Taking Sin Seriously – Eye to Eye with Evil

Key Bible Verse:  Greatly distressed, one by one they began to ask him, “I’m not the one, am I, Lord?”  – Matthew 26:22

Bonus Reading:  Mark 7:14-23

Adolf Eichmann was one of the worst of the Holocaust masterminds.  When he stood trial, prosecutors called a string of former concentration camp prisoners as witnesses.  One was a small, haggard man named Yehiel Dinur, who’d miraculously escaped death in Auschwitz.

On his day to testify, Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man—behind the bulletproof glass—who’d presided over the slaughter of millions.  As the eyes of the two men met—victim and murderous tyrant—the courtroom fell silent at the tense confrontation.

Then suddenly, Yehiel Dinur began to sob, collapsing to the floor.  Was he overcome by hatred, by the horrifying memories, by the evil incarnate in Eichmann’s face?

No. As he later explained in an interview, it was because Eichmann was not the demonic personification of evil he’d expected.  Rather, he was an ordinary man, just like anyone else.

In that one instant, Dinur came to the stunning realization that sin and evil are the human condition. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I’m capable to do this … exactly like he.”

Dinur’s shocking conclusion?  “Eichmann is in all of us.”

—Charles Colson in A Dangerous Grace

 

My Response:  How aware am I of my capacity for evil?

 

Thought to Apply:  The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian author)

Adapted from A Dangerous Grace (Word, 1994)

 

 

Prayer for the Week:  Forgive me, my Savior, for my denial of, or my cavalier attitude toward, my sins that cost You Your life.