Connor Shanley

Last Friday [May 4, 2012] David Lane presented a chapel message about foundations.  In this article I hope to expand on some of his points, but there is a different main point.  My story and testimony has parallels to David’s, but it is different.  The point of this article is not to justify any of my actions.  The point of this article is to point out one of the most overlooked qualities in leadership and Christianity, which is honesty.  I don’t mean the honesty in terms of just keeping a clean public image; I’m talking about the honesty that involves admitting your struggles.  All Christians and especially Christian leaders need to be open about their struggles in order to help other Christians dealing with the same issues; it is part of being humble.  Please do know I didn’t come to learn about the importance of accountability from good experience but rather from my own mistakes.

I started smoking marijuana at the very end of 10^th grade.  Realistically, my life was good.  I had a loving family, I was getting good grades, and I was starting on two sports teams.  Despite all of this I still felt a deep-seated depression.  I can’t say why, but it came out of issues with self-confidence; there was always a feeling of never being good enough.  I felt a feeling of guilt.  This guilt was so overwhelming I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone; I believed if I had told anyone my thoughts, I would be judged.  I didn’t trust anyone.  This feeling made me feel like I was putting on a “good boy” image I was growing sick of.  I wanted to get rid of it; I wanted to be “myself.”

Prior to starting to be “myself” I was a worship leader both in school and in “NOW Night,” and I had just signed up to be a ministry team leader.  This feeling of being a leader also contributed to not trusting anyone.  A sin that often comes with leadership is pride.  The pride I felt made me want to be strong for everyone around me and not show any weakness at all.  So the main reasons I started smoking was a feeling of not being a real person.  I’m not saying this to justify my actions, just to explain my flawed logic behind my actions.

I continued on and off for two years.  I still didn’t really trust anyone.  I would tell people part of how I felt; I would share different parts with different people in order to scatter the truth, because I still didn’t trust anyone with the full truth of my thoughts.  It was this broken version of accountability that left me feeling like multiple people.  On one day I was a good ministry team leader, altar boy, church goer, then the next I would be partying and smoking.  I was split right down the center; and I thought I was making myself happy when really I was just adding to my misery.  This feeling of having a split personality was driving me crazy.

Finally in January of this year everything came to a standstill.  David texted me the most dreaded words at the time, “I’ve been caught.”  My heart literally skipped a beat.  I hoped that it wouldn’t come back to get me, but I knew that was a fantasy.  A week later Mr. Lane called my dad.  My dad came in and asked me if I had done it, and at first I kept denying what I had done.  Finally a clear thought came in my head: earlier that week I had prayed to God to guide me to change my life for His glory.  At the moment what I needed to do was so clear I couldn’t ignore it anymore.  I confessed.

I was mad and depressed, and then I was kicked off the basketball team.  I felt nothing but pure rage for a week.  I was mad at everyone and everything.  After that week though there was an odd feeling of relief.  I could finally be honest with everyone.  Still there was a feeling of guilt, and this feeling had more to deal with being a leader.

I wanted to quit being a ministry team leader.  I felt as though I had let all my guys down.  I started to write my letter to resign from being a ministry team leader, but about halfway through I got a sudden desire to do my devotions.  My devotions lead me to 2 Samuel chapter 11.  2 Samuel chapter 11 tells the story of King David and Bathsheba.  I decided to keep reading and finished the story of King David.  I read fully into the redemption King David received.  The lesson I learned was that God doesn’t always pick perfect people to lead.

One can look at the story of David and Bathsheba; one can also look at the story of Peter and Paul.  Peter denied Jesus three times and had struggles with some serious anger issues.  Paul persecuted Christians but was then called to lead the church.  We seem to have this idea today that leaders need to be clean cut and perfect.  What we need to accept is the idea of a perfect human leader is a false one.

I don’t write this to make myself look good in any way; I write this to help others who attend Summit in order to become strong Christian leaders who have struggles to be more open about their struggles.  Oftentimes a Christian leader can use the struggles he or she has to deal with to help people.  Christian leaders can’t just put everything they’ve done wrong under a bush and only keep the good things in the light.  The important thing we all as Christians, but especially Christian leaders, should always have with someone is accountability.

If leaders share their struggles with the people they are leading, those people view the leader as “more approachable.”  Being open is important, absolutely fundamental to the Christian faith.  Peter and Paul were both open about their sin.  Paul even said in 1Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the World to save sinners, of whom I am worst.”

In order to be a good Christian leader you must be humble, but something people often overlook about being humble is that it means you must be able to put yourself forward and admit your mistakes in order to help others: not just admit you’ve done some wrong things in the past, but truly use specifics to help others.  It is something I continue to struggle with.  I hope this article showed people the dangers of not having someone there to hold you accountable.  It not only hurts your ability to lead but also just to be a good Christian.  If someone is not there to hold you accountable you will fall deeper into sin, exactly like I did.  I didn’t trust anyone, I didn’t humble myself to go to another person, and it ended in me building a huge pile of sin from which I could not break out.  I am not a good example of how to use an accountability partner; I only try to show you what not having one at all will lead to.  So please, for your own sake, find someone to hold you accountable, and if you’re a leader, don’t be afraid to be open with those who follow you.  God uses the mistakes of leaders to teach lessons, and just because leaders slip up doesn’t mean they’re not leaders, and the mistakes don’t define them, it is their response that defines them.

James 4:16 —“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Connor Shanley

In the book Hitler’s Willing Executioner’s, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen talks about how the German people under the Nazi regime were all willing to help Hitler commit his crimes against humanity.  It is important, however, to acknowledge the fact there were Germans who disagreed with Hitler and who protested his policies.  These people cannot be forgotten; they stood in the face of evil and defied it.  These groups carried some of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century from Sophie Scholl to one of the most famous theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Some of these groups were non-violent, such as the White Rose society, who simply protested Hitler’s policies through writing.  Other groups such as the Valkyrie plot and the Abwehr plot tried to eliminate Hitler and replace his government.  Both violent and non-violent German resistance to Hitler under the Nazi regime was effective in discrediting and weakening the Nazi government.

The German resistance to Hitler was not made up of one organization.  The resistance was made by many different efforts, and it manifested itself in many different ways.  The first real resistance to Hitler came before he even got power.  The first people to protest Hitler were the communists and socialists; during Hitler’s campaign for election, they protested against Hitler.  After he took power, these communists and socialists helped Jews and political prisoners escape to friendly countries.  When war broke out with Russia, they helped the invading Russian army with food, money, supplies, and information.

The communists and socialists never united into one single movement; they were rather scattered efforts throughout Germany.  Three other major united movements or groups within Germany, who stood against Hitler, though.  The first was a non-violent group known as the White Rose Society.  The White Rose Society was established in 1942 at the University of Munich.  It was founded by three students: Christoph Probst, Hans Scholl, and Sophie Scholl.  These students did not lead any coup attempts or try to start a civil war.  These students simply spoke about living in an inhumane society.

Hans and Sophie Scholl both originally supported the Nazi government.  They were both proud members of the Hitler youth.  Their parents were never supportive of the Nazi’s, however.  Hans’s and Sophie’s view began to radically change when the Nazis started to invade other countries.  Though their views changed in the 1930s, they didn’t start writing until 1942.  This is when they began to write about the “Enslavement” of the German people under the Nazis.

In the summer of 1942, the White Rose Society started writing their first leaflets.  The leaflets were entitled “Leaflets of the White Rose.”  The first leaflet was dropped in the fall of 1942.  It started some real disorder in Germany.  People began printing copies and distributing them to other cities.  The writings impacted some students in Hamburg so much they started their own “White Rose Society.”  In Munich, anti-Nazi graffiti began to spread rapidly.  The leaflets were even given to U.S. soldiers before they invaded North Africa.  In the winter of 1943, the publications had to stop because Hans and Christoph were both sent to fight on the Eastern Front against the Russians.  Once they returned in February, they started work on a second pack of leaflets entitled the “The Leaflets of Resistance.”  Only two of these were published, however, before they were all arrested on February, 18, 1943.  On February 22, their trial began.  The three founding members stood bravely, but on February 23, all three were beheaded.

Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, and Sophie Scholl served as martyrs for the academic community who stood against Hitler.  Unfortunately, the Hamburg branch of the White Rose Society was also caught and many were sentenced to death.  These examples served to inspire others to speak out against Hitler.  This is the most well-known non-violent resistance to Hitler.  There were many coup attempts on Hitler.  Some of these attempts were non-violent; they simply wanted to overthrow Hitler, with no blood shed.  Others were full-on assassination plots.  These coup attempts came from many different places within German society.  The most famous ones and the ones that almost worked, though, came from inside Hitler’s own military.

General Ludwig Beck was the Chief of General Staff of the German army.  When Hitler announced Germany was going to invade the ethnically German parts of Austria, Beck was outraged.  Beck said he would refuse to carry through any order pertaining to the invasion of Austria.  Beck did not have to carry through any orders to invade Austria.  Austria was annexed as part of Germany and did not put up any fight.  In 1938, Hitler announced plans to invade the ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia.  General Beck had a major problem with killing any Germans, even it was just through ethnicity.  Beck again protested, suggesting all generals of the German army should resign because it would be a crime to kill other Germans.

He sent the following letter to his fellow generals: “The very existence of the nation is at stake.  History will attribute a blood-guilt to leaders that do not act in accordance with their professional expertise and political conscience.  Your military duty to obey [orders] ends where your knowledge, your conscience and your responsibility forbids the execution of an order.  If in such a situation, your advice and warnings are ignored, then it is your right and your duty before the Nation and History to resign from your positions” (Schrader, “The First Coup”).

This failed not because other generals didn’t agree with him, but because they were afraid of what might happen to them.  Beck resigned his post, but Franz Halder agreed with Beck.  Franz Halder and General Hans Oster, head of counter intelligence, made a plan to arrest Hitler.  They made a plan down to the tee to execute if Hitler ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia.  Unfortunately, the English and the French signed away Czechoslovakia, and there was no fight over it.  So the generals could never carry out their plans, because there was no invasion.

After the first unsuccessful coup attempt, Hitler began to conquer all of Europe.  By 1941, Hitler had conquered from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Sea.  Among the German public he was very popular.  Hitler began to lose popularity in December of 1941, when he tried to invade Russia.  Now Generals Beck, Olbricht, and Bussche began to make a plan to overthrow the Nazi regime.  They were just waiting for Hitler to get more unpopular.  General Olbricht wrote a plan in case of an uprising known as plan “Valkyrie.”  Valkyrie detailed the set-up of a new government in the case of Hitler’s death or a rebellion.  The plan was constructed so when Hitler was killed the Nazi regime would be taken out.  In 1943, Oster and Tresckow joined the plot.  In the summer of that year, Tresckow obtained plastic explosives from the English and placed it on Hitler’s plane.  This attempt did not succeed.  The bomb didn’t go off.

There were many other assassination attempts.  One included all the conspirators shooting Hitler at lunch, but many objected saying it wasn’t honorable.  They agreed on one plan in July of 1944.  The plan was to have Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg plant a bomb in one of Hitler’s meetings.  This was the best option so that way the bomb wouldn’t just kill Hitler, it would kill his advisers as well.  The plan was originally set for July 12, but it was delayed because Hitler’s right-hand man wasn’t present.

On July 15, however, Von Stauffenberg asked for permission to carry out the plan and plant the bomb.  Olbricht could no longer wait and gave the order to go ahead and plant the bomb.  The bomb went off but did not kill Hitler; the bomb was behind a leg of the oak table.  Hitler’s life would have ended if the bomb was just half a foot to the right or left.  They still tried to carry out plan Valkyrie.  It didn’t work.  The Nazis quickly stopped the plan.  All the conspirators were caught; most were shot on sight.

The next attempt on Hitler’s life was led by one of the most famous theologians of the 20^th century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer mixed the two types of resistance: at the beginning of the Nazi rule over Germany, he was passive.  He simply was protecting the church; once the war started happening, Bonhoeffer realized violent action was necessary.  He decided Hitler must be killed.

Dietrich Bonheoffer was born February 4, 1906.  He was homeschooled in his early years.  Bonheoffer graduated from Union Seminary in New York in 1930.  In 1931, he began teaching at the theological faculty in Berlin.  In 1933, Hitler’s rise to power sparked much debate within the German protestant church.  There was a debate if they should let “non-Aryans” serve as pastors.  Bonhoeffer was opposed to this idea of the Church putting a race restriction on pastors.  Bonhoeffer was getting worried the Nazi regime was starting to take too much power in the church.  Bonhoeffer formed his own church, called the confessing church.  The Nazis were infuriated by Bonhoeffer’s teaching, and they outlawed his church.  The fact the Nazis outlawed it did not make a huge impact, however; Bonheoffer still had an underground seminary for his church.

In 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to join the “Abwehr” plot to kill Hitler.  He continued on with the church until he was arrested in April 1943, after it was discovered he had given money to help Jews escape to Switzerland.  The Abwehr plot still carried on, though, and on July 20, 1944, five days after the Valkyrie plot, the Abwehr plot tried to kill Hitler but failed.  It was discovered Bonhoeffer was part of this plot.  He was then sentenced to death and was executed in April 1945.

All of these groups showed great courage in the face of evil.  They all stood up for what they believed was right and paid for it.  It is important to recognize not all Germans supported the Nazis; some fought and gave their lives trying to defeat the Nazis.  Others simply spoke the truth.  In the end, all these groups succeeded in making the Nazi regime less powerful.  They made other Germans realize what a twisted organization the Nazis were.

Bibliography

Barnett, Victoria. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Ushmm.org. 1^st ed. National Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009. Web. 10 October 2010.

Braun, Elihai. “Dietrich Bonheoffer.” Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 1^st ed. Jewish Virtual Library, 2009. Web. 12 October 2010.

Hornberger, Jacob. “A Lesson in Dissent.” Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 1^st ed. Jewish Virtual Library, 2010. Web. 10 October 2010.

Scholl, Igne. The White Rose: Munich 1942 – 1943. Farmington, PA: Weslyan University Press, 1983.

Schrader, Helena P.  “1938: The First Coup Attempt.” Valkyrie-plot.com. 2^nd ed. 23 April 2008. Web. 10 October 2010.

—. “1942: Plan Valkyrie.” Valkyrie-plot.com. 2^nd ed. 23 April 2008. Web. 12 October 2010.

Connor Shanley

The times in which we live are becoming more and more unpredictable and uncertain.  The world in which we live is changing rapidly, every day events are taking place around the world we don’t even know about.  These events are changing the world in which we live.  Recently there’s been a very strange thing happening in the Middle East; it has been popularly called the “Arab Spring.”  The Arab Spring refers to the recent increase in protest and civil disputes throughout the Middle East.  The Arabs are now trying to overthrow the oppressive regimes.  In many countries this would seem to be a good thing for the church and for Christians.  In some counties where these protests are occurring, the regimes have been oppressive to the Christian community.  In many cases, though, once the government is overthrown the chaos the protest and riots had will often be continued on to the Church.  This is why the Arab Spring is something the United States should be watching very closely.

The first country to start this Arab spring was started in Tunisia, on December 18, 2010; protest began in Tunisia to show public disapproval of government corruption.  The protests at first were going peacefully, but then various uprisings throughout the country resulted in over 1,000 deaths.  The protests only grew after that, though, and president and prime minister of Tunisia both stepped down from office.  The protests are still on going; the protesters still want to see major government reform.  Tunisia was the start of the Arab Spring, but it is definitely not the most well-known country with current civil unrest.  The country most noted for really being the start of the Arab Spring is Egypt.

On January 25, 2011, Egypt took after Tunisia’s example and started its protests and demonstrations.  Egyptians were sick of their government and their president Hosni Mubarak.  The protests in Egypt often grew violent; in one protest in Cairo, 846 people were killed and 6,000 were injured.  One seemingly good thing coming out of the protests though was Christians and Muslims were uniting to have their voices heard.  A sight seen very often during the protests was Christians forming protective barriers around Muslims during their 5 o’clock prayers.  Likewise, Muslim violence against Christians subsided for a time.  On February 11, Mubarak stepped down from office.  It was taken as a great moral victory for the protesters.  The success of the protest was not just felt in Egypt but in other Arab nations as they decided to follow Egypt and Tunisia.  Protest started to break out all over the Middle East; four days after Mubarak stepped down, Libyan rebel forces began a Civil War.

The aftermath in Egypt, though, was not all freedom and equality.  The government was now gone, and political chaos was taking over.  Violent protests were still going on, and at night people described Cairo as a war zone.  Much of the violence, however, was directed toward Christians.  Prior to the protests, the Christians in Egypt were already being persecuted, partially helped by the government, but the government did keep some peace.  Now that police can no longer enforce curfew, mobs of Muslim extremists are burning down churches and killing civilians.

Now many accounts of massacres of Christians throughout the Middle East exist.  Countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Algeria are having massive protests against the government, but because the police are so distracted by these protests they can’t protect the Christians.  The Christians are being overwhelmed; at first many thought this Arab spring would be a good thing for the unification of Muslim and Christian communities.  The Arab Spring has just sparked more anti-Christian violence.  Many believe the rise in violence is only reserved to some parts of the protest.  They believe as a whole, though, the Arab Spring will still be good for the unification of Christian and Muslim communities; they believe over all the Arab Spring is very good thing.

Many members of the media portray the Arab Spring as a good change.  The Arab Spring shows the Middle East is becoming more democratic.  The media on the left see it as the Middle East somewhat conforming to our way through wanting the common people to have a say in political matters.  There is a very dark side behind the Arab Spring, however: the rise in persecution.  Christians know behind these protests are people wanting to overthrow a regime not because it is not democratic but because the regime isn’t Muslim enough.

The problem now brewing in the Middle East is two types of protesters being seen; one type is the kind the leftist media love.  These protesters are the genuine young who want the right to vote and who want to put an end to their tyrannical government.  Then there is the other type, usually the older ones, who look to overthrow their government because their government has been too friendly to the West.  These protesters are angry their government is trying to impress America.  It is now a proven fact these protest leaders are members of terrorist organizations.  It taints the whole idea these protests are just all about freedom, and all this political unrest has become the perfect time for terrorists to try to get as much power as possible.

The Arab Spring, which at first looked to be a positive step forward, is now a dangerous threat to America.  The terrorists we are fighting every day are looking to take advantage of the political unrest.  The uncertainty of the outcome of the Arab Spring is endless; America could manage to gain many allies out of this.  For example, Libya (at least for a short time) should be on our side given we supported the rebels’ side.  Still, even Libya could turn on us, and now because of all the recent uprisings more weapons are in the Middle East than any agency can keep track of.  Most of these guns are just floating around the region with no one to keep track or regulate distribution of them.  Many of these weapons have already ended up in the hands of mobs that persecute Christians; those same people are the ones who will support the terrorists.

In conclusion, America must keep a very watchful eye on all this civil unrest.  If America uses the Arab Spring to its advantage, it could help stabilize the Middle East for years to come, but if America is not watchful, the wrong people may take control, and America could have a growing list of enemies.