It’s not the Apple: Faithful Living in a Troubled World Part 2

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33)

Last week, I reflected on what I called the Outrage Industrial Complex—our world that profits from keeping us divided, angry, and afraid. We heard Jeremiah’s call to the exiles: “Seek the welfare of the city… for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” That sermon was about the symptoms of the disease tearing us apart. Today, in Part 2, we go a step deeper—to the root of the disease itself. In two weeks, on All Saints Sunday, we’ll look at the cure. Last week, we looked outward—at the forces around us that profit from division. This week we look inward—at the forces within us that make those divisions possible…Beneath our culture of outrage lies something even more ancient and dark: humanity’s lust for power.

We all know the old story of Adam and Eve in the garden—the serpent, the bite of the apple. For centuries, people have called that “the story of original sin.” The sin in that story wasn’t about picking fruit; it was about power. The serpent’s temptation was this: “You will be like God.” And here’s the thing—if only that had been true! Remember my sermon series last Summer that talked about what God is like, about God’s character…those words quoted so often in scripture? For example, Exodus 34: God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” If only the serpent had meant, “You will be like God in mercy and compassion and forgiveness.” But that’s not the offer. The temptation wasn’t to love like God—it was to rule as false gods. If only we could be like God, like the living God we see most clearly in Jesus.

That was, obviously and unfortunately, not the temptation we fell for…It is not lovingkindness, but lust for power that possesses us: the desire to control, to dominate, to play the part of a pagan kind of God. That temptation shows up in every age, in every heart, in every system that forgets the sacred worth of every thing and every person God created and called good.

This summer, my wife and I had the privilege of traveling through central Europe. It was a trip rich with beauty and history: cathedrals and castles, music and art, and rivers winding through ancient cities. But it was also a journey deep into some of the darkest chapters of modern human history. We saw the consequences of our original sin on full display in Dachau, Prague, and Budapest. But the darkness begins long before tanks and prisons. It begins in the quiet corners of the human heart, whenever someone decides that being right is more important than being loving…that winning is more important than serving…that truth can be bent for the sake of control.

Today I want to share some of what I saw and learned, not as a travelogue, but as a reflection and a warning and a calling. Because the story these places tell is not about the past. It is about us, about what happens when we fail to protect human dignity and to resist any force that would strip it away.

Our first stop was Munich, and just outside the city lies the village of Dachau. The camp at Dachau was not originally built as a death camp like Auschwitz. It began in 1933 as a prison for political opponents of the Nazi regime: Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, LGBTQ people, and, hitting close to home for me, priests and pastors…anyone who dared to dissent. Eventually, tens of thousands did perish there—executed, starved, or worked to death.

Walking through Dachau is deeply sobering. You see the barracks, stark and uniform…built to erase individuality. You see the crematorium and the execution wall. You stand on the plaza where prisoners were lined up, counted, and sorted to die, or to live (at least for a while).

But perhaps the most chilling thing is how ordinary it looks. It is not a place built by monsters, but by ordinary people who lived a few blocks away in the village. And because they were ordinary, they are a warning. The line between good and evil doesn’t run between nations or ideologies—it runs deeply through every human heart. These were ordinary people who believed lies. Ordinary people who created scapegoats to take the blame for all their problems. Ordinary people who let their fear and prejudice outweigh their conscience.

The Holocaust and the Nazi terror did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words…With propaganda that labeled neighbors—lifelong neighbors!—as enemies and then, enemies as vermin…With policies that slowly, methodically, stripped rights from those deemed “the other.” It began with a culture that allowed contempt to replace compassion.

As Christians, we remember that every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). When that truth is forgotten or mangled, when people are seen as less than human, unimaginable evil becomes possible.

And so Dachau stands as a warning: dehumanization begins subtly. It begins when we categorize people as “them” instead of “us,” when we justify cruelty because someone is different, when we believe that some lives matter less than others.

From Munich, we went to Prague, one of my favorite places, the city of 100 spires, as beautiful as any in Europe. It is a place that endured decades under Communist rule. There, we visited the Museum of Communism. It tells the story of a system that promised equality and justice but delivered fear, scarcity, oppression, and death.

The Communist regime in Czechoslovakia tried to control every part of life, not only politics and economics, but art, speech…even thoughts. Dissent was punished. Surveillance was everywhere. People were imprisoned, tortured, and executed for daring to speak the truth.

In that museum, we learned about the Prague Spring of 1968, when citizens and leaders briefly tried to reform the system. Crushed by Soviet tanks, it is a stark reminder of how brutally totalitarian regimes maintain control. Yet, even crushed movements plant seeds. The courage of those who resisted in 1968 inspired the Velvet Revolution 21 years later. Truth refused to be silenced. One of the most inspiring figures of that time was Václav Havel, a playwright and dissident who became a leader of the peaceful “Velvet Revolution” that ended Communist rule in 1989. Havel spoke of the “power of the powerless,” power that ordinary people have when they choose to live in truth, even in a system built on lies. He wrote: The real test of a person is not how they behave in moments of comfort and convenience but how they stand at times of controversy and challenge. Havel and others chose to “live in truth,” refusing to cooperate with the lies that underpinned totalitarian control. That choice helped bring an empire down without a shot fired.

Our journey ended in Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is a city of stunning architecture and deep wounds. There, we learned about the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, when students and workers rose up against Soviet domination. They called for free elections, freedom of speech, and an end to secret police terror.

For twelve days, Budapest was alive with hope. People tore down statues of Stalin. They reclaimed their dignity, but the Soviet Union responded with overwhelming force. Tanks rolled into the city. Thousands were killed, including hundreds in beautiful Parliament Square. Thousands more were imprisoned or executed later. It was a heartbreaking failure in the short term—but it was not in vain. The courage of those who stood up in 1956 became part of the story that would eventually lead to the fall of the Iron Curtain decades later.

Standing there in the beautiful square, I was reminded of Jesus’ words: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13). The men and women of 1956 knew they might die, but they rose up anyway. They remind us that freedom is never free, and that human dignity is worth defending, even at great cost.

It would be easy to think these are stories from a different world, that such horrors could never happen here. But history warns us otherwise. No society is immune to the temptations that led to Dachau or the secret police or the suppression of individual rights in Prague and Budapest. Until the end of the age, we will always be tempted to fall prey to original sin—sin that has nothing to do with eating apples, and everything to do with lust for power, repaying violence with more violence, hatred with more hatred, and rule by fear and control.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis observes that the devil’s favorite sin isn’t lust or greed but pride, because pride is what makes every other sin possible. Pride whispers to each of us, “I am the measure of what’s right and wrong…I deserve to rule.” It’s the same whisper the serpent used in Eden. It’s the same whisper that echoes in every age when we try to force the world to bend to our will instead of God’s. The opposite of that whisper isn’t weakness—it’s humility. Humility is the recognition that all power belongs to God, and that true strength is found in service, not domination. It’s the lesson Jesus embodied when he knelt to wash his disciples’ feet, saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” It’s the lesson Jesus showed once and for all on the Cross. The early Church fathers called humility the mother of all virtues, because only humility can cure the disease of power.

The horrors we saw documented on our trip are not bound to any one ideology or political party. They have come from the right and the left, in democracies and dictatorships, in secular movements and in the church. They grow wherever fear is allowed to rule over love, wherever power is valued more than people.

The horrors begin not with tanks or camps, but with ideas:

  • The idea that some people are less valuable than others.
  • The idea that “order” is more important than freedom.
  • The idea that truth is whatever serves power.
  • The idea that our complex problems are simply someone else’s fault—some group we can blame, exclude, and silence.

Those are not just political mistakes; they are spiritual diseases, the modern faces of the same ancient, original temptation: the desire to be god without being good like God, the desire to play God rather than to follow Jesus. As Christians, we must strive to be Jesus’ ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) and repairers of the breach (Isaiah 58:12). Our lives must be examples of the fruits of the Spirit that St. Paul lists in his letter to the Galatians: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

Faithful people in every time—faithful people in our own time—must always be vigilant. We must resist voices that scapegoat immigrants, minorities, or political opponents. We must guard against disinformation that twists truth into falsehood. We must not surrender our responsibility to think critically, to listen to each other thoughtfully and carefully, and to speak the truth even when it is unpopular.

This is not about being liberal or conservative. It is about being those who bear the image of God. It is about being faithful to the Gospel. Jesus consistently crossed the boundaries that divided people. He touched lepers, spoke with Samaritans, welcomed tax collectors and sinners, and dined with Pharisees. He refused to dehumanize anyone, even those who crucified him.

When we follow Christ, we must commit ourselves to the sacred worth of every human being. We refuse to let fear alienate us from our neighbors. When we follow Christ, we must reject any system—political, social, cultural, or religious—that denies the image of God every single person bears. That is our baptismal vow.

The prophet Jeremiah returns in today’s reading with a new promise. God says, “The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:31–33). In Matthew, the Pharisees try to trick Jesus with the law and ask, “Teacher, which command in the law is the most important?” and Jesus answers, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and most important command. And the second command is like the first: ‘Love your neighbor the same as you love yourself.’ All of the law and the writings of the prophets take their meaning from these two commands’ (22:36-40). May that be the law that God writes upon our hearts. May the prophet’s words become more and more true, until love—not power—is what defines us, and binds us together, and moves us all..

Fr. Keith+