A Week in Motion: Travels, Hitchhikers, and Harrowing, Horrifying Histories
This week, I had two flights delayed; I missed one flight due to delays, had to make a last-minute change to my flight, flew to Amarillo instead, and then drove home, getting home at 2:30 am. I picked up a hitchhiker (Stranger from the airport) and gave them a ride to Lubbock as they had also missed their flight. I got called a racist because I didn’t want to buy someone a Gatorade at a gas station in downtown Phoenix. Note that someone approached me while in my car, and this person had forgotten to put on a shirt that day. I drove to the Mexico border and was close enough to “the wall” that I could have thrown rocks over it had I wanted to. All in all, I had a pretty eventful week, much of it being spent driving as I took care of business in Phoenix, Arizona, a business that included firing someone and lots of driving. As I drove, I once again dove into my backlog of audiobooks, a list that seems to grow rather than shrink with each book I read.
This week, I found myself finally reading a book that has been in my audible library for a long time now; I had just never taken the time to listen to it. This was, in part, I think, because I knew it would be a heavy and hard book to listen to. This was not because the book itself was bad, but instead because its material was dark and heavy. Partly, what prompted my reading this is that I am currently studying Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is a French philosopher who believed that we as human beings are “good by nature” and that society and civilization corrupt and taint this natural goodness. This is an idea that is obviously directly opposed to the Christian worldview, which says we are all fallen, broken, sinful, and desperately wicked by nature and that it is only by the grace of God above that we are directed away from our wicked ways. So today, I will detail some of the things I learned about in the two books I read this week. I want to provide a disclaimer and a warning here. I will be detailing some examples of the wickedness of humanity below so reader discretion is advised.
I first learned about this book when I was listening to a lecture from Dr Jordan B Peterson, and so had long been on my reading list. This book details the physiological evolution of Police Battalion 101 and the Ordinary Men who composed its ranks. The book uses records from the trials and confessions of these men as to the crimes they committed in Poland during World War 2. In this book we are introduced to a group of men who on the surface seem no different than you and I. Many of these men had been conscripted into the Order Police and so were not there by their own choice. They were there because they had to be. Many of these men were carpenters, iron workers, farmers, and other ordinary jobs of the day.
After conscription, these men were sent to Poland, and it was here where they would receive their orders to enact the “Final Solution,” this being Hitler’s vision to systematically eliminate the Jewish population from Europe. When the commander of this battalion first gave the orders for the “work” they were to do, it was recorded that he did so in tears. It was also during this time that he told his battalion of ordinary men that those who did not wish to participate would be forced to. When this offer was made, it was reported that roughly 10% of the battalion chose this option. The rest stood firm and resolute, not knowing the true horror of what was to come.
These men were then told that they were to round up all the Jews, and then, later, they would begin to escort them to the edge of the forest, where they would begin their “work.” Here, at the edge of the forest, they would require men to strip down naked, and women might be left with a night shift. The Jews would then be required to lay down face into the dirt to await execution. Each of these men received training on how to perform this execution to be most effective and efficient. They were trained to place their bayonets at the base of their victim's necks to provide stability and then perform the execution. This was presented as the quickest and most effective way to ensure instant death. As the Jews lay down defenseless, these ordinary men began to pull the trigger.
This execution would blow off the back of the victim's head, resulting in the skull and brains being splattered onto the face and uniforms of these men. Some of these men managed a single execution and would then seek to be reassigned. This reassignment was an option, but only some took it. Some of these men, after completing a round of executions, would flee into the forest to throw up, hide, or both. Many of these men continued this brutal work, seeing this as their duty, their obligation. As the months wore on and the executions continued, many of the men became hardened, and thus the work became easier. As the work became easier some began to become increasingly sadistic and would begin to enact cruel tortures upon the Jewish people, rather than a simple execution they would torment them. These men, over months of exposure to brutal violence and often excessive amounts of alcohol, became the horrifying monsters we have seen depicted in films.
As I read this book, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of somber horror. Over the decades since World War 2, we have made dozens upon dozens of films on the atrocities of this time. We have often depicted the Nazis as one-dimensional monsters. Through this, we have tried to shield ourselves from the simple reality that they were, in fact, human beings; they were ordinary men. I want to be clear here before I continue that I condemn everything that these men did, and they should be seen as monsters. But I also want to highlight that we, too, have the capability to become such monsters. I think many of us think we would be like those men who chose to step aside, or perhaps we think we would be like the rare heroes such as Oskar Schindler, but we think too highly of ourselves in these moments. The truth is that we most likely would have also taken up ranks with these ordinary men, and we, too, would have become like these monsters.
The reality is that we are cowards by nature. We seek the path of least resistance, we avoid doing hard things or talking about hard things, we don’t want to stick out, and we want to fit in with everyone else. So, too, were the desires of these ordinary men; they felt the pressure to conform, either to their peers or to the commands they were given. Reading these stories, one can see that there are countless justifications for the actions being taken. One of the stories recorded is about a man who was tasked with the execution of children. While his partner would execute the mothers, he would be left to execute the children. He would later confess that his justification for his actions was, “There is no escape, and the children would be unable to survive without their mother.” And so he was able to justify what he did as a form of mercy killing. He saw what he was doing as an inevitability, and so his executions were a “lesser evil” than allowing these children to survive and starve.
Once again, we read these and think we could never do such a thing, that we are somehow less capable of such justifications. But the ugly truth is that we are no different. We are equally capable of such horrors, and if we can’t admit this, then we set ourselves up to become monsters. We are not a creature prone to goodness; we are prone to wickedness and cowardice. The reality is that the thing that made the holocaust possible was that many thousands simply went along to get along. Many sought to preserve themselves only. Today, when we watch movies and witness the horrors of villains, we often see ourselves as heroes rather than our capacity to be and become villains. Some of the greatest acts of evil have happened because we are unwilling to step out. Courage is not fearless; courage is doing despite fear.
I have been a coward many times in my life. I have done nothing when I should have acted. I have said nothing when I should have spoken up. I want to be someone of courage. I want to be and become someone who is capable of doing hard things, and I want to become someone who courageously speaks the truth, even if it means I stand alone. I want to confront my capacity for evil so that by confronting it, I can stand against it. My conviction is that we each must practice doing hard things in the small and seemingly pointless things, for only by being faithful in doing what is right in small things do we equip ourselves with the capacity to do what is right in the big things. If we are not faithful in the little things, how can we possibly imagine we would be faithful in the big things? I am reminded here of Luke 16: 10.
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. - Luke 16:10 NIV
This verse comes from “The Parable of the Shrewd Manager,” and it is a parable of conviction for me. Later in this same chapter of Luke, Jesus gives the following accusation.
The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight. - Luke 16: 14-15 NIV
My conviction is also this: just as the Pharisees loved money, we also love our comfort, our status, and even our friends more than we love what is right and good. The love of even good things, such as friends, can often lead us astray. How can we ever be trusted with more when we fail to be faithful with the little things?
I grew up reading and hearing stories from a book called “The Bloody Theater” or “The Maryters Mirror.” It is a book filled with stories of thousands of men and women who gave their lives courageously for the sake of others and for the sake of what they believed in. Many were burned to death with their families for the sake of what was right. Many thousands of people today still live their lives in this way. But we here in America have become cowards. We remain silent and allow children to be butchered in the womb, and we allow children to be mutilated by doctors and drugs alike. We allow men into women's spaces. We watch porn, read erotic romance novels, play video games, mindlessly scroll social media and hide behind our screens. We are unwilling to confront or risk offense because of what might someone think of us. We are cowards unwilling to speak the truth. We, the church, have become cowardly unwilling to directly engage in the issues of our age; we lightly skit around the hard subjects of our day because it might affect our church attendance, our tithe, or both. We do not directly engage in conversations about our culture because if we do, we might lose our tax exemption status.
I write these words with my own convictions and see within myself areas of cowardice. I want to be courageous, and I want to be someone who can, like my ancestors, stand and willingly face death for what is right, good, and just. We do face a death of sorts here in America, but it is not a physical death, not yet. Instead, we face the slow and cowardly death of conformity. We stand by doing nothing because it doesn’t affect us or it’s not our business. We are not better than those ordinary men of Battalion 101, and we, too, have the capacity to become what they became.
I close with the second book I read this week called “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang. It tells the true story of the often-forgotten Holocaust of World War 2 and the brutal savaging of Nanking China by the Japanese during World War 2. It is a book that will petrify you with horror and the capacity for evil we as human beings have within us. We are not good by nature, and we are instead desperately evil without the grace and intervention of Jesus Christ.
