Simon Wiesenthal once penned the thought-provoking book, The Sunflower . His theme was the unshakable struggle that we as human beings have with guilt.
In the story, which was a true one, he related how he had been taken from a death-camp to a makeshift army hospital during World War II. One day he was ushered by a nurse to the side of a Nazi officer who had asked to have a few private moments with a Jew. Wiesenthal entered warily and was brought face to face with a fatally wounded man. The man turned towards him and spoke in little more than a cracked whisper as he unburdened his heart of a heinous crime he had committed: He had set ablaze an entire village of Jews. He was unable to silence from his memory the screams of those men, women and children as they burned to death at his command.
Why did the soldier beckon this stranger to his bedside? Knowing that he was dying, he made a last desperate effort to seek forgiveness from one whose people he had killed. Yet as the man pleaded with him, Wiesenthal could not bring himself to forgive him. In fact, during the confession, Wiesenthal tried to leave again and again but was implored by the soldier: “please stay.” He needed to get this off his heart.
But the struggle was equally intense on the other side. At the hands of the Nazis Weisenthal had lost 89 of his own relatives. How could he, by a mere pronouncement or the wave of a hand, just absolve anyone of so monumental a crime against humanity? He left the room and walked away.
In the following years, Wiesenthal himself began to feel some confusion and uncertainty, wondering if he had done the right thing. So he wrote to 32 scholars around the world to seek an answer to what had become a vexing question: “Am I guilty in this too?”
What a vortex of human emotion swirls around this subject of guilt! We battle for it in our courtrooms and philosophize about it in our classrooms. We wrestle with it in private and deny it in public. We try to explain it away for ourselves, while denying others the same privilege. Yet we all must deal with guilt and the question remains: Where do we go to deal with it?
Guilt has, in fact, become the cornerstone of all neuroses according to some psychologists. Would it not be wonderful if we could find a way of removing it completely? But it can only be removed if the absolution and the penalty meet the demands of Justice and love. Such is the unique offer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. “A Slice of Infinity” is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
[see also HolwickID #986 and #3036, and #34490]