Today is the feast of All Saints, can we all be saints,
how good can we be, on the other hand, how bad can
we be? We can be very bad. Adolf Hitler was
someone of little importance in the Germany of the
early 20th century, he started to become important when
he started public speaking, when he stood up and
addressed an audience it was discovered he had
charisma. Eventually he would address huge crowds
and he held them spellbound for hours, what was he
saying to them, exactly what they wanted to hear.
They wanted to hear that it was wonderful to be
German, and all the problems the German people
experienced were caused by the Jews. This, along with
all the parades, flag waving, military music etc. made
the average German feel wonderful themselves.
We all know what happened next.
Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, spent time in a
concentration camp, he survived, he was a chemist and
was useful. After the war he wrote about his
experiences. Sometime in the 1980`s he committed
suicide. In his last book he referred to the German
people, rather than using terms alike to “National
Socialism”. He was saying human beings are capable
of this sort of evil and not just a few human beings, and
not just German human beings. All of us are capable
of real evil.
Hitler had great charisma as a public speaker, so did
Jesus. The difference was Hitler told people what they
wanted to hear, Jesus told people what they didn`t want
to hear, and left it to them to choose what they did.
Do we listen to what people are saying to
us> Today society has become a vast living
room where we are sitting watching life on
television, television has charisma. Maybe we
live our lives through watching all these
beautiful people live their live on television,
maybe we`ve become too passive to ever do
anything very bad, does that make the situation
good? Do we have real choice?