written 6/16/2016 at 4:00am in Lviv, Ukraine
Through out my race I have met many people. Amazing people giving their lives to server God and others. I have met missionaries, pastors, lay people, travelers and natives. I have interacted with people from truly all over the world.
This past month I was honored to have the chance to visit Auschuwtiz, the Nazi extermination camp near Krakow, Poland. It was humbling to walking in the stories of hate, pain, hope, perseverance, struggle, and love. Being in a place like that really makes you think a lot. One of the things that stood out to me was recognizing that every person that passed through those gates had a life and a story prior to entering. There was one display that showed numerous photographs of the victims prior to coming to the camp. In those pictures you saw smiling face, families and still snapshots of the life stolen from them.
It causes you to ponder how could humanity allow for such treatment of itself. As I consider this I came to think about what it is to be human. I thought about a theology class I audited last year. In Genesis when God creates humanity he states that it is very good. Obviously the fall screwed things up. I grew up being taught that humans are inherently evil, but I would now argue that it is not that we are inherently evil, but rather we hare inherently broken. See humanity, true humanity is meant to be in communion with God, but obviously the fall messed that up. So it is not so much that we are evil but that we are missing a vital part of what it is to be human. Jesus came to do many things, but I believe one of those things is to show us what it truly means to be human. When we accept Christ and choose to obey him we do more then obtain righteousness we actually become more human. Yet when we reject Christ we remain in broken humanity and often move even further from true humanity thus resulting in the darkness of the world seen around us.
