Questions on Christianity

Over the past few blogs, we have seen that Hitler and Stalin did not kill millions on their own but there were thousands of others who actively approved and carried out their orders.  When I was searching the internet for the book on the Ukraine famine, I found another book that illustrates this point again.  This one involved China, Mao, and the Great Leap Forward.

The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to rapidly bring China into the modern world by setting lofty goals for industry and agriculture in order to stimulate new methods of accomplishing particular tasks.  The leaders in the cities and country in order to show support for this initiative set even loftier goals.  These goals proved to be impossible to meet.  The result was violence against the worker in an attempt to increase output.  Safety and quality took a backseat to quantity which resulted in many  industrial accidents.  In the country, the rulers vastly overestimated the harvest and when the national government took what it was told was excess produce the result was little food left for the farmers which resulted in the starvation of millions. The result of all this political maneuvering was that in the years 1958 to 1962 between 32 and 45 million Chinese died unnecessarily.

So who was responsible for all this suffering and deaths?  Was Mao the only person  who committed all these atrocities? As Dikötter explains:  “. . .a dictatorship never has one has one dictator only, as many people become willing to scramble for power over the next person above them.” [1]

There were many party  members who did not back the Great Leap Forward with sufficient enthusiasm were removed from their positions. [2]  The question is how far  would we go when commanded by our superiors in government or business to take actions that would go against our Christian beliefs?  Would we find some way to justify such actions or would we be willing to suffer the consequences?

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[1]   Frank Dikötter.  Mao’s Great Famine.  London:  Bloomsbury, 2010, p. 41.

[2]   Ibid., pp. 100-103.

In our blog of November 12, 2020 entitled “Individual Responsibility” we saw that one person by themselves cannot change the world.  It takes a group of people committed to an idea.  We saw that Hitler alone was not responsible for the Holocaust but thousands of others shared his vision and helped him carry it out.

This lesson is reinforced in Anne Applebaum’s book Red Famine which documents how Stalin deliberately removed all food from the Ukraine in order to starve the kulaks into the collectivization of their farms and to teach them resistance was futile.  It is estimated that around three million people died.

As Applebaum points out in her book, it took thousands of people to implement the policies that caused the starvation of the Ukrainian people; Stalin did not do it on his own.  [1]  It took activist teams to search all the farms and remove anything edible;  it took neighbors iinforming on neighbors. [2]  It took the extraordinary effort of the international  press together with government officials to deny the famine ever existed, to cover it up. [3]

This event is history and there is nothing we can do to change it.  What we can do is to learn from it.  The most important question for us to ask ourselves is how would we respond if we were ordered by our government to take an action against strangers or even our neighbors, knowing full well we were condemning them to death?  It would take courage to refuse to carry out such government orders and it might even cost us our life.  What an incident such as this would reveal to us is the type of person we really are.  Would we condemn another person to death to save our own life, to secure for us and our family a better future?  Or would we heed the words of Jesus:  “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”  (Luke 9:25 ESV)

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[1]   Anne Applebaum.  Red Famine.  New York:  Anchor Books, 2017, pp. 253-254.

[2]   Ibid., pp. 264-286.

[3]   Ibid., pp. 354-359.  Also watch the  movie Mr. Jones to see how the international news media handled this human  tragedy.

I have been reading The Christian Mind by Harry Blamires.  It was written in 1963 but is highly relevant for today.  He has some interesting comments about truth.

In my book, The Renovation of Our Soul, I discuss the difficulty we have in knowing what is true.  This is a result of several factors—we are finite, we are limited in our knowledge and in our ability to utilize the knowledge we have, and we have a sinful nature.  However, that does not stop us from trying to learn what is true.  So as Pilate asks:   “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

Some people think truth is like a pudding or a brew; which is concocted from a variety of human opinions. [1]  This is the thinking today; truth is relative and is dependent upon one’s view and the society in which one lives.

But Blamires believes that truth is more like a rock which is exposed by scrapping away the dirt surrounding it and the dirt is human prejudice and passion. [1]  And I would add human ignorance.

Or Blamires states truth is like a lighthouse.  It always sends out its light but that light can be obscured by the elements–rain, snow, fog.  Again in speaking of truth, those elements that obscure the truth include human prejudice, passion, and ignorance. [1]

Using either analogy, it is obvious that determining the truth requires work.  Sometimes truth stumbles in the public square (Isaiah 59:14) and unrighteousness suppresses the truth (Romans 1:18).  However, God has promised to provide us with assistance.  Jesus, in talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth (John14:17) and promises us the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth (John 16:13).  So let us be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and not be like those Paul describes as:  “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7  ESV).

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[1]   Harry Blamires. The Christian Mind.  Ann Arbor, MI:   Servant Books, 1978, pp.  112-114.

At this time of the year, we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Most depictions of his birth include a manger scene to emphasize his lowly birth—there was no room for him in the inn.  Even Jesus’ upbringing seems to emphasize his lowly estate; he was not a member of high society or even of the religious or political ruling class but instead he was known as a carpenter (Mark 6:3).  The disciples who Jesus relied upon, James, John, and Peter were from the working class—fishermen.

However, as we discussed in the blog last December, there is reason to believe Jesus was born in a regular house for that time and not in a stable.  Also the wise men from the East came from a long distance to worship him and left him gifts.  As an adult, Jesus’ interaction with the religious leaders of his time was as an equal.  Jesus was respectful but he was not afraid to challenge them (Luke 7:36-50).  Pharisees were sneaking round at night just to see Jesus (John 3:1-15).  He had rich people coming to him for advice (Matthew 19:16-22) and even climbing trees to see him (Luke 19:1-10).  Jesus was not intimidated political leaders such as Roman governor Pilate.  When Jesus was interrogated by Pilate, Pilate’s reaction was one of amazement (Mark 15:1-5).  Another top Roman official, Herod, was absolutely dying to see Jesus (Luke 23:6-12).  He thought, in the words of our time, that Jesus was a rock star.

I’m not sure why people emphasize the humble beginning of Jesus’ life.  What we need to remember is that Jesus related well to everyone he met—the poor, the alienated from society, the middle class, the rich, and the well connected.  One would not expect less of God’s son.

Some Christians are very focused on using politics to achieve certain Christian goals they believe in and to which they are committed.  They spend a considerable time and effort to electing the right Congress persons or getting the right judges on the judicial benches.  These efforts are laudable and as Christians we should be involved in all the policy debates in our country.  The question we ask is:  should politics be our main focus?

An editorial in World Magazine states that winning political battles is easy compared to “The much harder part [of changing] the deep-down desires of the people the politicians represent.” [1]  But is this not the way God  works in our world?  His primary efforts are to change us, to change our soul so it is like him; it is not to change our government.   When we change ourselves, then we change our institutions such as our government.

So while we should be involved in politics, we also should ask how much time and effort do we spend on politics and how much time and effort do we spend on changing our soul so it becomes like God.

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[1]   Joel Belz, “More than politics”, World Magazine, November 21, 2020, p. 8.

Étienne Gilson, who is a French philosopher and historian of  philosophy, states there is no common ground of truth on which  science and religion can meet. [1]  My question is:  Why?

Part of the problem lies with religion.  Religion tends to attribute anything they do not understand to God while science investigates what we do not understand to uncover facts that explain the phenomena so we can understand it.  Religion needs to learn from science.

Part of the problem lies with science.  Science has learned how biological systems work but while scientific rules can explain the functioning of biological systems they cannot explain its existence [2]  Science says evolution which is random changes together with natural selection is the cause of our existence but “Chance is the pure absence of an explanation.“[3]

In speaking of teleology (the study of the evidences of design or purposes in nature), Gilson notes science does not like teleology because it is an untestable explanation [4] but has nothing to replace teleology which they no longer want. [5]  The intelligent  design movement, using the methods of science, has had great success in demonstrating that our existence is not random, that there is an intelligence behind our existence. [6]  Why is science so opposed to the possibility that we are created beings and that there is a purpose for our existence?  Science needs to learn from religion.

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[1]   Étienne Gilson.  From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1971, p. 88.

[2]   Ibid., p. 132.

[3]   Ibid., p. 154.

[4]   Ibid., p. 154.

[5]   Ibid., p. 152

[6]   See  Signature in the Cell by Steven Meyer and Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe.

When we hear or read about the various atrocities committed in our world such as the millions killed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, we more than likely blame the leader of that country at that time and maybe a few of his closest allies.  However, are the citizens of these countries totally blameless?  Is the entire world totally blameless?

Robert Gellately in Hitler’s True Believers answers “No”.  The reasons he gives are:

1. The world, after World War I, placed many onerous requirements on Germany which developed a resentful attitude among the German people toward the rest of the world.
2. Many of the German people had anti-Semitic views well before Hitler.
3. Hitler could not have come to power unless he had at least the tolerance of the business community.
4. Professors in universities joined the Nazis because removing Jews from the universities meant jobs for them.
5. The Gestapo was too small to enforce Hitler’s degrees and needed the help of ordinary citizens.
6. Ordinary citizens used the Nazis to get rid of opponents.

Even in counties which Germany captured, citizens of those countries helped the Nazis round up Jews if it would mean an advantage for them such as a job. [2]

This lesson from history teaches us that all of us are responsible for what transpires in our world.  The actions we as individuals take do have an impact.  Now one person all by themselves cannot change the world but we can influence others through our actions and words and together we create our world–whether for good or evil is a choice we each must make.

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[1]   Robert Gellately, Hitler’s True Believers.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 2020.

[2]   Sarah Rose, D-Day Girls.  New York:  Crown, 2019, p. 92.