Articles
Ordinary Evil
ORDINARY EVIL
In 1992, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland was published. It is an unsettling insight into human behavior, for it details how a unit of average, middleaged Germans (from Stuttgart, GE) became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews in Poland. It’s hard to put these men in the same category as the Nazi hierarchy, but what they did—just following orders—was unconscionable. There’s no evil of which ordinary men aren’t capable.
Reserve Police Battalion 101 is how I think of the soldiers who abused Christ. Maybe they’re not to be lumped with Judas, Pilate, or Caiaphas, but their evil, in some ways, is more disturbing than those who played a more public role in Christ’s death.
EVIL WILL OUT
The soldiers had no reason for abusing Christ. When they took charge of an innocent man who had been scourged, they might have been sympathetic and kindly. I was once detained by the Athens, Greece, police, and they couldn’t have been nicer; they would have put an Eagle Scout to shame. But the Roman soldiers, trained to be brutal, could not be otherwise (2 Pet. 2.14). Sin is malevolent and it will come out; one malevolent victim can treat another victim horrendously (e.g., Jewish capos).
EVIL PAYS
Judas sold himself for thirty pieces of silver; the soldiers hired themselves out to Caesar. The were the minions of others, doing what they were paid to do. Evil men can be heartless tyrants to those beneath them, and fawning sycophants to those above them (Matt. 18.21–35). If men will torture the Son of God for money, should we ever be surprised at what else they’ll do for money?
EVIL LAUGHS
Ridicule is from a Lat. word that means to excite laughter. To the evil, godliness is a joke (Job 12.4). In ridicule Jesus, they put a purple (the royal hue) robe on Christ; in ridicule; they wove thorns into a crown that they placed on Him to further wound and insult Him; in ridicule, they put a reed in His hand then used it to beat Him on the head; in ridicule, they spit on Him, then bowed before Him in mock worship; in ridicule, they cried “Hail, king of the Jews.”
“All they that see me laugh me to scorn” (Ps. 22.7). In their ridicule they bowed, but it was the devil they worshipped.
-kenny
