As I thought about the incredible evil that the Nazis committed in World War II I kept thinking about a tract that I read many years ago by Chuck Colson called The Danger of Being Normal. In the tract a holocaust survivor named, Yehiel Dinur, comes face to face at the 1961 Nuremburg trials with one of the chief architects of the holocaust, Adolph Eichmann.
When the Dinur sees Eichmann he trembles and passes out. When he comes to, years later in an interview with Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes, he was asked what went through his mind when he saw Eichmann. His response is telling. He basically said that when he saw Eichmann, for the first time in almost 18 years, he no longer looked like the godlike man he once looked like to him but that he looked like an “ordinary man” just like him. Dinur went on to share with Wallace: “I was afraid about myself; I saw that I am capable of doing this. I am exactly like he.”1 Then Wallace concluded that “Eichmann is in all of us!”
I believe that because Jesus lives in us we hopefully would never do such evil even if placed in a similar circumstance. But remember Peter denied Jesus three times. Without Jesus in us I believe we human beings are capable of great evil if the circumstances are just right. Thank God for Jesus!
1 The Line Separating Good and Evil – Richard E. Simmons III (richardesimmons3.com)