Follower

Due to some family health challenges, our family departed Burkina Faso in 1987 and returned to live in the USA. On the return trip, our family met Cheryl’s dad and stepmother in Paris for a vacation in Europe. We rented a van and toured France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Cheryl’s dad, Maurice, had served in the army in Germany, so he wanted to retrace some of his experiences. He was one of the guards at the Nuremberg war criminals’ trials. He served as an officer in the compound where Speer, Hess, Goring, and other Nazi leaders were held in jail for the post war trials.

The court room in Nuremberg where the trials took place is not open to the public, and that was a huge disappointment for us. Maurice was a determined man, and he persisted, using broken German he retained from living there forty years before this visit. Finally, he convinced the guard that he had served as an officer for the famous Nuremberg trials, and the guard called for someone to come and give us a personal tour of the courtroom.

Maurice took us to the historic parade ground just outside Nuremberg which was Hitler’s most powerful pulpit where he amassed troops covering the 7-acre field. He told us about US troops blowing up the giant marble swastika that overlooked the stadium and parade grounds.

In Berchtesgaden Maurice directed us to the site of a former retreat for German officers. The retreat compound is located below “Kehlsteinhaus,” Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Before all the buildings were destroyed after the war, it was used as a retreat for R & R for Allied officers. Maurice remembered where every building stood and where he stayed. He pointed out an indentation in the ground and told us that had been a swimming pool.

As we walked over the grounds, I noticed that an older couple was following us closely and listening intently to what Maurice was saying. I turned to face them and smiled and greeted them, and they returned the smile and greeting.

When we returned to the van, we were getting refreshments for the kids, and the couple who had been following us approached us. The woman did the talking and told Maurice that he did a good job describing the retreat grounds. She went on to inform us that they were Austrian, and both were physicians. Then she said something that surprised us: they were not only Nazis, but her husband served during World War II in the SS. That was an eerie feeling, but then she showed us an old photograph of Hitler with a girl with braided long blond hair and blue eyes. Then she told us that she was the girl in the photograph. Many German troops carried a copy of this photo in their pockets as a reminder of the Ayran race and why they were fighting.

We were already blown away by all this information that she shared with us, but as they said goodbye, the lady leaned in closer to us and said, “If Hitler were alive today, we would still be his followers!!”

Now that was an unnerving surprise. I wondered how many other people today shared their conviction about being a follower of Hitler.

I thought a lot about that word “follower.” In many parts of the world a believer does not identify himself as a Christian because that word is associated with the slaughter of tens of thousands of Muslims during the crusades of the Middle Ages. Particularly in the Muslim world believers identify themselves as “followers of Jesus.” For those who declare themselves as followers of Jesus there are great sacrifices—their family usually disowns them and shuts them out of their lives; they are unable to find a job because they are branded as rejecting the true faith of Islam; they have difficulty finding a place to live; and their personal property is attacked.

I looked up synonyms for follower in the dictionary: acolyte, adherent, convert, and disciple. The dictionary also stated some words related to follower: apostle, missionary, proselytizer, soldier, loyalist advocate, backer, champion, devotee, worshiper, and zealot.

As I typed those words, I had to stop and think about my own commitment to Jesus related to each of those words. Wow! The question still lingering in my mind is this: How does my journey as a follower of Jesus stack up to each of these words? Am I really a soldier for Christ? A zealot? Would anyone say that I champion Jesus?

May the Lord renew my heart and mind to be a true follower of Jesus Christ!