches up almost exactly to the number of Jews from other countries that died in the Holocaust. Remember, the Holocaust started in Germany.
Third, some people don't believe in the Holocaust simply because they are anti-semitic. I know that sounds strange, but the philosophy works something like this: Because of the Holocaust, Great Britain and the United States decided that the Jews needed their own homeland--a nation that would fight for them if any nation ever tried to oppress Jews like that again. Obviously, then, the Jews faked the Holocaust in order to gain sympathy with the world powers and orchestrate the creation of the nation of Israel. Some of them hid, and then paid the German SS to lie at the Nuremberg trials... Interesting theory, but, what if Germany had won the war? Then what? For that matter, going into the Nuremberg trials, the Germans that testified really didn't know what was going to happen to them. Many of them were executed. How much money do you pay someone to confess to crime that was never committed and accept the death penalty? Not to mention, the Jew's assets were seized by the Third Reich to support the war effort. Are we to believe that they managed to hide enough money away to bribe men to die for their cause? Further, even though, we've established a motive for faking the Holocaust, did the Jews really have the means to fake something that huge? I think not. There were an awful lot of poeple that witnessed how badly the Jews were treated by the Germans under Adolf Hitler. Most of these witnesses were not aware of the death camps, but, in order to fake the Holocaust, there would have had to have been people high up in the German government working on the conspiracy. There were no Jews in such positions.

Fourth, the revisionists claim not so much that the Holocaust didn't happen, but that it has been exaggerated, and that too much emphasis has been placed upon it. Most of these don't believe that the Nazis had gas chambers (in spite of the fact that three of them were still standing when the Russian troops arrived). They claim that the number dead was much less than 6 million, and that most of the ones that died were simply victims of disease or malnutrition. They also point out that there were a lot more than 6 million killed in battle during the war, so why the emphasis on the Jews? (Most of them don't point out that Stalin actually killed more Jews than Hitler did.) Personally, I think most of these really fall under the first heading, they can believe that the Jews were badly mistreated, but a campaign to eradicate them? Surely not. You might convince me that the Holocaust history should be revised. Maybe the numbers are exaggerated. Maybe it was only 5.5 million (I don't really know how the numbers were arrived at, but I suspect that the 6 million number is non-negotiable because if we start saying, well, maybe it was only 5.5 million, then somebody will say, oh, but it was only 5 million, and before you know it, the Holocaust didn't happen at all, which would be absurd). Maybe, most of the dead really did die simply because the Nazis didn't feed the Jews or provide them medical care in the camps. It certainly would have been less expensive to let them die through neglect than to spend money on diesel fuel to create carbon monoxide to gas them.

I think that bottom line is, it was a terrible thing, and we don't like to believe that we, as human beings, are capable of such things, but we are, and we need to be reminded occasionally of just what we can do. The Holocaust should not be remembered as an example of what bad poeple the Germans were, or even of how terrible the Nazis were, but just how terrible we human beings are. We can be real monsters. We are also capable of great good, but sometimes that seems to be the exception.