Holiness = Happiness

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

How vital it is for us to keep in mind our distinctive love ethic (agape). Just as God loves the world (see John 3:16-17), we are called to love it too; praying and laboring for the existential and eternal best for all of the below by command of all of the above.

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In my many visits to Dachau as a student in the early 70s and then later as a tourist and tour guide, I often thought of Pastor Niemoller's witness.

Regardless of the weather, I have always been chilled at Dachau. It remains one of the most grotesque examples of inhumanity and unholiness. 160,000 slave laborers were confined in that one concentration camp under subhuman conditions before liberation. Aside from the Satanically inspired facilities for mass murder and cremation with meat hooks used to warehouse the bodies of our Lord's children, Dachau was the site of brutally unspeakable medical experiments — that's a euphemism for Nazi butchering — on over 3,500 prisoners. God only knows how many of God's children were slaughtered by those German demons at Dachau.

Despite knowing more than 6 million people (mostly Jews) perished in those houses of hell and not forgetting that millions more were exterminated outside of the camps, the horror is still unimaginable to people in countries like America which have been insulated from such barbarity by relatively civilized borders.

That's why I scolded a retired pastor who served under Hitler after he came to see me and complained about theologians like me who continue to refer to Germany's national sins surrounding World War II, "I pray to God that we'll never stop because God forbid that it should happen again."

When we don't learn from history's pejoratives, it repeats itself. God knows we haven't learned from history. Having witnessed the reincarnations of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Austria, France, and Germany myself beginning in the early 70s and continuing into the 21st century, I was not surprised by their exposed complicity in the evils of Iraq under Hussein along with their damning silence about Islam's hate homiletics.

That's why I carry two stones from Dachau in my pocket. I picked them up during my last visit in 2000. One is white to remind me of the purity of holiness which honors God by helping all of God's children.

One is red to remind me of the floods of blood that have been spilled because of unholy alliances. I carry them as my burden; praying God's help.