Gen 3 Human potential

I watched some of Hitler's home movies today. The relaxed, friendly man they capture is at times perhaps even more chilling than the one we see shouting at rallies in front of huge Nazi flags. The Hitler portrayed in these films plays with children, genuinely and gently interacting with them. He engages in small talk about films, joking at one point that some of his female friends would rather have watched "Gone with the wind" the night before.

One commentator said this of the films:

"it's very easy to think of Hitler simply as a Monster, simply as a raving mad man if you like. To see him in this atmosphere is I think somehow very disturbing, because this human dimension, in a way, relates Hitler to us and says to us that he is a human being just as we are. That maybe in some, even if a very small way, we have the sort of potential to do evil as Hitler did."

And that's the truth of Genesis 3. Adam was human, Cain was human, Hitler was human and we are human. The seed of Hitler's sins was sown in Eden and passed to him through Adam's decedents. That same seed lives in me. I have the same root in me as the ordinary men and women who drove the cattle trucks, separated the men from the woman and children, who stoked the fires, who piled up the teeth and collected the hair.

I still vividly remember the first time I realised I was really sinful. Stained with guilt. I never really saw it before. It wasn't just other people who were bad it was me and I needed a saviour.

PS. Interesting enough I learned today that Hitler was said to be a vegetarian and very concerned about animal welfare. The Nazis engineered the torture and slaughter of million yet passed laws to protect horses and lobsters. Just another chilling insight into the twisted blindness of sin.