My father in 1941 

Happy “Indigenous People’s Day” or “Happy Columbus Day!”

Which of those two labels for this holiday is right for you relates to questions about right and wrong that I’d like us to consider.

Our world today is increasingly polarized between opposing factions who all know that they are “right” and the other is “wrong.” The polarization is strangling us.

I’d like to tell you a story about good and evil many of you have not heard before. It takes place in a Mennonite colony located in the barren desert of the Chaco of western Paraguay. The year is 1941.

As most of you know, Mennonites hold a strong belief in nonviolence, judging violence to be wrong, and never the best solution to any problem. Despite this core belief, many peace-loving Mennonites living in the harsh Chaco of Paraguay in the 1940s took a strong stand in favor of Nazi Germany. An entire colony of them had emigrated a decade earlier from Stalin’s Ukraine to Paraguay in order to avoid military service. And yet, less than ten years later, most of them saw Nazi victory as a way to get out of the grueling life in the desolate Chaco of Paraguay, and to return to the rich farmlands they had fled.

Pictured above is a Fernheim Colony Nazi Bund meeting in 1941. “Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz” means “public welfare before private interest,” the slogan of Hitler’s National Socialism.

In the photo below, the two people on the right are head schoolmaster Fritz Kliewer and his wife Margarete, two Mennonite leaders who were among the staunchest Nazi supporters in the Chaco in the early 1940s.

Ed and I are researching this tragic chapter in Mennonite history because of the book we’re writing about my parents. They spent most of their adult lives as Mennonite medical missionaries serving the poor and needy in Paraguay, South America.

My father was in the Chaco when the story above unfolded, serving as the colonists’ only physician. In the featured photo at the beginning of this article, Dad is standing in front of his Chaco home in 1941.

According to the records, both the colonists who supported the Nazis and the minority who opposed this position (including my father, who was sure no one could be both a Mennonite and simultaneously a Nazi) knew they were right and the others were wrong. In March of 1944, the conflicts came to a head, leading to episodes of extreme physical violence among these pacifist people.

As you can imagine, it’s difficult for many Mennonites to face this heartrending historical stain.

I’m unwilling to condone the behaviors of the Nazi Mennonites in the Chaco. But it’s not that hard for me to understand their motivation when I read about the desperate conditions they were hoping to escape if Germany won the war. Drought. Famine. Disease. Death.

My father used to say, “All of us are capable of anything, given the right circumstances.”

His words are sobering. If I accept that I, too, am capable of unthinkably cruel and wrong behaviors, given strong enough motivations, I’m less likely to self-righteously judge another. I might, instead, engage in a dialogue to learn and grow from the mistakes.

The increasing polarization in our social and political climate worries me. We seem more interested in being “right” about particular issues we care about, than in having important conversations about outcomes that matter to all of us. Freedom. Health. Safety.

I wish it were as easy as some think to distinguish right from wrong.

Based on extensive research and his own experiences as a prisoner in the Soviet prison system, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said this about good and evil:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

In fact, our self-righteous knowing that we’re right and the other is wrong has destroyed and continues to destroy us. When the Hatfields and the McCoys were lost in their righteous family disputes, the impact was minimal outside of their immediate geographical area. By contrast, in our highly interconnected world, our self-righteousness is wreaking havoc across the globe - as we arm ourselves with weapons ranging from assault rifles to nuclear devices.

In order to protect what we know is right, of course!

Differences of opinion have existed throughout recorded history. Sometimes it seems to me that we’re struggling with the same challenges we’ve faced for centuries. Our planet is in dire need of transformation, but the same old righteous battles roll on over who’s right and who’s wrong.

As Albert Einstein pointed out long ago, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

If being right versus wrong is the perspective that has created many of our problems, and I think it is, then we may be kidding ourselves in thinking that we can  solve them by maintaining how right we are – about anything – Columbus Day/Indigienous People’s Day or even our favorite politician. Rather, can we vulnerably explore alternative perspectives with one another regarding the challenges we face and outcomes we all desire?

Can you suggest one thing we can do in our immediate families and communities to foster this kind of vulnerable exploration?