Information Related to "So, Who Goes First?"
| Audio/Video |
 |
This Is the Way... So, Who Goes First?by Robin WebberMany people around the world are acquainted with the numerical figure of 6,000,000. If someone were to pose the hypothetical question of "what comes to mind when I say six million?" many would simply state that this was the devastating total of European Jewry exterminated during World War II under the auspices of the Third Reich. But, if someone were to ask you, "what does the figure 300,000 signify to you?" many of us would be stumped! We might respond in various fashions with thoughts centered around cities with a population figure like Omaha, Newark or Portland. The grim reality is this was the number of disabled individuals whose only reason for "liquidation by the state" during World War II was that they were considered "lives not worth living." In itself, this is a staggering figure, but we tend to be numbed at the even larger figure of 6,000,000. Maria LaGanga, a Times staffwriter, challenges her audience to contemplate a powerful question regarding these figures by simply asking—"is there enough grief to go around?" Equal Victims In her article of January 19, 1999, titled "Fighting for 'Other' Victims of the Holocaust," she focuses on the efforts of Sid Wolinsky, who is litigation director of Disability Rights Advocates. Beyond his job title, he has a personal stake in this endeavor in that he is both Jewish and his brother is developmentally disabled. His mission? He is fighting so that people with disabilities will be remembered as equal victims of the 20th century's foremost horror. LaGanga shares in her article: "For starters he is pushing for greater acknowledgement of the 'invisible' first victims—the German men, women and children who were murdered or sterilized in the '30s and '40s because of conditions such as schizophrenia, genetic diseases, physical handicaps and developmental disabilities." Wolinsky is not only focusing on the past, but trying to assist in the present and point towards the future. LaGanga goes on to say: "Last month, Disability Rights Advocates stepped into the controversial Holocaust-related litigation filed against Swiss banks. Although the suits have resulted in a $1.25-billion settlement, lawyers are still fighting over how it will be distributed. The organization wants surviving disabled victims to receive a share of that settlement and wants another share to be used for setting up a foundation to advance rights of people with disabilities, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe." Why? The article supplies background as the writer quotes Hugh Gregory Gallagher, author of "By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians and the License to Kill in the Third Reich," which was published in 1995. It is Gallagher who makes the lament, "surely there is enough grief to go around!" He continues, "What happened to the Jews, the 'Asocials,' [happened to] the disabled people [who] were all part of the same gotterdammerung, the same catastrophe, and must not be forgotten." LaGanga continues to develop the need to remember, by sharing parts of the above mentioned work which horrifically cites: "There were eugenic efforts spurred by German physicians brought about by a series of official 'edicts,' the 1933 law requiring sterilization of men and women with mental and physical handicaps; the 1939 registration of all malformed children; and Hitler's decree in the same year authorizing physicians to kill the incurably ill. Between 1934 and 1945, an estimated one percent of Germany's childbearing population was sterilized, nearly half of whom were inmates of asylums. The euthanasia of people with disabilities was officially halted in 1942...but it continued surreptitiously until at least the end of the war." The last comment that LaGanga utilizes in quoting from Gallagher's work and others is: "The shower gas chamber, later used in the mass murder of Jews, was created for and perfected on people with disabilities at German hospitals in the 1930s." Major Questions Before Mankind So what do 6,000,0000 and 300,000 have in common? Everything! But, why should we be concerned today as we are about to turn the year 2000 ? Serious students of Bible prophecy realize that human nature has not changed, nor have the socio-economic and population dynamics that can give rise to such inhuman political regimes that perpetrates crimes against humanity. Every human generation must face them. It is telling on a society as to how it treats those who are physically, emotionally and mentally impaired. Today, tremendous questions face all nations, cultures and families as we ponder euthanasia, abortion, cloning, and how to care for the physically and mentally challenged. What does it even mean to be "challenged" or "impaired?" Are those even fair terms to use? Who creates the definitions? Who makes the rules? Who makes the final determinations to live or die? Who determines the quality of life? So, who goes first? These are all powerful questions which a future society may choose to decide. As more and more people dwell on this planet the law of "supply and demand" will squarely face humanity. Will there be a will to care? Will there be an untapped capacity of understanding yet to be displayed? Is it possible that with the advent of cloning we will marginalize the need for compassion in a perfect world with perfect people? What will that do to the human spirit? A careful study of history would say otherwise, but the Word of God gives us hope. In fact, it reveals that the ultimate ruler of the world to come will have been One who was considered among the "despised ones." What Did Christ Do? When it comes to the question of "who goes first?", Jesus Christ approached the disabled as some of the first recipients of his attention. One of his opening declarations is found in Luke 4:18-20 in which he proclaims, "Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-20). During His earthly ministry, Christ continually focused on this segment of the population which was left uncomfortably at the margins of everyday human society. He came into immediate contact with the woman of Matthew 9:20 who had the issue of blood (that would have made him ceremoniously unclean), yet cared for her. At other times he came into contact with individuals who were troubled with demons, had multiple personalities, and mental disorders and problems—and yet, did not shun them but loved them and worked with them (Matthew 7:24-30, Matthew 12:22). When we think of Mary Magdalene, we do not think of extinction, but expansion of a human being! Such is the message and motion of the gospel as shared by Christ. Imagine if you will for a moment, the fate of Mary Magdalene if she had lived in another time and another place—a Jewish woman with a troubled existence! How lacking the color and the flavor of the Bible might be without Christ's meaningful contact with her! What did Christ say when asked about His agenda and His priorities? Let's notice His reply to John's disciples in Luke 7:20-23. "Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." Is it possible people were offended at Christ for His seemingly disproportionate amount of time spent with individuals that society and their families had written off? What might be our personal reaction today if we were allowed to look over His shoulder? Why the keen interest by Jesus Christ towards the disadvantaged? Shakespeare once said, "He jests at scars that never felt the wounds." Christ, in that sense, was in solidarity with the "castoffs" of yesteryear and today. Isaiah 53:3-4 vividly describes how "He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted." A fascinating thought to ponder is where would Jesus have wound up under the Third Reich? God's Final Solution For anyone to marginalize or extinguish the human spirit, any human spirit, because it is disadvantaged, simply does not uphold the message or solution that Christ brought. Michael Green in his book titled "Acts for Today," says on page 31-"Another striking characteristic of this Man is His care for disadvantaged people. When quoting Isaiah 40:3, to which all the gospel writers refer, Luke alone gives the last part of the quotation, 'and all flesh shall see the salvation of God' (Luke 3:6). Luke alone tells us that 'the son of man has come to seek and to save the lost' (Luke 19:10). Those two hints give us an insight into Luke's concern for 'left over people,' a concern which he displays constantly throughout his two books." Perhaps, that is why Luke records powerfully in Acts 3 the story of the lame man and his healing. The beggar at the gate of the Temple "who was a certain lame man from his mother's womb." The same lame man who was marginalized at the Temple gate-most likely normally unnoticed, other times walked over, pushed around or just spat on. But then Peter and John came upon him and it says in Act 3:4. "fixing his eyes on him" (as if this was not normally done)....and saying, "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you...rise up and walk." What a different solution from that offered 60 years ago to the disabled of Europe. Prophecy Is... What does this have to do with prophecy? Prophecy is not just about dates, imagery, beasts, false prophets and innumerable armies. It's about people who have been forgotten by society. It's about people who have not known why they were created. Prophecy is the good news of how God is going to meet the very real needs of humanity. His Ultimate Solution is so different from Hitler's Final Solution. God speaks of a different kind of "round up" of the suffering and less fortunate people in the book of Jeremiah. "Behold I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child, together; a great throng shall return there" (Jeremiah 31:8). What can they expect? What will be God's Ultimate Solution? "Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted, 'Be strong, do not fear!' behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you" (Isaiah 35:3-6). What a totally different form of attention is offered to these people than what their predecessors received at the hands of the beast-like kingdoms of man. Humanity will witness one miracle after another. Verse 5 and following verses develop an incredible picture. "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing." The Ultimate Solution-lest we forget-is the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical healing of humanity. This is the big picture! But, that picture can only be filled by those who "fasten their eyes" on the realities of history and strive not to repeat them. Those Who Went First The Jewish Community is coming to realize their incredible plight is part of a greater circle of suffering by people who couldn't speak, hear, walk or think. Increasingly, Jewish organizations are expanding their time of remembrance and reflection on this "quiet extermination" of the human spirit of 300,000-those who went first. Remembrance of the past is a proper footpath to the future. Mr. Wolinsky's challenging work appropriately echoes the voice of those who could not speak for themselves or for that matter even defend their lives. They were the first to die in a human cataclysm of immense proportions. God holds all humanity to the same rule-"in as much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me" (Matthew 25:45). Mr. Wolinsky's care and concern for those unable to speak for themselves certainly reflects the millennial refrain of "This is the way, walk you in it." WNP |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| © 1995-2022 United
Church of God, an International Association | Request
Free Literature Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. All correspondence and questions should be sent to info@wnponline.org. Send inquiries regarding the operation of this Web site to webmaster@churchofgodtwincities.org. |
|
Related Information:
Other Articles by Robin Webber
Origin of article "So, Who Goes First?"
Keywords: holocaust disabilities nazi victims extermination final solution
Human nature:
