Auschwitz I and II - Birkenau

                                              Disclaimer:

This blog post is only as theological as you want to make it. I recently had the opportunity to visit one of the sites left from the Nazi Genocide that took place from 1933-1945. I also had the opportunity to walk back out of the gates of the concentration camp that 1.3 million died in. This experience was extremely real, extremely profound, and extremely moving. I have found no adjective for what I saw here. I have posted the photos that I took at Auschwitz I and II not to offend anyone, but to provoke thoughts and conversations. I truly hope that this indeed does scare you and cause you to question the world that we live in. Could this happen again? Is this happening today? What are we doing about it? This is not a hiccup in history that can be forgotten about and I find it specifically important for today's youth. It is especially hard for us (the youth) to fathom these almost surreal events that took place only a few generations from us; yet, we have more technology at our fingertips then Hitler could have dreamed of having. Technology is a tool or a weapon and genocide continues to happen today all over the globe.

one last note, everything that Hitler did was legal. Jews were not considered to be human during this genocide, just as babies are not considered to be human today.

Ephesus

Ancient Ephesus and the Spread of Christianity

The Old and New Testaments of the Bible are full of historical and spiritual events that seem to have taken place in some surreal and distant land, like that of a children’s book. Often, the stories are so inconceivable to modern Christians that they have lost their literal sense, making it difficult to relate to them in a complete spiritual sense. This certainly has been the case for myself. However, after walking the streets of ancient Ephesus, I feel that I can personally relate to Paul’s writings spiritually and understand more about Paul’s life and the people that he influenced during his missionary journeys.

Venerating the tomb of the Apostle St. John

            Ancient Ephesus holds such an important role in the spread of Christianity as well as a lot of intriguing history that is not necessarily dogmatic, but spiritually enlightening. For example, Mary’s house and the tomb of the Apostle John are found here. Neither of these landmarks can be one hundred percent accurate and must be taken with faith, but both landmarks indeed do have scriptural and spiritual evidence for their credibility, and influence Christians today in their spiritual life. I will touch more on this latter.

As for the ancient port town and its influence in Christianity, this city was arguably the most important location for the spread of Christianity through Asia Minor. What we can know about Ephesus is that Paul lived in Ephesus for two years on his third missionary journey and wrote his letters to the Thessalonians and Corinthians from here.[1] We know that the Ephesians worshiped the goddess of Artemis and Paul had to flea Ephesus because the silversmiths saw a decline in the pagan worship and the people began to turn against him.[2] We also know that St. John lived in Ephesus while he wrote the Fourth Gospel during the later part of his life and is traditionally buried in the former Basilica of St. John which was built by the Emperor Justinian in the 6^th century.[3]