I’ll attempt to keep this one brief since I’ll need to get ready for church soon. As I arose and sat down to read a little this a. m. a thought (one that has vexed many people throughout recent history) surfaced within me and I thought that I would attempt to draw out from within me some kind of a conclusion. The book is “The Coming of the Third Reich” by Richard J. Evans (Penguin Press, 2005). When commenting that “I want to draw something out from within me”, I certainly did not want to appear dramatic. I simply am not sure as to what is going to be concluded. So let us just “bang on the keys” and see what comes out on the other end.
The vexation, of course, surfaces whenever one contemplates just who it was that perpetrated those awful atrocities appended to the history of the Second World War. This is Germany; the land of Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Beethoven, etc. etc. This is “the land of poets and thinkers” the most cultured country in all of the world - as many have said in commenting on the subject matter. How in the world can such a cultured and educated people do such things? My thought while reading the book this morning surfaced this silent utterance: “But of course they did these things; we are sinful Man. Under similar conditions we all would have done the same”! Now I promised to keep this brief, so I’ll not support with details the culture thing.
The Hebrew People let God down. Had He gone to some place near Tuscany ca. 2000 BC and drawn out some guy named Luigi and formed a people from this guy, we Italians would have let God down; And so with all the peoples of the world. We would all commit atrocities under similar conditions. We are all slaves to our collective sinful natures. In the year 2008, in the midst of the exponential and information age, what atrocities await us – atrocities that we will all participate in? The implications lead us to the conditions uttered by the Lord as found in Matthew 24-25 and particularly by Luke 21. We will betray one another with all of the implications that that awful scenario requires.
But wait, you might say. We are Christians. We do not do such things. Exactly! We are Christians, we do not do such things! We are a “called-out” people. So what “thought from within me” shall I conclude? Perhaps it is this. As we attempt to heal the world in the name of Christ, and the world does not want to be healed, and turns and rends us, will we still be Christians? Will we keep the faith? The thought is this: Christ is in the process of calling us out just as He did Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans. Where is our heart, what is our ethos, where are our treasures? Are our affections and treasures still in Chaldea? We are living in 1933 beloved. There is a wave of evil with tsunami like conditions about to engulf us. The world does not want to be healed by Christ. Only a hungry, Abrahamic-like nature, one that yearns for truth will resist just such a temptation. The wave that currently drives much of the Christian community today may be the 21st century edition of the Third Reich in 1930s Germany. Let’s be careful here and terribly sobered by our current world condition - please!
OK, I lied. Not brief and more than one thought. Have patience with me. Believe me, I will pursue this subject much more in the future.
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2 comments:
Hey Dad,
I was recently trying to be a little more specific as to the cause or causes of the terrible things that happened during World War two. I was with a secular group and I mentioned Hitler and his beliefs in Darwinism and of coarse some weren't happy. No one publicly responded but you could cut the tension with a knife. Do you have any thoughts on this as being part of the cause?
Many years ago, in my BC days, I found myself reading Mein Kampf. Always wondered why it happened.
The Germans were ripe for the picking. Bad economy, recovering from a lost war, feeling down about their nationality, it is no wonder it happened. Along came a man speaking about change and blaming a group of people for all their troubles.
Thousands of years before this another man blamed 2 groups of people for all his trouble. The religion he created is still around today and still blaming 2 groups of people.
I picked up a Quran on the kings highway in Jordan. Started reading that. Funny, it reads just like Mein Kampf. Must have been written by the same guy.
There is another story long ago about that guy taking out his revenge on 2 people.
We have been ripe for the plucking then and we will be ripe for the plucking now, without Christ that is.
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