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What would you do

abide

abide

Member
Take your mind back to the holocaust in Germany during the war. You are a German Christian and you were a truck driver or working in one of the concentration camps.

You have found out that the Jews are being taken to be killed. You need your job but you have conflicting views concerning what you should do as a Christian.

  • Would you quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Whenever I read stories about the Nazi concentration camps I asked myself these same questions
The bible speaks about the tribulation and the time during when people will not be able to buy or sell. How will we deal with such circumstances. How far will our love go. It is a question that we need to think about.
 
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abide said:
Take your mind back to the holocaust in Germany during the war. You are a German Christian and you were a truck driver or working in one of the concentration camps.

You have found out that the Jews are being taken to be killed. You need your job but you have conflicting views concerning what you should do as a Christian.

  • Would you quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Whenever I read stories about the Nazi concentration camps I asked myself these same questions
The bible speaks about the tribulation and the time during when people will not be able to buy or sell. How will we deal with such circumstances. How far will our love go. It is a question that we need to think about.
Click to expand...
On this note

http://www.gamblefuneralservice.com/obituary/herman-lewis-cranman/#comment-202467

I wanted to meet him,his son,Roy is a reminder of my uncle.Herman wrote a book of beING a pow.I have that book.
 
abide said:
  • Would quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Click to expand...
Dear Sister abide, I like your reasoning and it has to be hard choices we must make at times.

First thing that comes to mind is Rom 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. How has this affected others in the past having orders they could not, or would not adhere to?

Dan 3:5 That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up:
Dan 3:14 Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego heard these orders in Dan 3:6 And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace, they responded with:

Dan 3:16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.Dan 3:17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
Dan 3:18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

They ended up in the furnace but Jesus went there with them in Dan 3:25.Daniel faced a similar experience in Dan 6:7 All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Daniel continues praying.
 
abide said:
Take your mind back to the holocaust in Germany during the war. You are a German Christian and you were a truck driver or working in one of the concentration camps.

You have found out that the Jews are being taken to be killed. You need your job but you have conflicting views concerning what you should do as a Christian.

  • Would you quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Whenever I read stories about the Nazi concentration camps I asked myself these same questions
The bible speaks about the tribulation and the time during when people will not be able to buy or sell. How will we deal with such circumstances. How far will our love go. It is a question that we need to think about.
Click to expand...

Germany was a Christian nation!
 
abide said:
Take your mind back to the holocaust in Germany during the war. You are a German Christian and you were a truck driver or working in one of the concentration camps.

You have found out that the Jews are being taken to be killed. You need your job but you have conflicting views concerning what you should do as a Christian.

  • Would you quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Whenever I read stories about the Nazi concentration camps I asked myself these same questions
The bible speaks about the tribulation and the time during when people will not be able to buy or sell. How will we deal with such circumstances. How far will our love go. It is a question that we need to think about.
Click to expand...
Hi Abide,
I'd like to think that my answers would be positive.

I do have a comment regarding your second question.
That's an incorrect way to think about anything. Just because someone will take your place, does not absolve you of your own personal responsibility.

We are responsible to God on an individual basis, so we cannot say that if we quit it's useless because someone else will just take over.

It's OUR soul we must be concerned with. So it would be right to quit the job of driving the truck. Whatever happens after that is not our moral responsibility.
 
Because of the authority figure giving out the orders.

It became a psychological study. And the research was done accurately. But the researcher and his research was completely vilified. It was a show on Netflix for a while. (Can't remember the name)

But basically most people pass the responsibility off to the authority figure giving the orders. No matter what they are told to do. Even torturing, hurting, and killing innocent people.
 
If I was a Christian in Germany during that time, I hope I would have had the sence to leave. To take my wife and any family I had to somewhere else. The more I learn about Germany at that tine the more toxic it seems. I would hope that that toxicness would be realized and for me to pick up what I could and flee from it.

In today's world I don't know what we can.
 
JohnDB said:
Because of the authority figure giving out the orders.

It became a psychological study. And the research was done accurately. But the researcher and his research was completely vilified. It was a show on Netflix for a while. (Can't remember the name)

But basically most people pass the responsibility off to the authority figure giving the orders. No matter what they are told to do. Even torturing, hurting, and killing innocent people.
Click to expand...
Are you speaking of the experiment where people shock others when they give wrong answers? And they continue to administer shocks at the demand of the tester even though they are led to belive the shocks are incredibly painful? It was found most people were compliant to that demand. I think this experiment was done sometime in the late 50's early 60's......I don't remember the name of it but we studied it in psych 101.
 
Here it is:
Milgram experiment
For Milgram's other well-known experiment, see Small-world experiment.

The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject is led to believe that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.[1]
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychologyexperiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience; the experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of people were prepared to obey, albeit unwillingly, even if apparently causing serious injury and distress. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2]

The experiments began in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University,[3] three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"[4] The experiments have been repeated many times in the following years with consistent results within differing societies, although not with the same percentages around the globe.[5]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
 
jasonc said:
Antisemitism goes back long long before the 1930s,try at least to m.Luther and before.
Click to expand...
Yes, It started with the church in Rome. I can give you specific dates: Rome 200 A.D. In 240 A.D. Rome began to run the Jew out of their land.
  • History of the Church vs. Jews - Jesus would be furious
    jesuswouldbefurious.org/Catholic/ChurchvsJews.html

    Christian persecution of the Jews . ... document Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church: ...
 
Douglas Summers said:
Yes, It started with the church in Rome. I can give you specific dates: Rome 200 A.D. In 240 A.D. Rome began to run the Jew out of their land.

  • History of the Church vs. Jews - Jesus would be furious
    jesuswouldbefurious.org/Catholic/ChurchvsJews.html

    Christian persecution of the Jews . ... document Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church: ...
Click to expand...
I'm of Jewish lineage, currently my avatar on fb us a grave of a deceased relative.
 
abide said:
Take your mind back to the holocaust in Germany during the war. You are a German Christian and you were a truck driver or working in one of the concentration camps.

You have found out that the Jews are being taken to be killed. You need your job but you have conflicting views concerning what you should do as a Christian.

  • Would you quit once you found out?
  • Or would you used human reasoning saying I am just doing my job driving or cooking for the inmates. It is a management problem. Even if I don't work here the officials will still do what they intend to do.
  • Would you find a way help some escape?
  • Would you allow any to come to your home for safety?
Whenever I read stories about the Nazi concentration camps I asked myself these same questions
The bible speaks about the tribulation and the time during when people will not be able to buy or sell. How will we deal with such circumstances. How far will our love go. It is a question that we need to think about.
Click to expand...

hello abide, dirtfarmer here

I look at the question differently, I guess. Was the soldiers that killed each other right or correct in engaging in war that the leaders of their country declared? Or do the civil authorities have the right to inflick death to people who commit certain crimes against the populace? It is my belief that those that are elected to positions of authority in governments are so commissioned by God to carry out the laws of "the land" and will have much more to answer for.

Romans 13:1-5, " Let every soul be subject unto the higher power, for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For the rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid: for he beareth not the sword of God in vain: For he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

In Daniel 3 and "the 3 Hebrew children", which Eugene has mentioned, is about worship of another god. There is no ruler that has the power to constraint any one to worship anyone or any thing, other that the God that rules over his creation. Was Shindler wrong in his helping those that he did, I don't think so, because he was following his conscience, neither do I think that the truck driver that delivered people to the concentration camps was guilty. He was obeying a higher authority. Did the subjects of Nebuchadnezzar suffer the same fate as he, for seven years?

It is my belief that we should obey "the law of the land" if it doesn't require us to bow down and worship a god other that the true God.

 
But (just to be obstinate) Daniel defied the laws and got thrown into the Lion's den for doing so.

Shadrach, Meeshac and Abednego got thrown into the furnace for defying the King.

There comes a point where "just following orders" doesn't cut the mustard.

We were given brains to use. God expects us to use them. Even Elisha told a bold faced lie to them soldiers.

Preventing frivolous loss of life seems to be one key.
Preventing separation from God seems to be another boundary. There are possible others...But I can't remember them all.
 
dirtfarmer said:
hello abide, dirtfarmer here

I look at the question differently, I guess. Was the soldiers that killed each other right or correct in engaging in war that the leaders of their country declared? Or do the civil authorities have the right to inflick death to people who commit certain crimes against the populace? It is my belief that those that are elected to positions of authority in governments are so commissioned by God to carry out the laws of "the land" and will have much more to answer for.

Romans 13:1-5, " Let every soul be subject unto the higher power, for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For the rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid: for he beareth not the sword of God in vain: For he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

In Daniel 3 and "the 3 Hebrew children", which Eugene has mentioned, is about worship of another god. There is no ruler that has the power to constraint any one to worship anyone or any thing, other that the God that rules over his creation. Was Shindler wrong in his helping those that he did, I don't think so, because he was following his conscience, neither do I think that the truck driver that delivered people to the concentration camps was guilty. He was obeying a higher authority. Did the subjects of Nebuchadnezzar suffer the same fate as he, for seven years?

It is my belief that we should obey "the law of the land" if it doesn't require us to bow down and worship a god other that the true God.
Click to expand...
Hi Dirtfarmer,
I've thought of Romans 13:1-5 many times.
If the laws of the land do not agree with the laws of God, I'd have to say that the laws of God must be obeyed first.

Hitler did think he was God. So serving him was akin to serving a god.

If one was a soldier in his regime, he would not have had a choice not to follow the commands of his superior. How one would deal with such a situation, I do not know. I could say what I THINK I would have done, but I really will never know since I was not faced with that choice.

If I were a truck driver, however, and had the choice to quit --- then I would. No doubt about it.

I must say that I was rather horrified to read of the Milgram Experiment which civilwarbuff posted.

WHY would the teacher flip the switch? I don't think I could. I say think, because I truly feel we don't know what we would do in any situation until we were actually faced with it.
 
wondering said:
Hi Abide,
I'd like to think that my answers would be positive.

I do have a comment regarding your second question.
That's an incorrect way to think about anything. Just because someone will take your place, does not absolve you of your own personal responsibility.

We are responsible to God on an individual basis, so we cannot say that if we quit it's useless because someone else will just take over.

It's OUR soul we must be concerned with. So it would be right to quit the job of driving the truck. Whatever happens after that is not our moral responsibility.
Click to expand...
wondering said:
Hi Abide,
I'd like to think that my answers would be positive.

I do have a comment regarding your second question.
That's an incorrect way to think about anything. Just because someone will take your place, does not absolve you of your own personal responsibility.

This question was

We are responsible to God on an individual basis, so we cannot say that if we quit it's useless because someone else will just take over.

It's OUR soul we must be concerned with. So it would be right to quit the job of driving the truck. Whatever happens after that is not our moral responsibility.
Click to expand...
wondering said:
Hi Dirtfarmer,
I've thought of Romans 13:1-5 many times.
If the laws of the land do not agree with the laws of God, I'd have to say that the laws of God must be obeyed first.

Hitler did think he was God. So serving him was akin to serving a god.:agreed

If one was a soldier in his regime, he would not have had a choice not to follow the commands of his superior. How one would deal with such a situation, I do not know. I could say what I THINK I would have done, but I really will never know since I was not faced with that choice. So true:neutral

If I were a truck driver, however, and had the choice to quit --- then I would. No doubt about it.:wave2

I must say that I was rather horrified to read of the Milgram Experiment which civilwarbuff posted.

WHY would the teacher flip the switch? I don't think I could. I say think, because I truly feel we don't know what we would do in any situation until we were actually faced with it.
Click to expand...
We are on the same page:amen
 
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