When will we ever learn?
27 August 2011
Last night on BBC 2 Newsnight, Charles Moore said that Britain is economically and morally bankrupt.
Tonight BBC 2 showed the story of Hans Litten, the Jewish lawyer who stood up to Adolph Hitler and exposed the Nazi programme of violence in a Berlin court room in 8/5/1931. It took him only three hours, and although most of Germany listened, not enough people learned from it. The cost of not listening was very great. The same mistake is made to the present hour - “it cannot happen here.”
“To Stop a Tyrant” BBC2 8-9 p.m. extolled the courage of the brilliant, young Jewish lawyer who exposed Hitler and suffered the consequences in Nazi concentration camps. The programme ended by reminding us that such brave people are in every country challenging tyrants who are imposing their distorted and wicked will upon whole populations.
This is the real world, and we need solutions. This wickedness in the heart of man is only too real to many people around the world. It becomes very real when faced with a Brownshirt, Blackshirt, a Gestapo interrogator, a Mafia or gang member, or whoever feels no responsibility for his violent behaviour. The fear created by such a situation is experienced by too many people, and during the recent riots in English cities ordinary citizens in Britain spoke about this fear.
No appeals to reason could halt the beatings and torture by the Gestapo. There is no power on earth which can stop wicked tyrants who think that they can get off with their wicked activity. The only power is divine power, and to this we must appeal. Although such people have hardened their conscience, and seared it with a hot iron, yet they still have a conscience. It can be re-awakened by their cowardly fear of reprisals. Bullies are cowards. They need to be reminded that God will catch up on them and that a lost eternity awaits them except they repent. However, humanist politicians don’t have this in their arsenal, and their appeals to reason, education, jobs and the good life are falling on the deaf ears of these wicked people who take the law into their own hands, and who decide to forge a good life of their own making in their own violent way.
Such real life scenarios are described in the Old Testament – which for some strange reason Richard Dawkins thinks should not appear in a book claiming to be divine. He seems to think that a divine book will describe a standard of conduct as if we are living at peace in heaven, instead of living in a sin-cursed world where people are in constant danger of their life being a prey for the wicked. The Bible is a good textbook to remind people what human life is really like. One wonders what literature Dawkins studied at school, or what sanitised history of mankind he would prefer. Does he think that only genes are selfish, or can he not admit that Scripture paints a very real picture of the wickedness of man, of the dangers of their reprisals, and the realities of living under threat of sudden destruction?
God is no vulnerable Jewish lawyer - but in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, He was indeed incarcerated, beaten up and done to death. However, there is a difference to this story. This same Jesus will judge the world, and although the message of God’s final judgment of human actions is heard, yet too many will not listen to it. The Gospel of His grace is therefore ignored, and lives are not changed. Hearts are hardened and violence continues. The cost of not listening will be very great - too great.
