striped pajamas

I watched the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" today.

I mainly watched it because Maddy is watching it in one of her classes and I wanted to know what they were seeing.  They have been studying much of the goings-on during the holocaust.

Just now I was trying to fall asleep when the few final scenes of the movie started to run through my mind.

They aren't graphic or grotesque, from a visual point of view.  

But they are absolutely grotesque and horrific from pretty well any other stand point.

The thing that I keep thinking is How. 

How was something like that possible?

How did so many people get so brainwashed into believing that the Jews were subhuman?

How could people treat other people that way?

But I guess things like that have been going on since life began.

And that is the way of humans.

I think sometimes that there is no way anything like that could ever happen again.  But I am pretty sure that I am wrong.  It has happened over and over and over again in our past and still happens now in many areas of the world.  And what would stop it from happening again....

The holocaust really wasn't that long ago, from a historical perspective.  It's not like we have "advanced" so much since then.  Another holocaust may not happen, but something else - something that destroys the beauty of human life - can.

People treated others like trash - or worse.

Why?  What causes that?

It is Pride.

Hatred.

Jealousy.

Arrogance.

Self-centeredness.

and

Fear.

It is Sin.

And these things, these sins, are always around us.

And they always destroy.

There are reasons why God says " It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex, a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community."  (Galatians 5, The Message;  impurity, debauchery, idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy - NIV).
Because these things do nothing but hurt and destroy.

So today I was brought again to the stark reality of the prominence of evil.

But that has to take me to the prominence of Good.

Sin and death may have a victory all too often, but in the end good, God, will conquer it all.