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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – There was a movie about the Holocaust called Jakob The Liar. Holocaust movies are difficult to watch. They are always set about the background of man’s unimaginable cruelty to man. We’re confronted with how could others be treated so horribly.
And Jakob The Liar is not a particularly good movie, but it does give a fantastic lesson about the power of hope.
Here’s the story: Jews in the ghetto are forbidden to have radios. They might hear foreign news broadcasts that Germany is losing the war.
Jakob – played by Robin Williams – is called before the Nazi authorities for a petty violation of curfew. He could be put to death. But he is spared. But while waiting to be questioned by the authorities, he hears a radio broadcast that a group of German administrators are listening to. It reported that Russia is advancing on the eastern front, and that Hitler’s army is facing defeat and starvation.
Jakob shares this hopeful news with other Jews in the ghetto. Everyone assumes that he has an illegal radio. He doesn’t. But he is now perceived as a source of information. And he begins making things up. He claims that future radio broadcasts report that allied troops are about to reach Poland and then Germany. Liberation is at hand.
Jakob is shocked at the power of hope. People who were going to commit suicide hold on for a few more weeks. A little girl hopes that she will live a normal life someday. In time the Nazis begin to suspect that Jakob has access to news from the outside world. He is killed based on their suspicions, which are wrong.
Consider for a moment how Christians are a little like people who wait for Jakob’s next report. We are told that Christ-followers are promised eternal life in paradise. Yet no one has been there. No one knows for sure, except for reliance on Biblical teaching. I believe that’s true, and an unimaginably great Heavenly reward awaits me. But, to be completely honest, I have no idea what that would be like. Here on earth a never-ending feast or a continuous celebrating would surely get tired over time. Paradise is a concept that we can’t understand in reality as we know it.
And yet we are told to live hopefully, too. That there are rewards and blessings that we will receive here on Earth. Jeremiah, chapter 29, tells us: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” God does not intend for us to struggle until our final day. If you are going through challenges and life seems difficult, take heart. Present circumstances are promised to change.
Live in the great hope that is promised to us.
Chris Conley
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