When Men Sacrifice for Others
Sin, Cowardice, and Three Stories of Heroic Love
What makes a hero?
I’ve been thinking about this question since October 7, when the world saw another war begin and the opposite of heroes arise. Hamas, a militant organization founded upon the destruction of the Jewish state, carried out a years-long plan to invade Israel, in the process viciously and sadistically murdering, raping, and hostage-taking civilians, mostly Jews. Even more horrifically, members of Hamas publicized their evil, reveling in it. More than one commentator has drawn parallels between what we’ve seen in recent weeks with the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads who shot innocent civilians en masse and members of which documented their kills with pictures.
This connects to more evil that we’ve seen. People and organizations—very public ones like Harvard and BLM (Black Lives Matter, not—heh—the Bureau of Land Management here in Wyoming)—have excused or even celebrated the slaughter of babies, among many other atrocities, though some have walked back their support due to public censure. Others, though, have not. Seeing videos of crowds around the world yelling things like “kill the Jews” feels earth-changing yet again, like we’re all living in Weimar Germany, on the cusp of another monstrous period of unmitigated horrors. These events bring to mind the chilling idea first published in 1920, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life by—not coincidentally—two German university professors. When certain people are deemed “human ballast” and “empty shells of human beings,” it’s not a reach to move from the theoretical argument of killing the so-called unworthy to actually making it happen. The slow creep of ideological poison is real, and any student of history should be alarmed by it. Because when people are unapologetic about hurting or killing a particular group of people, and reveling in it, genocide lurks near. And incremental examples of vitriol, like people ripping down posters of missing Israeli children and using foul language to describe these modest public efforts to show support are just as scary, because they show a hardness of heart building against neighbors.
For we have to acknowledge the horror of concentration camps isn’t the end-all of the breadth of human evil. Many German and other civilians knew of or witnessed the Brown Shirts, the Einsatzgruppen death squads’ acts, and the chimneys billowing human ash and yet did nothing to stop it, or even to acknowledge it when it was occurring. And this is part and parcel of how sinners can commit great evil through omission (a thorough and brutal history of this World War II history is “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders).
It would seem simple, and even easy, to point out clear sin, especially violent and sadistic sin, and yet history has proven that there’s far too much lackadaisical indifference, or fearful silence, toward it, even among Christians. And unfortunately there’s a direct line between thinking “that’s not my problem,” and “speaking out might imperil my job,” and tacit approval of such sin, because truth is the only searing divide between right and wrong, and we must hold to it at all costs. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his famous 1974 essay, “Live Not By Lies”:
But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: Not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices—to be made in favor of either truth or lies, in favor of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.
This is a temptation for us all, as we should well know. How easily we will parse language, and self-justify, and explain away our lack of love.
Three stories come to mind as counters to the recurrent horror of neighbors hating neighbors.
The first is from earlier this month, in a story published in The Atlantic about the journalist Amir Tibon and his family in Israel. (I’d quote it at length, but now I can’t get access to the full text. Hopefully you can.) When their area was attacked by Hamas, Amir and his wife and young daughters took refuge in their safe room. He called his father, a retired Israeli general, and told him the situation. That man girded himself for war and left their relatively safe area to save his son and his family. His wife, Amir’s mother, came along, eventually taking wounded people they encountered to the hospital. Amir told his daughters, “Grandfather is coming.” And he did, and he saved them all. It’s a breathtaking story of courage and sacrifice of one man for his family and subsequently other people also in danger.
The second story of incredible valor is from nearly eighty years ago that I’ve seen mentioned a few times. American Master Sargeant Roddie Edmonds and his platoon were taken prisoner in 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge and moved to a POW camp. This story from 2015 explains what happened there.
On the prisoners’ first day at the POW camp, the German intercom system in the American barracks crackled to life. Only the Jewish POWs were to fall out after morning roll call.
At this point in the war, the Nazis were already implementing the Final Solution – their plan to wipe out the Jews of Europe that led to the killings of 6 million Jews at camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. That plan now extended to Jewish POWs from the Allied armies.
“We’re not going to do that,” Edmonds told his men, some of them still remember 70 years later. “Geneva Convention affords only name, rank and serial number, and so that’s what we’re going to do. All of us are falling out.” …
Edmonds, a Christian, was true to his word. The next morning, all 1,275 soldiers stood at attention in front of their barracks. The commander of the camp was furious, storming up to Edmonds and shouting, “All of you can’t be Jewish?!”
“We are all Jews here,” Edmonds responded. Standing next to Edmonds was Paul Stern, a 19-year-old Jewish soldier who heard Edmonds’ words and the exchange with the base commander.
“I was so proud of him,” Stern tells me by phone from his home near Washington.
He is 90 years old now but remembers every moment of that conversation. His words come between staccato breaths. Speaking seems difficult for him, but he is too excited to stop: “He was so brave to say that.”
I don’t need to see Stern’s face to know he is smiling.
“We are all Jews here,” Stern repeats in a whisper.
Read the whole thing. An even more incredible footnote is that Edmonds never told anyone about this event. His own children found out about it after he died in 1985.
Who does these kinds of things? I love Amir’s story, because the reality is that even family members don’t always risk themselves to love those who ostensibly love them back. I love Roddie’s story, because rarely do we see someone—let alone a whole group—risking their lives for a few, who they probably don’t know well, if at all. Which brings me to the third story, this old one you've heard many times.
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“And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested [Jesus], saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”
So he answered and said, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”
And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”
But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”
And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The truth that we see here is that real heroes are the ones who are courageous and self-sacrificial and full of valor. In short, they love their neighbors. I think about this because God has given us children who are learning this now and will someday face circumstances which will test this truth. As much as I hope and pray that they grow to become the kind of people who defend the vulnerable and helpless, especially women, children, and the elderly, I know the depth of evil of which every person is capable. That is, I know we are all black with sin, and we easily become the family members that turn blind eyes from need. We become fearful priests and Levites, and we become silent civilians walking in communities where murder occurs.
We cowards have only one recourse. We need to know the one true God, triune and almighty. Most of all, we need to know Christ, the one who taught His disciples that in weakness, He saves the world. He is the One who shows us through His own sacrifice that no man has greater love than the one who lays down his own life for others.
Few of us, I think, will get a chance to prove our love for others in this way, let alone have anyone else know about it. I pray that all Christians be blessed with courage to act like the Israeli grandfather, like Roddie Edmonds and his men, and like the Samaritan if God gives us such opportunities. But this is what I really want our son and daughters and other Christian people, and really, all the world to know: that in our complete helplessness, God does not forget us. He humbled Himself to be made incarnate, in dirty, sweaty, fallible human flesh to come all the way to us, in our desperate holes and prisons and despair, to save us. He is merciful so that we live, not just temporally, but eternally. He is our everlasting hero. And so we still pray for Christ to give us courage and love, as we also pray, “E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.”