Today, on the way back from church Barbara and I listened to Sunday Brunch on ABC Sydney. Simon Marnie was interviewing Eva Cox, prominent for her outspoken views on social policy issues. In the course of the interview she reflected on the horrific things people do to each other. She made the point that everyone is capable of doing the things the Nazis did in Germany, a point that has brought her plenty of hurtful criticism. Here Cox concurs with Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, Heidegger’s former student and lover, who covered the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker. Adolf Eichmann, captured by Israeli security forces in 1960, was the SS lieutenant-colonel responsible for implementing Hitler’s Final Solution. This involved transporting Jews to the death camps in keeping with the goals Eichmann set for the number of Jews to be killed by certain dates. He also wrote memos to his superiors boasting that he had exceeded these goals.
Arendt later wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem, a book that continues to shock many because Arendt did not accept that Eichmann was a particularly evil man. She concluded, “One cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann.” Instead of finding a man driven by pathological anti-Semitism or extraordinary evil she found him to be an ordinary, boring bureaucrat who did evil things as part of a job he believed he was doing well, something we are all capable of doing under certain circumstances. Hence her famous phrase “the banality of evil.”
From a sociological standpoint, as Zygmunt Bauman has argued, Eichmann illustrates the dehumanizing nature of bureaucracy, which itself takes from bureaucrats any sense of personal responsibility for the lives of the individuals who are affected by their decisions. Indeed, in understanding Eichmann himself it may be too simplistic to explain his actions as merely due to a desire to promote his own career by pleasing his superiors. Clearly, Eichmann’s actions also reflect his own personal deficiencies. Whatever variables were involved in making Eichmann the man he was, Barbara Thiede’s conclusion holds good:
Bureaucrats can kill without compunction if that is part of their job description. Others will look on, or away. As Elie Wiesel has so often noted, apathy and indifference are no less dangerous than fanaticism.
These observations resonate with the biblical depiction of the sinful human nature which all individuals possess. It so happened that immediately before listening to this radio broadcast we had been listening to Allan Mao preaching on 1 Timothy 1:12-20, which Allan titled, emphasizing words in verse 15, “I am the worst.” The great apostle Paul, revered as a wonderful saint and man of God, reflects on how he had been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man” (v13). Yet, his life was marvelously transformed by his experience of God’s mercy and the abundant pouring out of the Lord’s grace upon him. Yet, as Allan pointed out, Paul does not say, “I was the worst of sinners”, but “I am the worst”. Paul knew full well that minus the mercy and grace of God he was the same man as he had been before he came to know the Lord. Further, Paul uses his own life to help Timothy to understand what it means to discharge the gospel trust (cf. v11). That is, Timothy too is being implicitly encouraged to see himself as the object of mercy and grace. It is precisely because we all share the same fallen nature that we should all have that sense, “I am the worst of sinners.” It is patently obvious from Paul’s example that this is not a morbid realization that leads to depression and self-harm. On the contrary, it is precisely this awareness that causes us to marvel in the mercy and grace of God and to be eager to share what lies at the heart of the gospel: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (v15a).
Let us not be under any illusions about our own personal propensity to think, do and say evil things. As God commented through Jeremiah:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
Posted July 20, 2008
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