"I'm not as bad as Hitler"

Here's my article for the November magazine:

This year marks the 80^th anniversary of the start of World War Two and also, perhaps, the start of a new way to personify pure evil. During WWII, the person of Adolf Hitler was unsurprisingly used by the Allied nations in their propaganda to illustrate the immorality of the Nazi regime. However, this association of Hilter with evil continues to the present day in a way that isn't true of Kaiser Wilhelm who was used in similar propaganda in WWI. Hitler continues to be used to personify evil; perhaps because in our secular world that cannot acknowledge a supernatural realm, there needs to be something to replace the devil.

Hitler has also indirectly contributed to the field of logic. A reductio ad Hitlerum is an attempt to invalidate someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler, e.g. he was a vegetarian and against smoking. In the world of the Internet, Godwin's rule asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. This has the unfortunate side-effect that making any reference to Hitler or the Nazis, however justified, is now seen as a reason not to listen to that argument. This is particularly dangerous when it comes to issues of censorship and restrictions on freedoms of speech and belief, which were used by the Nazis to quash any opposition or disagreement and are also increasingly used today to stop any questioning of the cultural zeitgeist.

There is another way that Hitler is used in arguments. Again he is used as the embodiment of evil, but this time people use him to compare themselves with: they say “I may not be perfect, but I'm not as bad as Hitler.” This has particularly dire consequences when it comes to the subject of sin and judgement. The Bible teaches us that one day Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:5). It reminds us that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's standard (Romans3:23) and that we all therefore need to repent in order to be forgiven (Acts 3:19) and enjoy eternal life with God (Revelation 21:27).

Now I doubt whether anyone considers themselves to be perfect, but the problem is that when we compare our sins to other peoples' sins we will always be able to think of people who do worse or more sins than us, and if we can't, we can always rely on the argument that “I'm not as bad as Hitler”! When we do this we minimise and trivialise our sins to such an extent that we don't feel the need to repent. But if we look at this from God's point of view rather than our own we see that “the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James2:10 The Living Bible), because Jesus tells us that the standard is to be as perfect as God himself (Matthew 5:48).

To have a right view of ourselves is to say that we are just as bad a Hitler and that we don't deserve eternal life any more than he does, no matter how many good things we do in our lives. But the glorious good news is that even though we are that bad, Jesus died to take our punishment so that through belief in him we can enjoy eternal life with God and with no more pain, suffering or war.

Longing for a better world

Here's my sermon for this year's Remembrance Service at Broughton, the readings were Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Micah 4:1-5:

Last year we marked the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War, a war which put an end to the Victorian and Edwardian idea that human history was a march of progress with the world getting a better place as time went on. This year, we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, a war that put an end to the idea that wars are the way to solve humanity's problems.

Just over twenty years after the conclusion of the so-called 'War to end all wars', the sons and grandsons of the Great War veterans went off to fight on European soil again, and in one way or another, our armed forces have been on active duty somewhere ever since.  The writer of the Bible book Ecclesiastes said that there is a time for war and a time for peace – although we see precious little of the time for peace.

He is writing about what he sees in the world around him, and part of his message is that we can endure the bad things that happen, because they will pass.  However, there is a larger message in his book that is greater than this Stoical, stiff-upper-lip, almost fatalistic, view.  And that is that these are things that happen 'under the heavens', meaning that these things happen on earth.  He goes on to say that if our life on earth is the only life we have then every event and action, good and bad, is meaningless, and we should therefore just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

But the writer says that God has put eternity in our hearts, he has given us all a deep sense that there is more to life than this life, and therefore we cannot be satisfied by looking at the world this way.  We all have a desire in us for the things of heaven, whether that's justice, or peace, or safety, or joy, or love.  We want an end to all those bad things that the writer of Ecclesiastes lists.  We want an end to death, to killing, to destruction.  We want an end to weeping and to mourning.  We want an end to hate, and an end to war.

But how can this happen?  The Second World War proved that war is not the solution.  So how can there be a time when nation will not take up sword against nation, where everyone can live in peace?  The prophet Micah tells us that if we want the benefits of heaven we need to turn to the God of heaven: “He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”

However, we cannot do this on our own.  Humanity is incapable of making itself perfect.  The First World War taught us that.  We need help from God.  The final book of the Bible, Revelation, gives us a great picture of what the new, redeemed and restored world will look like when everyone walks God's way: “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

An estimated 19 million people died in the First World War, and an estimated 85 million in the Second World War.  Both wars were fought to bring justice and peace, to make the world a better place.  But it took only one death to make that heaven-on-earth possible, and that one death was Jesus'.  Jesus declared that he is the way, the truth and the life and that no-one comes to the Father except through him.  He declared that he would lay down his life so that we may have life and have it to the full.

So if you long for a world where there is no more death or killing, mourning or pain; if you want a world of justice and peace, joy and love; if you want the kind of world those in the World Wars fought for; then come to Jesus: he will teach us his ways, so we may walk in his paths, now and for ever. Amen.