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Live by the sword?
- Thread starter Mojo
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I feel like I’m in a fun house in bizarro world! Hitler’s Germany, the Nazis, were a bunch of peace loving cool guys? Who fired up the ovens? Who invented fake showers plumbed up with poison gas? Who was it that made lamp shades out of human skin? Did America do all that just paint the sweet natures Nazis in a bad light? The pagan loving Nazis? Those guys?!?
I’m all about a healthy case of defiance disorder but there is a penalty for calling evil good and good evil. The Nazis were evil. I can’t believe I have to say that here.
The narrative is very controlled and has been for many years. Six million is a lie. The reasons why it was told are hidden for the most part in the monster that remains a mystery. How much truth is the media giving us today? Could anyone without firsthand knowledge really figure out what part of today's news is factual?
Most of us will of course agree that those things they claim Natzis did are evil, but not all are going to just accept those claimed events as 100 percent factual. After all, we know George Floyd was a decent guy assaulted by a cop and killed in cold blood, and Kyle Rittenhouse was an extremist targeting peaceful protesters.
There is video evidence, survivors who lived through it. My grandfather fought in the Pacific. He had five ships sunk from underneath him. American service men liberated the camps. This is a narrative that comes organically and from multitudinal grass root sources. You can’t fake this stuff in 1945. The Holocaust happened. Half of the 12 million people executed by the Nazis in concentration camps were Jews. These are entirely plausible numbers based on how many Jews were in Europe before the war and how many could be accounted for after the war. Precise counts are difficult because the ovens were running day and night incinerating the bodies but in reality the difference between the skeptic’s claim of 600,000 Jews and the conventional wisdom of 6 million is morally indistinguishable. There was a horrific slaughter of Jewish men, women and children. And also Christians and other dissidents. You can’t whitewash this. Just ask the Polish. The butchery that followed the Nazi’s sneak attack was barbaric.The narrative is very controlled and has been for many years. Six million is a lie. The reasons why it was told are hidden for the most part in the monster that remains a mystery. How much truth is the media giving us today? Could anyone without firsthand knowledge really figure out what part of today's news is factual?
Most of us will of course agree that those things they claim Natzis did are evil, but not all are going to just accept those claimed events as 100 percent factual. After all, we know George Floyd was a decent guy assaulted by a cop and killed in cold blood, and Kyle Rittenhouse was an extremist targeting peaceful protesters.
I know this was meant to be lighthearted, and I laughed, but for the record, I never advocated banning theocracies. I just prefer not to live in one (other than in my own home).Yup. And Adam and Eve had it even better and they screwed it up. And they were monogamous so ban monogamy!
There's a ton of evidence to back up the holocaust. Period.
Let's keep this on topic. Deeper discussions of World War II and the Holocaust can be continued on another post if someone wants to start one.
If someone wants to discuss Dietrich Bonhoefer and the implications of Christian pacifism vs. violent/armed resistance during WW2, that's fine by me.
If someone wants to discuss Dietrich Bonhoefer and the implications of Christian pacifism vs. violent/armed resistance during WW2, that's fine by me.
I don't want to debate the holocaust, that is a pointless aside as @Mojo has said. However, there is a useful point to be made here. I'll just pull out one of @The Revolting Man's statements for comment.
Other points made by @The Revolting Man could be commented on also, but my purpose is not to debate the holocaust. My purpose in this post is simply to use one example to point out that what you have been taught as fact is not always true - so don't get emotive about it when somebody else questions those facts. It is always good to ask questions, sometimes you learn things.
I think where we differ is that the more I look at it, the more I conclude that the Allies were evil too.
The problem with the default narrative is that it portrays the Nazis as purely evil, and the Allies as almost purely good. That is an unrealistically extreme patriotic propaganda position that can only be maintained by selectively focussing on some events and ignoring others. And because reality is more complex than this, simplifying it to this extent it means that good is called evil, and evil called good. The only way to avoid calling good evil and evil good is to set aside patriotism and dispassionately look at it from the outside. From that perspective you can more clearly see both good and evil, recognise the evil and good on both sides, and not mislabel either.
Ultimately, war is evil. And that gets us back to the point of this thread. Do we as Christians engage in the evils of war, or do we stick to nonviolent pacifist actions that do not risk us being participants in that evil?
Probably nobody. There were accusations of lampshades made of human skin made at the Nuremburg trials, and the media emphasised these as they suited the narrative of the day. However, as far as I am aware, every supposedly human skin lampshade that has actually been tested has been found to be animal skin or plant cellulose. Even Wikipedia, that bastion of conventional thought, states this! There were probably no human skin lampshades, without evidence this is a myth. But it is a myth that many people think is an established fact.
Other points made by @The Revolting Man could be commented on also, but my purpose is not to debate the holocaust. My purpose in this post is simply to use one example to point out that what you have been taught as fact is not always true - so don't get emotive about it when somebody else questions those facts. It is always good to ask questions, sometimes you learn things.
Nobody disputes that evil things happened. They debate the extent of the evil on each side. There is enormous eyewitness evidence for concentration camps and people dying in all manner of ways. The debate is about the scale and precise nature of the evil. Not about whether it was evil.
To be very clear, I agree on this.
I think where we differ is that the more I look at it, the more I conclude that the Allies were evil too.
The problem with the default narrative is that it portrays the Nazis as purely evil, and the Allies as almost purely good. That is an unrealistically extreme patriotic propaganda position that can only be maintained by selectively focussing on some events and ignoring others. And because reality is more complex than this, simplifying it to this extent it means that good is called evil, and evil called good. The only way to avoid calling good evil and evil good is to set aside patriotism and dispassionately look at it from the outside. From that perspective you can more clearly see both good and evil, recognise the evil and good on both sides, and not mislabel either.
Ultimately, war is evil. And that gets us back to the point of this thread. Do we as Christians engage in the evils of war, or do we stick to nonviolent pacifist actions that do not risk us being participants in that evil?
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Delved into most of it. Some pretty good stuff. Some stuff I don't agree with, but good food for thought. Boy, was it LONG! I resorted to skimming in some areas. If you're into history, I'd recommend it, even if you might not agree with all of the points made.
I had nearly this exact thought in mind while reading your response. Great thought.
I am a patriotic, exceptionalism promoting American, who loves his men and women in uniform. But, a fallen nature assures that both sides in a war will push the envelope, and sometimes bust it completely open ("all have sinned and come short...").
It's not all nefarious. The mental stresses of war will undoubtedly push people over the edge. Can I in good Christian conscience advocate for participation in an armed conflict risking participation in potential evil? That's all I'm asking.
I disagree. Some war is evil yes but not all. It depends on the reason for the war and the methods used while fighting the war. Yah himself commanded Israel into war. Was he commanding that they do something evil?
Again the premise of the question is wrong but I think the answer is to seek discernment from the father and engage in righteous wars but avoid the evil wars...
So you'd rather live under the evil morality of Satanists than the imperfect morality of Christians? Cause that's what we have today.
Keep in mind that we're all talking about 'theocracy' but there are a huge range of forms of government that would fall under that. It's likely we're all arguing for/against our mental conception there of and those conceptions are not the same.
This ignores that it was the west that financed the building of the German war machine. Like in so many wars before and since, the bankers funded and armed both sides. History isn't as morally cut and dry as the propaganda insists.
In light of the Old Testament I don't think we can say this. However in light of our own personal history I think we can say much of it is. And our own assumptions about what war's are just have more to do with propaganda than justice.
For example...
Read the article Zek. I'm inclined to give more credit to eminent historians of the time than the cartoonish propaganda that came later.
Just stop and think about it. How likely is it that the German people enthusiastically aided and abetted a cartoon villain? This isn't like Stalin, where the Soviet government was imposed by force. Hitler was an extremely popular elected leader. These are people in many cases only 1 generation removed from a huge segment of the US populous at the time.
This is what war propaganda does, it has to amp up the evilness of a people and their leader in order to work you up into a murderous frenzy. Did Hitler come over here or did we go over there? Think about that.
When I was a kid they taught us in school that Hitler killed 6 million people, amoung them many Jews. But the numbers keep changing. Then they were claiming 6 million Jews, but others were killed too so then that suddenly expanded to 12 million total. It's hard to believe this stuff when you've watched the propaganda shift and change over time. I have no doubt Hitler murdered people, maybe even millions; he wouldn't be the first or last leader to do so.
And yet the Allies murdered millions of Germans after the war. And Stalin murdered millions of people BEFORE the war. Around 7 million Ukrainians and who knows how many Russians by that point. He'd eventually go on to murder some 70 million people. And THAT was our ally.
Our hands are not clean of innocent blood. Even if we grant that Hitler killed 12 million, in the grand scheme of things our side killed many times that. We backed the greater evil. How can we be the 'LIBERATORS' of Germany if the first thing we did was murder a few million of them?
Just in simple terms of death tolls we were the greater evil. There is no way I can look at WW2 and say our side was just.
Yet that is 'the good war' according to many people today.
It wasn't. But if there is a good war, what makes it good? How would we know? What Biblical principles would justify it?
Rev. 19:11
"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war."
Rev. 12:7-8
"7And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven."
Most mormons believe this happened in the "pre-existence." Many Christians probably also believe this was in some other time and place, yet the first few verses of the book tell the writer that these things must shortly come to pass.
Most modern wars are just for the furtherance of man's empires, and wars of aggression waged for money and power are evil.
Most think of angels as supernatural beings, and the same for "sons of God" yet some NT writing was directed to the angel of a church, and Adam was the first son of God.
Obviously it is a matter of conscience whether one takes up arms, and under what circumstances. To just sign on with a branch of the military is to submit your choice and will to another, trusting the decisions of other men in these matters.
To decide on strict nonviolence might prevent you from "participating in evil," but it would also prevent you from fighting in the service of God in the battle of the ages that gathers the wicked out of the kingdom.
It's RUMPLESTILLSKIN! And when they figure out his name he's never heard of again.
I think lost in all of this could be the nuanced difference between wars of self defense and wars of offense.
If Canada decided to invade our Northern states, and then annex Alaska for oil to fuel a further invasion southward, I think it is just and moral for one to protect ones homeland. Much of scripture is written in defense of property rights.
However, the premise of this discussion was predicated on whether or not Christisn citizens of a sovereign government have the moral or biblical authority to take up arms in resistance when that government no longer respects their observance of religion and has become openly hostile towards their practice of said faith.
Is the solution to stay and openly fight in armed resistance, or leave and find a new land that will grant them the right to practice freely without having to raise a sword?
If Canada decided to invade our Northern states, and then annex Alaska for oil to fuel a further invasion southward, I think it is just and moral for one to protect ones homeland. Much of scripture is written in defense of property rights.
However, the premise of this discussion was predicated on whether or not Christisn citizens of a sovereign government have the moral or biblical authority to take up arms in resistance when that government no longer respects their observance of religion and has become openly hostile towards their practice of said faith.
Is the solution to stay and openly fight in armed resistance, or leave and find a new land that will grant them the right to practice freely without having to raise a sword?
I knew a wonderful man named Johannes Bos who lost all of his family in the Holocaust. The truth of the Holocaust was always on his face.
Absolutely correct
That was an overly simplistic statement and others have very rightly disagreed with it. I need to clarify. Human wars (meaning any war that was not directly ordered by God for reasons that are His concern) contain and promote evil in various ways:
- The aggressor (usually meaning the side who declared war on the other) is generally evil, when they choose to use violence to achieve their aims. The defenders are not engaging in evil when they fight back against that evil - but may have engaged in evil if they provoked the war in the first place.
- When saying that, it is the leadership who fomented the war (on one or both sides) who are evil. The individual soldiers who are following orders in the context of propaganda, and who truly believe they are doing the right thing, are not evil. Because what matters is the intent of the heart.
- War leads to evil. Evil acts are justified as necessary in the extreme circumstances of the war. And after a people are conquered, they are almost universally subjected to murder, rape and pillage - this can be seen from the Bible to every recent war also.
I think most people are simply not aware of that historical fact. But that is the fruit of propaganda. When you've spent years reading a consistent message of extreme propaganda like human skin lampshades, you truly come to think that not only the leadership of the country, but also the general citizens who allowed this to happen, are evil.
And then, when you finally win the war and the individual citizens are undefended, the average soldier who thinks all Germans are evil feels justified in raping and murdering them, or letting them starve, as retaliation for the evil they believe their people have committed. Some of the first-hand accounts of what the allies did after "liberation" are as horrifying as the first-hand accounts of German concentration camps. And not just on the Soviet side - on the Western front also, with America being at least as involved in this as anyone (some would argue the worst offender, with evidence - I'm not claiming that, but I mention it to make sure that nobody is under the illusion that the Allies might have been bad but that couldn't be "our" troops, just the other ones).
So I should clarify rather that human wars contain great evil, lead to more evil, and it is almost impossible to avoid that evil.
When Christian Frank has been conscripted to fight on one side, and Christian Franz has been conscripted to fight on the other, each leaving a wife and 3 kids to go to the front line, regardless of whether Frank kills Franz or Franz kills Frank, I cannot really call the outcome of his wife losing her husband and his kids losing their father anything but evil.
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I remembered reading this years ago and thought it relevant to this discussion, as war is usually political in its origins.
Yes that's exactly it. Because I don't want a theocracy means I would rather be under satanist that's definitely the logical conclusion from what I said.