I once lived just a few kilometres from a place of mass murder.
At the time, my father was a chaplain to the NATO forces who were stationed at Hohne in north Germany. I spent my holidays there when term ended at boarding school. The infamous Nazi concentration camp, Belsen, was just a couple of kilometres away.
I remember it clearly. A straight concrete road ran to Belsen from Hohne. I visited it once when I was sixteen years of age—but being so young, I was not able to understand the full horror of what I was seeing in the photographs on display there. What I did notice, however, was that I couldn’t hear the sound of any birds singing. It was as if nature itself was holding its breath, appalled at the evil that had taken place.
What little I was able to absorb caused me to wonder how the country I lived in and admired, could be capable of such evil? Somehow, the most civilised nation in the world; a nation of exquisite culture and scientific excellence, had walked away from its Christian heritage—and produced the extermination camps of Belsen, Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek.
General William Donovan, a member of the US prosecution team at the Nuremburg war trials, kept records of all that was learned at the war trails conducted there. These records were organised into 150 volumes, and are now kept at Cornell University. They make sobering reading as they reveal that the Nazis understood that Bible-believing, evangelical churches would have to be neutralised by infiltration, extermination and indoctrination. Only those churches that compromised their Christian values would be spared. Donovan reported, “National Socialism by its very nature was hostile to Christianity and the Christian churches. The purpose of the National Socialist movement was to convert the German people into a homogeneous racial group united in … aggressive warfare.” Donovan’s reports make it clear that, notwithstanding public rhetoric, the Nazi party planned to eliminate authentic Christianity completely.[1]
It would seem that atheism, whether it be in the form of Hitler’s National Socialism, Communism, or the neo-Marxist ideologies that are currently on the rise in the West—cannot help butremove all that is sacred from what it means to be human… and this paves the way for the vilest abuses that humankind can perpetrate. Tragically, it seems that without God, humanity reverts to the law of the animal kingdom where it makes perfect sense for the strong to enslave, predate and abuse the weak.
The Austrian psychologist, Viktor Frankl, survived the horrors of no less than four Nazi concentration camps. When he reflected on his experience, he wrote:
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin but rather at the desks and lecture halls of Nihilistic scientists and philosophers.[2]
Abuses by any military regime cannot occur unless its nation’s opinion leaders first establish a philosophic climate that removes both the sacredness of humankind and godly moral boundaries.
Sadly, the West is now doing both. The humanity departments (particularly) in our universities have been allowed to develop an intolerant anti-Christian, Neo-Marxist, culture that is oppressive. The justification for this is that they are being “enlightened rationalists.” In reality, they neither understand the scientific wonders and mysteries of the cosmos, or the historical and theological underpinnings of Christianity. They just re-quote tired anti-Christian clichés which they have failed to examine for truth.
Again, the nation’s “intellectuals” are removing the sacredness of life and God-given moral absolutes from society. Men now marry men, and some women want it to be legal to kill the baby they are carrying just minutes before birth. It seems as if the wisdom of millennia accumulated by the world’s cultures is being trashed, and the lessons of history ignored. No one remembers that Communism once tried to dismiss the historic concept of family, but had to reverse their decision when they saw its ruinous consequence on society.
Today’s liberal, secular ideas have been smuggled into our society under the banner of “compassion” and “justice.” These emotive words have been used to shut down rational debate. This sometimes causes me to wonder whether I’ve woken up in some sort of evil parallel universe. It’s hard to believe what’s now happening.
With some surprise, I discover that I am now a grandfather. This lovely reality brings with it some disquieting fears. I confess to being deeply concerned for my grandchildren’s future. My generation had the choice of passing on to them either a blessing or a curse. Sadly, I fear we have not done well. Our children have been brought up to have a state-sanctioned secular worldview. As a result, they don’t know anything about why they exist, what their meaning is, what their moral boundaries are, or what destiny they can hope for. As a result, they believe themselves to be meaningless and are committing suicide in record numbers.
And what of today’s church?
The abuse carried out by paedophiles hiding in the church, and the lack of biblical faithfulness displayed by some of its leaders, have both contributed to disintegration and demise of the church. There is no way God will allow either obscenity to continue unchallenged. He will bring judgement—and has, as our newspapers attest.
Many in the church are now desperately looking for today’s Elijahs and Isaiahs who will lead our nation back to repentance and restoration, but where are they? Who will be the catalyst for unity and reform? Who will earn the grudging respect of a wayward nation by their integrity and their lifestyle?
Perhaps Rick Warren is someone who comes close. He is the senior pastor of Saddleback church (a huge church in America with many campuses), he chose to drive an old car for many years, and gave 90% of his income back to the church. With Rick at least, we saw something of the simplicity of living and integrity displayed by John the Baptist and Jesus.
So, what of the future?
Historians such as the Englishman, Arnold Toynbee, tell us that civilisations are not destroyed when nations attack them from the outside; rather, they die on the inside when they commit cultural suicide. They die when they lose faith in the central beliefs that once held their civilisation together. History indicates that this life-cycle of a civilisation is inexorable and inevitable—almost. Only one thing has ever reversed a civilisation’s decline and injected new life into it, and that one thing is Christianity. John Wesley’s Methodism is one such example. It is widely credited with preventing England’s poor from descending into total gin-sodden depravity, and it introduced a moral climate that probably prevented England from suffering the bloody uprisings and revolutions that were occurring in Europe. The poor and the desperate encountered the gospel.
So, we need spiritual revival… and I know of no revival that was not birthed without desperate, prevailing prayer.
So that is what I want to give myself to this year. I invite you to join me.
[1] Donovan X, 18, 03, 02 (Cornell University).
[2] Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy.
