Do I have your attention?  Good. 

I want to discuss eight cognitive mechanisms we commonly use to disassociate ourselves from reprehensible acts. When I was a boy, my father initially resisted the Gospel message. When discussions turned to our sinfulness and need for a savior, he would inevitably say something like, “So I’m no better than Adolf Hitler, right?  I’m a good man. I love and take care of my family. Why shouldn’t I get into heaven?”  (He later accepted Christ, and is now in heaven.)  I finally learned how to answer him. 

SCALES OR A YARDSTICK?

Somewhere my dad picked up the idea that there was a set of scales in heaven where if your good outweighed your bad, then you got into heaven.  So, he reasoned, if you were basically good and not as evil as Manson, Hitler or Stalin, then you would surely be admitted to heaven.  It burst his bubble when I pointed out to him that no such scales exist in the Bible nor in heaven, only the absolute yardstick of God’s perfect holiness and justice. If you fall short of that measurement in word, thought or deed, whether by an inch or a million miles in you never enter His presence. 

GOING TO THE MOVIES AND JUMPING TO THE MOON

Let’s say the price for a movie ticket is $9.50. You and your friend check your pockets. You have $4.00; he has only $2.00. Question: Which of you is getting into the movie theater first? Answer: Neither!  Although you have more in comparison to him, you do not meet the standard of admittance!  Consider another example. Let’s say you and three friends have a jump to the moon contest.  You jump 4 feet, and your other friends only 1 foot each. Question: Who got to the moon?  Answer: Neither!  Just because we can jump higher than someone else doesn’t for a minute imply that we can jump high enough to reach the moon. 

Comparing ourselves with others is morally dangerous.  When we compare ourselves to the bum in the gutter, we may look great, but this is not the standard of measurement.  Compare yourself to the perfect God of eternity in all of His holiness, and you will be immediately struck with your need for a savior. 

GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR

Adolf Hitler is infamous for starting a world war which ended in 61 million deaths, including the Holocaust.  What is interesting is that while everyone unconditionally condemns Hitler’s genocidal behavior, they usually do so without realizing that all of us have a little Hitler within.  Take the following test in the form of the following eight self-exonerative processes.  These are the same used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime to exculpate yourself from feelings of guilt. 

Genocidal behavior is not unique in human history, and is certainly not limited to the leaders of the Third Reich.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn quotes a figure of 66 million dead in Russia from the beginning of the October Revolution to 1959, with an estimate of some 20 million shot, or dying of famine or disease or exposure for the decade 1929 – 1939.  These deaths occurred as a direct result of the punitive actions of the Soviet government.

Many more “silent” millions in the 20^th Century have been virtually forgotten by the mass media and academia. 

EIGHT SELF-EXONERATING MENTAL MECHANISMS

Dr. B. R. Hergenhahn in his Introduction to the Theories of Leaning, summarizes Albert Bandura’s concept of human self-exonerating mental mechanisms succinctly [1]. All eight cognitive mechanisms are present in the Nazi phenomenon, yet are not unique in human genocidal history.  It is important to realize that Hitler felt that he was following established precedents in the Catholic Church’s policies toward the Jews and other “infidels,” both religious and political.  The mechanisms are as follows:

Moral Justification. One’s otherwise reprehensible behavior becomes a means to a higher purpose and therefore is justifiable. Example: “I committed the crime so that I could provide food for my family.”

Euphemistic Labeling. By calling an otherwise reprehensible act something other than what it really is, one can engage in an act without self-contempt. For example, non-aggressive individuals are far more likely to aggress toward another person when doing so is called a game. Example: “Let’s all play Monopoly.”

Advantageous Comparison.  By comparing one’s self-deplored acts with even more heinous acts, it makes one’s own reprehensible acts look trifling by comparison.  Example:  “Sure I did that, but look at what he did.”

Displacement of Responsibility. Some people can readily depart from their moral principles if they feel a recognized authority sanctions their behavior and takes responsibility for it. For example: “It did it, because I was ordered to do so.”

Diffusion of Responsibility. A decision to act in an otherwise reprehensible manner which is made by a group is easier to live with than an individual decision. Where everyone is responsible, no single individual feels responsible. Example: “I couldn’t be the only one saying so.”

Disregard or distortion of consequences.  Here people ignore or distort the harm caused by their conduct and therefore there is no need to experience self-contempt.  The farther people remove themselves from the ill effects of their immoral behavior the less pressure there is to censure it. For example: “I just let the bombs go and they disappeared in the clouds.”

Dehumanization.   If some individuals are looked upon as subhuman, they can be treated inhumanly without experiencing self-contempt.  Once a person or a group has been dehumanized, they no longer posses feelings, hopes, or concerns, and they can be mistreated without risking self-condemnation.  For example: “Why not take their land, they are nothing but savages without souls.”

Attribution of Blame.  One can always choose something that a victim said or did and claim that it caused one to act in a reprehensible way.   For example: “I wouldn’t have done that, if you hadn’t said what you did.”

Leo Kuper in his revealing and disturbing book on the subject of genocide, Genocide: Its Political Use in the 20^th Century, points out that genocidal behavior is deeply entrenched in the annals of human history and that moral standards and religious principles have not diminished nor significantly modified this phenomena.  He cites an interesting parallel with genocide committed in the Middle Ages and 20^th Century Anti-Semitism;

“It is startling to find within Christian practice in the period of the Crusades, the Inquisition and the religious wars, all the elements of the major genocide of our day, that of the Nazis against the Jews. There were the laws corresponding to the Nuremberg laws. There were the distinguishing badges, the theory of a Jewish conspiracy, appointed centers of annihilation corresponding to Auschwitz, and some systematic organization, with the Dominican friars for example providing the professional expertise and the bureaucratic cadres in the Inquisition.” [2]

The painful fact that remains is that we are all sinners, and whether this fact is manifest through moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, disregard of consequences, dehumanization, or attribution of blame, although not as “extensive” as Hitler’s or Stalin’s, before God we are just as “intensively”  as guilty!  Acts of individual or mass violence are continually committed by clinically normal individuals who are sanctioned by their “in groups”.  In this sense there is no need to appeal beyond “normal” fallen human behavior in order to explain our sin or the genocidal phenomena of Hitler’s Reich.

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the inequity of us all.”

Isaiah 53:6

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 3:23

“As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.”

John 1:12