CHARLES COLSON, In his book of essays Who Speaks for God?, tells of watching a segment of television’s 60 minutes in which host Mike Wallace interviewed Auschwitz survivor Yehiel Dinur, a principal witness at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials…

During the interview, a film clip from Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial was viewed that showed Dinur entering the courtroom and coming face to face with Eichmann for the first time since being sent to Auschwitz almost twenty years earlier. Stopped cold, Dinur began to sob uncontrollably and then fainted while the presiding judge pounded his gavel for order.

“Was Dinur overcome by hatred? Fear? Horrid memories?” asks Colson, who then answers:

No; it was none of these. Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, all at
once he realized Eichmann was not the godlike army officer who had sent so many to their deaths. This Eichmann was an ordinary man. “I was afraid about myself,” said Dinur. “I saw that I am capable to do this. I am …exactly like he.”

Colson follows his penetrating observation with this question: Why is it that today sin is so seldom written or preached about? The answer is in Dinur’s dramatic collapse, for to truly confront our sins is a devastating experience. If preachers talked about sin, says Colson, many people would flee their church pews never to return. R. Kent Hughes, “The Comfort of Mourning,” The Sermon on The Mount — The Message of the Kingdom, 25-26

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23; cf., v. 10

Mike Benson