Justice and Mercy

We returned from Krakow on Monday afternoon, and I'm just now gathering the energy to write about our trip. I'm sitting in Coffee Heaven in a big comfy chair, sipping my latte and savoring a chocolate muffin as I look out the window at the bustling streets of Prague. Seems like pretty good writing conditions to me.

Poland was absolutely beautiful. I couldn't imagine a better location for a spiritual retreat. After a long seven hour train ride, we finally arrived at our great hostel in Krakow late Wednesday evening. Along with the six interns were the Stewart family, the Hunter family (the WHM missionaries who we stayed with in Vienna), Bethany (who flew over from the States to help lead the teaching during our retreat), and our friends Jason and Dot. In other words, it was a pretty large crew.

Our time was mostly filled with group worship and teaching time, as well as individual discipleship and personal reflection. We skimmed the surface of World Harvest's Sonship program, which is absolutely amazing from the tiny portion of it that I've heard. All of us were challenged to explode the way we apply the actual truth of the Gospel to the way we view ourselves, the way we view others, and the way we view God. The particular areas we tried to unpack were sin, grace, repentance, conflict, and forgiveness. We held our sessions down in the hostel's pub, and by the end of the week, the bar workers asked if we could keep our door open so they could hear us singing hymns.

I love the town square in Krakow. It's a huge open space filled with beautiful sidewalk cafes and a large market of Polish jewelry and pottery. The atmosphere was very different than Prague....so friendly and full of life. I loved walking along the street to the melodic sounds of a waltz played by the violinists at all the restaurants. There were also some really interesting performances in the center square, such as a break dance troupe, a man who moved marionettes to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," men who danced with fire batons to the rhythms of live drumming, and a sequin bedazzled Polish male singer who was accompanied by some rather shady flamenco dancers. All of it just felt marvelously vibrant and European.

On Thursday, we visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. I'm incapable of even beginning to put my experience there into words. I have always had a major interest in the Holocost, but there is a world of difference between reading about it in a history book and actually walking through gas chambers where millions of people were coldly exterminated from existence. When we entered the camp, I felt a heavy weight come on me, and it never left. I felt physically sick and burdened to think about the immense evil perpetrated in that camp of death, and couldn't help crying as we walked through parts of Auschwitz. It's one thing to hear about over a million people dying in that one camp.....it's another to see expansive mountains of their shorn hair. It's easy to dehumanize numbers...not so easy when you walk past piles and piles of shoes, taken from the feet of those who were murdered. To put faces with those shoes...that adorned the feet of smiling children, that an adoring husband gave to his lovely wife....and hardest of all to face, the pairs that looked exactly like shoes I own. I couldn't escape the thought that these people could have so easily been my family and friends. It shocked all of us to hear the exact details of how the entire murderous operation was so precisely planned, so cruelly calculated with cold effeciency by so many people. The utter deception of the whole thing was stunning, too...almost no one who stepped off those trains knew what they were about to face. It makes me sick to think that many bought their own train tickets....tickets to their death. We saw large rooms full of kitchen utensils and suitcases....these people simply believed they were being relocated, and packed up their entire lives.

More staggering and heartbreaking than the thought that I could be one of these victims was the realization that I could also have been one of the perpetrators. The deep evil that took place in Auschwitz lingers in my own heart. It was good to go to the concentration camp directly before talking about sin, to recognize the full capacity for evil in the human condition, to recognize the full capacity for the evil in my human flesh. I like to think of the Holocost as a misguided, horrific accident, casued at the hands of a few power hungry lunatics....but the truth is, it took hundreds of people to carefully plan every detail of this mass execution. Normal people, like me. These people were not brutal, ignorant savages....they were wealthy, educated, and civilized. They listened to classical music and appreciated beautiful art. They were not so brainwashed and blind as I would like to think. The human heart is so quick to embrace an ideology of hatred and exclusion. I think of my own prideful desires to be glorified as an integral member of something significant and to be recognized for my intelligence, and I wonder how quickly those desires would have led me to embrace Nazism during that time. I would like to think of myself as Corrie Ten Boom, when I'm often more similar to the Nazi guards. As we walked through the camp, I found myself angry and thirsty for justice. My anger began to turn towards myself as I realized that similar atrocities are happening today, as basic human rights to life are viciously trampled in so many nations around the the world, and I turn a blind eye. The horror of the Holocost began when people were able to dehumanize other people, and that's exactly what I chose to do to suffering people groups today. I hear about the ravaged lives of people in Darfur and the millions dying in the AIDS crisis, and they become mere numbers in my brain, statistics without faces and souls.

My prayer is that my heart would break over injustice, whether its over the starving orphan in Darfur or the hungry homeless woman sleeps five minutes away from my comfortable bed in Greensboro, NC. But even that isn't the end of the story. Micah 6:8..."He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" I cannot only desire justice...I must desire mercy as well. Though I loved the idea of God's righteous wrath being poured out at the end of time on the perpetrators of inhumane cruelty, I struggled to accept that the cross of Christ could also cover those people. I remembered Corrie Ten Boom's story of leading one of her former Nazi concentration camp guards to Christ, and I found myself angry at the thought of that horrible person being shown mercy. Why do I not believe that the blood of Christ is powerful enough to forgive the Nazi guard as well as it cleanses my own dark heart? My pride and self-righteousness were thrown in my face, realizing how much I truly believe I deserve the grace of God. How quick I am to strive to pay for what I get for free, to judge others by a law that I can't keep.

On that note, I will leave you with some words from one of my favorite Derek Webb songs that played continually in my head this past week (go and listen to it yourself):

i repent, i repent of my pursuit of america's dream

i repent, i repent of living like i deserve anything

i am wrong and of these things i repent
i repent, i repent of parading my liberty

i repent. i repent of paying for what i get for free

and for the way i believe that i am living right

by trading sins for others that are easier to hide

i am wrong and of these things i repent
i repent judging by a law that even i can't keep

of wearing righteousness like a disguise

to see through the planks in my own eyes
i repent, i repent of trading truth for false unity

i repent, i repent of confusing peace and idolatry

by caring more of what they think than what i know of what we need

by domesticating you until you look just like me

i am wrong and of these things i repent