Thursday, May 21, 2015

A Thought for Thursday 21 May 2015

On this day in 1940, a special Nazi unit carried out its mission, executing more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia.  Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed “unfit” by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been “successfully evacuated.”  Source: History.com

History is not always interesting, but it is always useful because it gives us insight into a people, a culture.  The Nazi regime was decidedly cruel in its quest for a “master race”, exterminating all who were deemed unfit.  It was not only the Jews who suffered this incredible Holocaust; anyone who did not fit a preconceived mold of adequacy, who were deemed useless by this blood-thirsty regime were mercilessly executed.

These “useless” people, however, were not all summarily executed.  Many suffered through medical experiments conducted by the Nazis, human guinea pigs who were forced to endure extreme heat, extreme cold, and exploratory surgery with no anesthesia – to name only a few of the ruthless experiments to test human endurance.  Drugs and other chemical concoctions were also tested on these victims to determine their effects on humans.

These mental patients actually got off pretty easily compared to many who were not immediately executed, the thousands who died very slow, very painful deaths.  All the victims of the Holocaust were not deemed merely “unfit”; they were considered “sub-human”, not worthy of any real consideration.  Thankfully, after a long and costly war, this regime was defeated and many were convicted of crimes against humanity and executed.  To this day there are still Nazi hunters searching the globe for those who managed to escape from Germany after the war.

In our modern-day “culture of death” we are allowing history to repeat itself.  Though our government is not summarily executing persons who have been deemed “unfit”, our government and our culture have decided that some lives are not worthy of sacred respect.  Whether through abortion or euthanasia, we have convinced ourselves that “death with dignity” is a noble endeavor worthy of our time, our consideration, and our resources.  Taxpayers are compelled to contribute to these “social experiments” one way or the other, and too many are actually ok with it.  It is called “misappropriated compassion” in that we have convinced ourselves we are doing a good thing by deciding for ourselves the measure of “quality of life”.

Let us not be deceived.  We are in the midst of a culture that long ago crossed an ethical line.  It isn’t about “choice”, for most of these victims are compelled to endure (against their will) these merciless and misappropriated acts. "Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Numbers 35:33).

We are not doing a good thing by our acts or our silence.  We are polluting our land, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to make a case for Divine Grace when we show no effort or even intention to repent of these crimes against humanity, these crimes against Divine Creation.  It is ironic that many cannot read the book of Numbers without seeing a bloodthirsty God, and yet it was this God who exposed our own bloodlust, the same bloodlust we lift up today in the name of liberty, in the name of “choice”.

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).  It is long past time to awaken from this nightmare.


Michael

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