It is part of our fallen nature to scapegoat other people whenever something goes wrong. It is human nature to blame someone else for personal and societal problems. Sadly, it's easier to blame, hold grudges, and even seek revenge than to demonstrate the lessons of forgiveness and compassion that we preach. This is the same with the church, who fell prey to Satan's lure and turned against the very people through which our salvation came from.
In the early centuries of the church, the disagreement between Jewish and Gentile Christians who accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah and the Jewish people who did not eventually created a tragic schism that was solidified after the Bar Kockhba Jewish revolt (A.D. 132-135). The church leaders began to forget that our salvation came through the Jews (John 4:22), that Jesus was a Jewish Messiah, born of a Jewish family, with Jewish Disciples. They even began to forget that most of the New Testament was written by Jewish believers in Jesus. Sadly, early church leaders such as Justin Martyr, Origen of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom began to make disparaging writings on the Jewish people, blaming them for the crucifixion of Jesus and that their actions brought God's wrath. This completely ignores the scriptures in which Jesus foretold his suffering (Luke 13:33, Matthew 16:21, Mark 8:31, and Matthew 17:22) and that these fulfilled the Old Testament Prophecies of the Suffering Messiah who would bear the burden of our Sin (Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, & Psalm 22).
Centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment became embedded in church doctrine. This hate lead those who professed to follow Christ to commit great evil against the Jewish people in his name. Jewish children were kidnapped and forcibly baptized, they were denied their basic human rights, forced to live in segregated communities, and subjected them to vicious pogroms against the Jews for so many centuries.
Sadly, Jesus warned us in Matthew 7:22-23 that many who professed to follow Jesus would be deceived into following a false Jesus created by Satan, and would do great evil in is name. On their day of Judgement, Jesus warned that he would turn these false Christians away.
As the centuries progressed, the hate within many of the
churches remained. Martin Luther, the German clergyman who wanted to bring the teachings of the church back to the Bible would ultimately forsake his own goal and continue the un-Biblical practice of hating the Jewish people. It is no coincidence that Adolf Hitler took advantage of this centuries of church prejudice and used it in his own campaign against the Jewish people of Europe, a campaign that ultimately led to the infamous Final Solution. The centuries of church hate that had for so long preached "You have no Right to live among us as Jews" became under Hitler "You have no Right to Live."
This church prejudice was the tool of Satan. While Christianity did not cause the Final Solution, it's centuries of anti-Judaism which transformed into Antisemitism-history's oldest hatred-made the Holocaust possible. If the church had walked with meekness and humbleness, and followed the true teachings of Jesus, it's highly likely that the Holocaust never would have happened. Those who profess to follow Jesus today must not make the same mistake that the churches made in the past. They must follow Jesus with compassion an humility, and not walk in blind-self righteousness (one of the many things that Jesus preached against). We as Christians must never forget who our Messiah is, and where it is our salvation comes from.
Sources
Michael, Susan, ICEJ U.S. Director (
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