Do people have a responsibility to be true to what they believe?

Most people would find that an easy question to answer--and yet every day throughout all of human history people compromise themselves in various ways in order to "get ahead" or at least "not to get involved."

American historian and author Daniel Goldhagen wrote a book that was quite controversial in Germany when it appeared in 1996. The book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," spoke of the critical role ordinary Germans played in the success of one of history's most evil persons. It wasn't what they did, it was what most people didn't do that allowed Hitler to carry out his designs so successfully in broad daylight. Would acting on their beliefs and/or the disgusting things they witnessed have hurt their businesses and careers?--undoubtedly.

Here in the US we have our own stories of course. In the early hours of the morning of 13 March 1964 a young woman named Kitty Genovese screamed for her life as she was repeatedly stabbed by her killer outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. Police detectives learned later that most of her neighbors had heard her screams behind their closed doors and windows but each assumed another would call the police. No one did.

All of this reminds me of the end of Saint Francis of Assisi's prayer:

for it is in giving that one receives,

it is in self-forgetting that one finds,

it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,

it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.