Two Lives

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 1:18-25.

Roald Dahl is best known for his odd and somewhat dark stories for children, like James and the Giant Peach, Witches, Matilda, The BFG, and of course Willie Wonka. He also hosted a TV show for 9 years called Tales of the Unexpected, which dramatized short stories of his that were definitely not for children. I remember vividly one that was different from all the rest. Dahl said in the introduction that he had researched the details and, except for the dialog which he had to create, this story was true. It concerns a couple at an inn. The woman is about to give birth. She is worried because she has had 3 other children before and they all died. The doctor reassures her this one will live. Still, when the child is born her drunken husband says, “My God, Klara, this one is sicklier than the others!” The doctor and midwife beg the man to show his wife some compassion. And you really feel for the poor mother as she prays that her newborn baby will live. After he is done with the delivery, the doctor leaves the mother and child and, filling out the birth certificate, he asks the father what the boy's name will be. He answers, “Last name: Hitler. First name: Adolf.”

I checked it out and Dahl was right. Hitler was the 4^th of 6 children and the first 3, two boys and a girl, all died of disease or birth defect. Hitler's mother doted on him. He adored her. We even have a picture of him as a baby and he was cute. What went wrong?

Scholars have written books on this but I don't want to deal with that yet. For now I want to draw some comparisons between this person and another, not born in an inn.

Hitler was the son of a moderately successful customs official. He originally wanted to be an artist but after the first World War he became the head of a small political party and fancied himself a kind-of messiah, the savior of the mythical Aryan race from inferior races, like the Jews.

Jesus was born a Jew and raised as the son of a tekton, a Greek word that covers carpenters, masons, smiths and builders in general; in other words, a man who worked with his hands. (Matthew 13:55) Jesus himself took up that profession. (Mark 6:3) He was called by God to be the Messiah, the savior of his people, not from other people, but from their sins. And that did not stop Jesus from helping and healing non-Jews. (Matthew 8:5-13; Mark 7:24-30; Luke 17:11-19) In fact, he told his apostles to make disciples out of people from every nation. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Hitler was a powerful speaker and preached hatred towards those he saw as his enemies and enemies of his Reich or realm, both within Germany and outside it. He had his military personnel swear a personal oath to him and that they fight in his name.

Jesus was also a powerful speaker but preached love even towards one's enemies. (Matthew 5:44) He told his followers to turn the other cheek when struck. (Matthew 5:39) He told Pilate that the difference between his kingdom and those of this world was that his followers were not fighting for him. (John 18:36)

Hitler was obsessed with purity, especially when it came to ancestry. Since his father was born illegitimate, he vigorously defended himself against speculation that he was part-Jewish.

Jesus' culture was obsessed with purity, especially ritual purity that kept a person from touching lepers, or women who bled or the dead. Jesus ignored such things when it would prevent him from healing people. (Matthew 8:2-4; Mark 5:25-29; Luke 7:11-15) And as for racial purity, Matthew's genealogy of Jesus lists at least 3 Gentile women among his ancestors. (Matthew 1:3, 5)

Hitler promised his people victory and prosperity and to give every family a People's Car or Volkswagen, a promise he broke.

Jesus told his disciples that following him would mean persecution and possibly death. He told them to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. (Matthew 16:24-25)

Hitler had excellent generals but didn't listen to them. He micromanaged the war and lost.

Jesus sent his disciples out two by two, giving them authority to preach and to heal. (Mark 6:7-13) Before his ascension he sent them to carry on his mission. (Matthew 28:18-20)

When the Russians took Berlin, Hitler killed himself rather than let himself be captured and humiliated.

Jesus let his enemies arrest, try and execute him in the most painful and humiliating way possible.

Hitler was responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

Jesus never killed anyone. His death saved countless people.

Two babies, two men, two paths. One chose the conventional way to power and his name is a synonym for evil. His remaining family members changed their last name and decided not to have offspring so as not to perpetuate his legacy.

The other chose self-sacrifice and his name is a symbol of good. His family joined his followers and oversaw the church in Jerusalem. His brother James wrote one of the books in the New Testament. He died as a martyr to his faith in his brother Jesus.

Hitler was raised Catholic and, like a lot of boys, once thought of being a priest. And we are left to ponder what would have happened had he followed through on that. He would have been a powerful preacher. If he truly opened himself to following Jesus, he could have done a world of good.

And yet when he became the Fuhrer, he had the New Testament rewritten to suit his ideas. There was nothing in there about turning the other cheek or about serving the sick or the imprisoned or the foreigner. While in public Hitler paid lip service to Christianity, but in reality he worshiped another god: himself. He lived only for his own glory.

Proverbs says, “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death.” This is so true that Proverbs says it twice. (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25) And Jesus said, “What does it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) And despite the fact that we see this over and over again in the lives of so-called great men, people don't seem to learn from it, not even when it turns out to be fatal. Out of 69 Roman emperors 43 died violent deaths. That's 62%. Most died from assassination, followed by suicide and then death in combat. Hitler survived assassination attempts but it left him addicted to multiple drugs when he killed himself. His allies, Mussolini and Tojo, were killed, one by the mob, the other convicted of war crimes and hung. In our time we've seen the deaths of people like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Ben Ladin. They all pursued power through might and fear. They all died ignominious deaths.

You could say Jesus died an ignominious death, though it is no longer considered to be that by most people. Because he used his power to heal others and to feed the hungry.

Hitler promised his people a glorious Thousand Year Reich. It lasted just 12 years.

After two thousand years, 1/3 of the world's population, 2.4 billion people, call themselves Christian. They are found in every country on earth.

And, yes, not all who call themselves Christian are real followers of Jesus. And, yes, terrible things have been done in the name of Christ. But they clearly go against what Jesus explicitly said not to do. Jesus knew some evildoers would claim to act in his name. He said there is no place for them in his kingdom. (Matthew 7:21-23)

But every atrocity done in Hitler's name was explicitly called for by him or consistent with what he said. And using the numbers compiled in Matthew White's book Atrocities, even if we do not lay the entire death toll of the Second World War at his feet, Hitler and his followers still killed millions more people in 1 decade than all those killed over 20 centuries by so-called “Christians”. Hitler even beat the number of deaths attributed to Stalin and Mao—if you exclude the famines they caused.

Now let's ask it: why did Hitler choose the path he did?

Some say he was a psychopath. Which may have made a different life harder for him but not impossible. Professor James Fallon is a neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath when he saw his own brain scan and checked his own DNA for “warrior genes.” And his family tree includes 6 murderers including Lizzie Borden. His family and colleagues confirmed that he had no emotional empathy for others. But through using his cognitive empathy, consciously stopping and asking himself what a good person would do in a situation, he has changed. And his research shows that even the expression of warrior genes can change. This shows there are pro-social psychopaths.

Some point to the abuse Hitler received from his father as the reason he became the person he was. But people such as Beethoven, Brahms, Tyler Perry, Maya Angelou, and Eleanor Roosevelt, among many others, were abused as children and yet grew up to do things that made the world a better place. They chose not to pass on their trauma to the world.

Hitler's past need not have determined his future. Nor do our pasts.

We always have a choice. And we have the words and example of Jesus. And if we ask we can have the same Spirit as Jesus in us. And in Jesus, we have a God who understands the pain and trauma of living in this world firsthand and who forgives and heals and who is willing to walk beside us through whatever hell we find ourselves in.

And what's more, the closer we get to Jesus, the more we become like him. And the more we become like him, the closer we come to being the person he created us to be: loving and whole.

The choice is ours.