Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

After the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the extent of the atrocities there became clear. Many millions of people had been executed, including several million Jews. The genocide of the Jews became known as the “Holocaust,” and many resolved that it should never happen again.

This was and is a noble sentiment, but the fact is that the mass extermination of people, including genocide, has happened many times since 1945. One thinks of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s, the mass killing of Cambodians by Pol Pot in the 1970s, and the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s, among others.

Recent events demonstrate that the genocidal spirit is still “alive and well.” Ukrainian civilians have been intentionally targeted by Vladimir Putin, and the terrorist organization Hamas recently carried out racially motivated attacks against Israelis. A world in which mass killings will never again happen has not materialized, and indeed recent history demonstrates that the killing goes on again and again. Human nature has not changed since the Fall.    

We should pray for and desire institutions, leaders, and political arrangements that provide a check on people’s worst instincts, knowing that a perfect world will always elude us. Only God can change the human heart.