Sacred Malls

Here are some quotes from Jon Pahl’s Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Places:

From the journalist Hanna Arendt on Adolf Eichmann’s involvement in overseeing the Holocaust: “The most potent factor in the soothing of his own conscience was the simple fact that he could see no one, no one at all, who was actually against the Final Solution.” Pahl then goes on to argue that this is part of the problem in society, that so many things that westerners take as a essential to life, no one speaks out against and thus a hegemony emerges which is difficult for almost anyone to resist. His critique of malls, Walt Disney World, lawn care, and the American obsession with the suburban home is well worth a look.

For me, I was impressed by this observation about Nazi Germany. Certainly, some did object and it made a little difference. As a missionary, sometimes I feel that's possibly my main calling: to object and hope that someone hears. To object to the pervasive secularism, to the greed, to the sensuality that shapes so much of life in post-Soviet Ukraine. And maybe, someone will hear.