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| October 2007 |
| Billie Silvey |
| Right and Wrong |
| Our current attitudes and behavior have been influenced to a great extent by the generation of the 40s. They’ve been called “the greatest generation,” and the war they fought a “good war,” but the 40s were anything but good for many people. It may be a useful exercise for us to consider where they got it right and where they got it wrong. |
| 1. They got many things right in the area of technology. |
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| Technological advances meant a better life for many people. However, the same scientific advances that gave us the ability to overcome time and space by envisioning the past and visiting other parts of the world through television, also made it possible for us to develop bombs that threaten the life and peace of everyone in the world. |
| 2. They got many things right in their sacrifices for freedom. |
| There is nothing more thrilling than the joy of the people of Paris as the U.S. Army rolled in to free the city from the Nazis, or of Jews freed from concentration camps. But we imprisoned our own citizens in internment camps set up for Japanese-Americans, and African- Americans who fought for freedom in Europe faced shocking discrimination when they returned home. |
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| 3. They seemed unaware of the needs of some people. |
| For all their efforts to free Europe from Hitler’s domination, there seemed to be an almost intentional ignorance of the horrors being perpetrated against Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps. And women, though freed to hold jobs when they were needed in the defense industry, were expected to blithely surrender them to returning soldiers. A nation that could understand that you couldn’t “keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Par-ee” failed to appreciate that it might be hard to keep some women barefoot and pregnant after they’d felt they were making a broader contribution. |
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| 4. They seemed unaware of their own shortcomings. |
| People in the 40s felt very strongly that some things were right and others wrong, while at the same time seeming blind to other moral issues. Such a realization should be humbling to us as Christians. We should wonder just how many of our own moral judgments are true and which might be a matter of prejudices and cultural preconceptions. We should think deeply and honestly evaluate our own beliefs and behavior. And we should have the humility to admit our errors and make needed adjustments. While we want to learn from the good in those before us, we should seek to avoid their failings. |