There, but for the grace of God, go I

Each week in my school one of the teachers runs devotions for the rest of the staff of a morning. This week I am on devotions, so I thought I'd share what I've been thinking about for this morning's time together.

I have been captivated over the last few years by the story of a Jewish man named Simon Wiesenthal. Simon was a jewish man living in Poland when WWII broke out. He has an amazing story to tell and survived the war only by the providence of God, which becomes very clear when you hear his story.

One day he had a rather unusual experience. He was, whilst being held in a concentration camp, assigned to work detail at a school that had been turned into a hospital. One morning as he arrived a nurse came to him and, asking if he was a Jew (as if the striped pyjamas didn't give it away), was taken to the room of a dying SS soldier. There the soldier told Wiesenthal about his life, culminating in a story which he told in graphic detail of a time when 300 Jewish men, women and children were piled into a house. The SS platoon then lobbed grenades in through the windows to set the house on fire, then as the house burned with the people inside the soldieers shot anyone who tried to escape through the windows. After telling this story to Wiesenthal the soldier explained that part of his belief system required him to seek forgiveness here on earth for crimes committed, so he asked Wiesenthal to provide that forgiveness. Wiesenthal, after sitting with the man for over an hour, holding his hand and hearing his story, never spoke a word, then he left. He came back a few days later to find that the soldier had died. Wiesenthal was somewhat haunted by this decision and put the question out to the world: What should I have done?

The story is recounted in a book called 'The Sunflower' and it contains 53 responses from people Wiesenthal invited to answer the question that he posed. Some are good, others are drivel, whilst others still offer no response.

One of the noteable responses is from Albert Speer, who served as a minister in the Nazi party and was Hitler's architect. In his letter he recognises that he has attained some moral guilt and responsibility for what happened under the third reich and that whilst it is not required for Wiesenthal to offer forgiveness for what happened, his kindness and compassion certainly made the life of the guilty man easier.

So my question then is: How do I respond to the terrible systemic injustices that I see in the past and in the present and how should I respond?

Certainly revulsion is appropriate. As I read about and try to understand what happened to some Jewish people during WWII I am disgusted by what I hear. One camp was nothing more than the end of the train line followed by a pit of fire where Jewish men, women and children were shipped to be disposed of. There there was a brick wall where some German officers were renowned for smashing the heads of children against them to silence them. This wells up in me emotions I cannot describe and it pains me to think about it.

I think, though, the problem comes wen we have feelings of anger towards the perpetrators of systemic injustice. I think that feelings of anger tend to come from an attitude that says "I would never do that, so how dare you do it." I think that as Christians we have not understood our sinful nature if this is our attitude. I believe that it is always true that 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.' If I believe that this is true then I have to believe that in my sinful depravity I am capable of being those German SS officers who did the most horrendous things. I am capable of being Josef Mengele who, when women begged to be able to stay with their children, smilingly obliged as he sent them both to the gas chamber. I am capable of being the Hutu soldier in Rwanda who, so filled with hate for his countrymen identified as Tootsies, would bludgeon to death women and children just because they were what they were.

If I recognise that the only reason I don't do these things and worse is because of the grace of God then my attitudes toward the people who perpetrate them changes. Instead of anger I feel sorry for the people who commit such acts as they have not been held back by God and I feel saddened by what is going on, but I feel no right to retributive justice as determined by me. Then, when these perpetrators repent, as Albert Speer seems to have done, whether or not it is sincere we are, here on earth, ready to receive that repentance and forgive, and leave the ultimate judgement up to God no matter how heinous the crime.

Because we know, if we are honest with ourselves, that the depths of our own depravity knows no bounds and it is only God who holds us back from acting on it. We have no right to hold against others what God doesn't hold against us.

I'm interested to know your thoughts.