Choosing our steps

Dear editor:

Once upon a time in a country far across the sea, there lived a nation of people who were typical of humans everywhere. They married and gave in marriage; they sold and bought; some worshipped in churches on Saturday or Sunday, and some did not believe in a higher power.

Some did good things, and some did evil things, and no one was perfect. Many loved their fellow people, cared for the sick, fed the hungry, while some did not care about others. Some were selfish, some were generous.

Their nation was pretty much like any other nation on the face of the earth. The masses wanted to “make Germany great again.”

Nazi power began its rise in about 1930. Some believed their promises. Those who could read the signs arose each morning more disturbed about what they were seeing and hearing, more afraid that their lives were about to be changed for the worse, more aware that their homes and businesses were in grave danger.

The Jews, especially, realized early that they were targets of physical and psychological oppression. Unless they supported this new religion called Nazism, they were doomed. Many were not given the opportunity to change their religion, even if they had wanted to do so. They were Jews, and they were not to be trusted. They were an inferior race. Millions were rounded up and transported to labor camps and to furnaces that burned on human fuel. A million and a half were children.

Although there are still some who deny that these things ever happened, people with an ordinary helping of brains and logic know that this is a true story. Those who think that it is a fairy tale have difficulty separating truth from fiction in many other ways.

Unfortunately, there are some who sit on the fence like mugwumps. They believe that such things happened, but they also believe that God, the one who made us all of one blood, was the author of this evil, ignoring the Scripture that denies that God could be such. Their understanding of sin and the punishment for it leads them to see what happened to these pitiful creatures as being God’s intentional will. Their error lies in the fact that they do not understand that God permits some things to happen but does not cause them to happen. They wonder what monstrous wrongdoing on the Jews’ part could have brought this on, that God would use Hitler as an instrument to cleanse their lives — permanently.

Today, as always, evil leaders — inept, lying, egotistical, narcissistic, self-serving, self-centered — are not placed in office by God. They are put there by voters — those who cast their ballots for them, and those who do not bother to go to the polls. If we do not vote, we elect by neglect.

In matters of government, we are allowed to choose our own steps. We must pay the price for our mistakes if we choose wrong. C.G. Smith Hot Springs