Discussing
Tarantino, Nazis and unforgivable sins

There is a fashion designer,now a Christian, who is doing a photo interpretation of Christ in the modern world called, "The Journey Project". In it, there is a picture of a Nazi walking with Christ, who is holding his pack and his gun and they are talking... Let that soak in a minute...a Nazi and the Saviour, a Jew...Christ walking the walk of "...if your enemy asks you to go one mile with him, go two..." It's a powerful idea of forgiveness.

Corrie ten Boom had to explore the same thing, when after the war she was speaking to an audience about forgiveness and God's love and her former Nazi guard came to her to ask her for forgiveness for what he had done...at first she couldn't forgive, and then praying for help, through Christ, she could.

Should we forgive? Can we forgive? Yes, through Christ. Trust building is another issue and one that needs Divine help for. Put it this way, if Judas, before he died, truly repented, would he be forgiven? Should he? Who then, DID Christ die for?
Just a few thoughts. Thanks for getting the grey cells working!

Father Phil Merton, a unique and energetic WELS Lutheran pastor who works primarily in institutional ministry, loves to remind congregations outside the prison context that you/we are no better than them. For instance, he mentioned that a woman once asked a colleague "Do you really think Jeffrey Dahmer can be saved?" The prompt answer was "Well, can you?" He also mentioned a choir director who talked about how much he enjoyed singing for a service at a state prison, then added "These aren't the killers, are they?" Oh yeah, came the reply, these are murderers and rapists and armed robbers you've been singing with." The repeated moral being, in God's eyes, you're no better than they are.

On the other hand, the fact that these people who had committed violent felonies were singing in the choir means they had changed some. I'd have to say that, up until the time he lost the power to inflict violence on others, killing Hitler would have been justified at any time. Carving the foreheads of every minion a team runs across, not so much. On the whole, considering what a lot of Americans watch these days, and how little history people grasp, I'm glad that the Nazis are at least the bad guys in this movie. It might keep down the popularity of the Aryan Nations in our own midst.

I haven't seen the movie, and now that I have read this, I probably wont being seeing it. I would like to think that God will take judgment on them for their acts of brutality when their time comes. "Vengeance is mine sayth the Lord", it's not ours to wield.
And as far as forgiveness goes, it was never for the person that did the sinning as much as it is for the person who needs to forgive. Our hearts get hard and when they do, we can not hear from God because the pain and suffering we are going through blocks us from hearing Him.
There is a multitude of wisdom in the phrase, "forgive and forget." If only we can do that, then we will be free indeed. Time heals all wounds if we allow the healing to start with forgiveness. Will we ever really forget? Probably not, but if we try, it can make a world of difference in how we live out our lives. Forgiveness empowers us not to be the victim.

Those men and women who made it out of those concentration camps are not defined by the situation they were in, but how there were when they came out of it. Just like Paul, who had a thorn in his body, was not defined by the torn, but by the means on which he dealt with the torn. He might not have liked it, and from scripture, we can tell he was enough of a pain to him that he asked God to take it away 3 times, but he grew from the situation and allowed Gods grace to be enough for him. The thorn was no more.

We all should be looking to God for our strength and allow Him to take care of the sins of others.

catahoula1, Do you happen to have a name for this designer? I would love to see this image of Jesus with the Nazi.