Something to Belieb in

Pop star Justin Bieber, 19, got some bad press last week when, after touring the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, he signed the guest book, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.” (That’s what his millions of teenybopper fans call themselves.)

I barely know who Justin Bieber is. I’m not his demographic nor, if you’re reading this post, are you. The kid clearly has talent. But he is completely self-centered as evidenced by his guest book entry in which he directed the focus away from Anne Frank and onto himself. If I was 19 and millions of girls were clamoring to see me, I’d probably think the world revolved around me, too.

My first visit to the Anne Frank Museum, in 1972, was one of the most profound experiences of my life. It’s not a classic museum. It's a house where Anne and her family hid in the attic from the Nazis.  The first floor was a business so the Franks and Van Dams, another family in hiding, had to stay quiet during the day to avoid detection. To relieve the boredom, Anne, who was 13 and 14 during her two years in the house, wrote in her diary, which was found after the war and published.

I entered the Anne Frank house as a 20-year-old who had signed off on everything I’d been taught about a loving, benevolent God who looks out for his children. I left that museum with my faith shaken. I haven’t felt the same way about God or my fellow man since.

If every American family aspired to visit the Anne Frank House instead of Disneyland or Disney World .... if Islam required every adherent to travel to Amsterdam rather than make a haj to Mecca … if everyone, everywhere, were to be taken on a tour of that unassuming house at 263 Prinsengracht … much of the world’s irrational hated would simply go away.

After Monday’s Boston bombing, newscasters were opining that most people are good and kind, citing the fact that so many people hastened to help the injured rather than simply running away. That’s pretty much how Anne was seeing the world when she wrote, “… in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Faith in the inherent goodness of our fellow humans is something to cling to. We need it but it’s hard to keep that faith in a world that always has been, and always will be, a dangerous place. There are a lot of crazies out there.

And that, unfortunately, is something we must continue to teach our children and grandchildren to Belieb in.