It is important to remember the suffering that others have gone through in the past to avoid doing the same in the future. In this video Mrs. Hoffman, a survivor of Auschwitz, tells her story of what she experienced during the horrors of the Holocaust.
She spoke of the great hunger and suffering that she and others faced while being held captive in Nazi Germany. She said while some novelists could try to capture the experience in their work the feelings of how you can lose your family members and watch so many innocent people die is a feeling only those who experienced it can really understand.
In the video she questioned how people were capable of doing such horrible things to other people and that is something we should question as well. The demonization of others who are not like us is one way people end up on the path to killing others. But it isn’t often a straight jump to that. When we live in a social bubble that talks far more about others than it listens to them it is very easy to get biased information, which leads to a biased perspective of those deemed outsiders.
When we harbor a sense of self-righteousness and judgmentalism it is easy to assume we are the authority on the lives of others and how valuable they are and dismiss information that doesn’t justify our ego and validate our assumptions about those who do not see or experience the world the way we do. When we don’t keep our pride in check it far easier to listen to those who feed our ego that “we” are better than “them” whoever the them may be. It is the lack of personal humility which leads to the assumption that we are better than others that provides fertile soil to grow in self-interest and the dismissal of those who get in the way of our greed and quest for self-importance.
That is why the Bible says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” Proverbs 4:23-27 Too many people are more concerned about what is right or left than what is Godly. And we people get caught up in self-seeking, be it on an individual or political level instead of seeking to please God in character and love for others it can be all too easy to justify harming others as a means to a “good” end which is what those who seek evil do. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4
