Mass graves, revisited: from whence the barbarity?

Have you ever taken another person's life? Ever purposely done physical harm to another human being? Ever enjoyed it? I wonder how it feels? (not enough to want to try it, though!)

THE WALL OF NAMES
"a permanent memorial to the victims of the Rwandan genocide - a poignant reminder of the estimated 250,000 victims buried just metres away."

I can be indignant today over yesterday's unthinkable deeds, but I am unable to prevent such atrocities from occurring tomorrow. It seems easier to register my horror at events in far away places than to stand up to the seeds of like brutality in my own backyard.

What does it take to be a perpetrator of -or accessory to- wholesale savagery?


1. Nearsightedness helps...

• Many seem limited in their ability to view a world beyond their own, to think more in the abstract, or to be more objective than subjective;
• Not searching for a right way to live that would apply to all human beings; thus, they are more vulnerable to manipulation.

2. Mental laziness helps...

• A penchant for "group-think".
• Drawing conclusions about groups of people based on limited personal experience or physical appearance.
• Reinforcing prejudice by blindly swallowing hearsay from those around us who already think like we do.
• Avoiding rather than embracing interaction with people other than our "own kind". This is, by the way, how potentially dangerous cults evolve.

    "Life is really complicated," THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PARTY IDEOLOGIES. "And the way people shield themselves from that complexity is by identifying more or less arbitrarily with a set of opinions and then sticking to those things like glue. People barricade themselves inside fortresses of knowledge. They're very territorial about their ideological structures. And they like to be in there with a bunch of other people who think like they do." Hence the immense popularity of highly polarized and politicized cable news shows.

3. Racism helps...

• Part and parcel of the aforementioned factors.
• Racism does not live too far down the street from Final Solutions.
• Racists (found anywhere in the world, I'm sure) are generally incorrigible and unapologetic... scary thought.

4. An inferiority complex helps...

• The real motive behind what appears as a superiority complex. Those truly at peace inside themselves have first made peace with God.
• Beware the individual who needs to establish his own self-worth by standing on the necks of others, however sophisticated his arguments appear.

5. Explosive emotionalism helps...

• Some seem incapable of self-analysis; when the right buttons are pushed, rational dialogue and objective reflection are thrown out the window.

6. A steady drizzle of paranoid chatter helps...

• Illegal Immigrants! Muslims!     ___________!  (you fill in the blank).
• SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS is a movie worth watching... the book by David Guterson was superbly written. Set in the Pacific Northwest around Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it portrays the tragic result of the prejudice and paranoia that manage to prevail in times of crisis.

7. A cauterized conscience helps...

• The potential to be a "Cain" to our "Abel" lies within. The refusal to follow the light of God and continual resistance to His Word can lead to the "reprobate mind" described in Romans chapter 1. After that, everything monstrous is possible.

8. Megalomania helps...

• The Hitlers, Stalins and Idi Amins have something especially perverse going on inside of them. Is it more shameful that they exist or that they exist outside of padded cells garnering so many followers?

9. A skewered view of the "kingdom of God" helps...

• Every act of violence in the name of God and religion, Christian or otherwise, lacks divine approval.
• It should be pretty clear to us who is following God and who is not.

BOTTOM LINE:

• The fact of one crucified Christ for the sins of all mankind nullifies every attempt ever made by cruel sophistry to assert some distinction among people groups that would justify one human being doing harm to another.
• All are condemned without Christ; all are offered eternal salvation in Christ.
• He loves "THEM" just as much as he loves me.

For the Christian, it is time to live the Gospel... it is time to sing a new song!

“And they sung a new song, saying,
Thou art worthy to take the book,
and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain,
and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood 
out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;”

(Revelation 5:9)