When I was growing up, Fascism was a political term in common use. I was seven years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the years ahead saw us occupied with the defeat of fascism. I can’t say I knew what it meant. I just knew it was bad. I have this uncanny feeling that, as fascism rears its ugly head again in our world, that a lot of people still don’t know what it means.

I had a strange sense of déjà vu watching Oliver North’s War Stories production dealing with the death march in Bataan and the use of slave labor in Burma. The Japanese treatment of prisoners was, excuse the term, inhuman. And the same inhuman spirit—a spirit of fascism—seems to possess some parts of Islam to this day. And I sometimes wonder if the term inhuman may say more than we realize. The way the Japanese overlords treated their own soldiers as less than human gave them license to act inhuman. And, of course, the Germans, while slightly more civilized, were still possessed of an inhuman spirit. It has been common over the years to to attribute demon possession to Adolf Hitler.

What is the rest of the world to do when they come up against the absolute embodiment of evil in a man, a nation, or a movement—especially a Christian world that follows the prince of peace, and believes in turning the other cheek? Is it just possible that we don’t fully understand how a godly man might respond to the presence of evil? On one occasion, Jesus talked with his disciples about facing this spirit of hatred. We’ll find it in the Gospel of John, chapter 15.

Christian people have often failed in their responsibilities to their fellow man. This is not terribly surprising. After all, we are human. Jesus, in a couple of his parables suggested that as many as half of us who call ourselves by his name will fail. And, in the end, none of us can escape the judgment that will fall on us for how we live and act in this miserable world.

A date that few remember is April 1, 1933. In Germany, it was a beginning. On this day a boycott of Jewish-owned shops began. Members of the Brownshirts picketed the shops to see to it that the boycott was successful. The hostility toward Jews grew day by day. Many shops and restaurants began to refuse service to Jews. In some parts of Germany, Jews were banned from public parks, swimming pools, and public transportation. Germans were encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants and teachers were fired.

As troubling as all that was to me, what was far worse was coming to realize that throughout this period, leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches remained silent. Only a handful of young pastors resisted. You may ask yourself how the German Christians could allow this sort of thing to happen to them? I will give you two things to think about. One: Most of those young pastors who resisted ended up arrested and executed. Two: How much evidence is there that American Christians have any more backbone than the German Christians of that day?

The German people are, in every sense of the word, a great people—intelligent, innovative, accomplished. But for me, the question about the Germans is always colored by the dark shades of Adolf Hitler, and the question of what happened to them…and to the Jews of Europe.

Not long ago, I presented a program titled How Freedom is Lost. I turned back the pages to an episode in the history of Israel–you can read it for yourself in 1 Samuel, chapter eight. It came at the end of what may have been a period of unparalleled freedom, that has never been before or since. And the story of why they laid that freedom down, and of what followed after, is an object lesson we must never forget. I am not going to retell that story today. (I will tell you how to get a free CD of that program a little later.) What I want to do today is to draw another lesson from much more recent history, and to consider the implications for Christians living right now.

I knew that Germany was a great nation in European history. Christianity was strong there, and the Protestant Reformation was born there. I have heard people puzzle over how a people like the Germans of that era could possibly allow such a lowbrow, corruptible little man like Adolf Hitler to come to such absolute power. Strange as it may seem, it may have been for some of the same reasons I discussed in How Freedom is Lost.

I knew of the great intellectual and artistic accomplishments of the Germans, and their great universities. It was in 1517 that Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a great cathedral. In the early 1700s, Bach was turning out some of the greatest music ever heard. In the late 1700s, Beethoven was at his peak. While America was just figuring out who she was, the great German universities were more than 300 years old. So how could a nation like Germany produce an Adolf Hitler?