Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230219
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last week was one.
From outside the Branch Davidian compound, I cannot comprehend a parent's willingly allowing a child to be incinerated as a sacrifice to a failed prophet.
From a distance of a half-century, I cannot understand how some people could consider themselves a "master race" that was obliged to exterminate the "inferior" Jews who lived in their midst.
Through tears and anger we all want to know why. We want to know how we human beings go so wrong.
Of course, there simply may not be answers that can be truly satisfying.
Humans always have struggled with the problem of evil, and nobody has provided an answer that fits everybody in every situation.
In a film shown in Roanoke last week about how today's Germans cope with the shadow of the Holocaust, a non-Jew who grew up after the Second World War couldn't even understand his own parents' inaction.
He wondered "why my parents did not throw themselves in front of the trucks when they came to deport" the Jews who lived in their neighborhood.
Many who watched from outside Waco, Texas, wondered why the families of those who perished inside didn't take more extreme measures to get their loved ones out when they had the time.
It was hard all around to avoid contemplation of the horrors that accompany the perversion of religion.
Even the most devoutly religious, who find peace and fulfillment and great joy in their religious faith must acknowledge that the same principles that uplift them can be used to hurt, even destroy, others.
Because Christianity is so widespread in Western culture, that is the religion we most often see perverted, but the problems arise in them all.
The heartfelt desire to spread "truth" to all can be twisted into militaristic compulsion to either convert or destroy those who refuse to accept that "truth."
The trust that is required to develop faith can be abused by a leader who becomes obsessed with the power to control others.
The plain human frailty to which we all are subject can make us prey to those who feed on the weaknesses of others and, like vampires, siphon life from them.
We've watched televangelists rise and fall, we've heard of priests sexually abusing children, we've tasted the bitter lies of those who proclaim love and practice hate.
So, what do I do - faced with the entire history of humanity that suggests we cannot eliminate evil?
Petitioning a beneficent God to prevent a new Holocaust satisfies many.
But those whose prayers were not answered in the death camps of Europe 50 years ago often find no solace in such a faith. Many survivors forever lost the ability to believe, much less trust, in a God who could allow such a thing to happen.
Those who believe we are God's hands - as well as those who deny that we are the tools of any diety - are required to do something.
Corporately, we must stand up to evil when it approaches and have the courage to turn it aside.
That is why it is important to remember what Nazi Germany did to Jews and Communists and homosexuals and Gypsies half a century ago.
It is not some morbid fascination with death that compels us to keep the Holocaust a living memory, but the fear that we are capable of watching it happen again - and doing nothing.
Of course, to some degree we each are responsible for ourselves.
I have to work to discern truth, to understand that I can be vulnerable, to avoid entrapment in the webs of false messiahs.
That's what makes it hard for some public officials and private citizens to have much sympathy for those who died at Waco. After all, didn't "those people" choose to follow a man who led them to their destruction?
That is also what makes it so difficult to come up with some plan to prevent a recurrence of that situation.
We might conclude that we can prevent another Holocaust easier than we can prevent another Waco.
Even if we cannot stop a madman from leading his followers to ruin, surely we would never allow a state to destroy a whole people?
The "truth" is that holocausts continue around us.
In Bosnia, the Sudan, Kampuchea.
And we have yet to answer the question, "What now must I do?"
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper.
by CNB