SIN, ILLUSTRATION OF

If there are mice or rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. The suddenness of your entry did not create the rodents, it only prevented them from hiding.

In the same way, the best evidence for what sort of person you (or anyone else) are lies in what you do when taken off your guard. For example, the suddenness of a provocation does not make you or me ill-tempered, it only shows what ill-tempered persons we are.1268

Some fraternity members put Limburger cheese very gently on a brother’s moustache while he slept. He woke up about an hour later and said, “This room stinks!” He walked into the hall and said, “This hall stinks!” He walked into the living room and said, “This living room stinks!” Then, greatly perplexed as to where the smell was coming from, he walked outside and exclaimed, “This whole world stinks!” And the real problem was right under his own nose—just like the sin in our lives.1269

Every baby starts life like a little savage—completely egotistic and self-centered. Babies want what they want, when they want it, be it a bottle, mother’s attention, or a dry diaper. Deny a baby these “wants” and he or she is seized with rage. Babies have no morals, no knowledge, no skills for survival. All children, not just certain children, are potential delinquents! If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of their infancy, where they gave free rein to every impulse and had every want instantly gratified, all children would grow up in that mold of depravity. That is the stuff out of which are made criminals, killers, and rapists.1270

To those individuals acquainted with the Holocaust of World War II, the name of Simon Wiesenthal is certainly a most familiar one. World-famous for his ceaseless pursuit of Nazi war criminals, he often speaks to college audiences about his activities.

“Could it happen again, even in the United States?” Wiesenthal is asked by American college audiences. His reply is, “Yes. All you need is a government program of hatred and a crisis. If it happened in a civilized nation like Germany, which was a cultural superpower, it can happen anywhere. When I was a young man in the 1920s, our answer to Hitler was to laugh and make jokes. How could a man with such crazy ideas succeed?” (Simon Wiesenthal, Dallas Times Herald, April 22, 1979).1271