Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 4, 16 January 1942, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

(Supplied by the Wbakata

ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS HAVE THE CHOICE BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL For a time i was uncertain whether the Avar would bring about a religious reawakening. But now 1 am certain that it will. My reasons for that belief are largely intuitive, and as' hard to set forth as the reasons for belief in religion itself. But some of them lie fairly near the surface. Human Nature That fear should play some part in the .movement is. only natural. Human nature is apt to be a frail thing in itself, and in a time of dangei and terror it is thrown back on spiritual resources that may have been neglected when ail seemed to be going fairly well. Cynical comment, also, is deflected by the fact that in the mind of the most timid person mere personal fear is overshadowed by horror. The phrase I have heard oftenest of late, from the lips of a!) sorts and conditions of people, is "Man's inhumanity to man." That human beings should be capable ol inflicting on one another the ghastly cruellies e;f which the Nazis are guilty is something that literally "staggers humanity." I belive it would horrify decent people in Germany if they were fully aware of it. But they are kept in ignorance, and the immediate agents in the crimes; are young men who have been de-humanised by a hideous kind of training that has resulted in a fanatical form of Devilworship. The Spirit of Christ Torror might conceivably induce utter disbelief in human nature, and also in a Divine purpose, but for the magnificent reaction of the people who are facing the most trying of all ordeals. They have shown not only fortitude, but compassion and helpfulness. Thus human nature has been vindicated right away; and, generally speaking, it is a variety of human nature that has a long tradition of religious training and of simple faith behind it. But that, in a sense, only deepens the horror, since it makes it less than ever comprehensible that human beings should inflict on human beings the atrocities that have served to evoke such fine qualities in the victims. And it is precisely here that religion comes in. Alongside the mysterious and nameless horror there has been Avhat one can only term I a spontaneous manifestation of the

lie Miiiislers' Association)

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

spirit of Christ in hum tin beings

The inference is obvious, and unassailable. God ru'es in the hear.ts of ordinary liunian beings who have not l)een systematically corrupted. But the spirit of Christianity has seldom been manifested in international dealings, and not ahvavs in the internal policy of nations; and it was openly and blatantly departed from by the men who seized power in what are now the totalitarian countries. Thus, in the blinding cataclysm, the ultimate foundations of civilisation are laid bare. (Jod rules the world, but men are not well-behaved automata. They are free to accept or reject Divine rule. That seems n little too elementary. There are mysteries of heredity and early environment that as yet have not been thoroughly sounded. But these are matters for the spiritual physician. They are irrelevant to the central proposition, that nations should not be ruled by diseased-minded persons who make evil their good, but by men whose spirit and ethics are Christian. Faith of Their Fathers One need not go further than the. contrast between Hitler and President Roosevelt. Mammon-worship and other forms of social evil have often been rampant in America; and the Americans, Like ourselves, have occasionally laid themselves open to ;he charge of hypocrisy. But the American people as a whole have adhered to the faith of these fiath-i p.rs, that the world is ruled by a Divine and revealed Power of righteousness, to whom human beings, are responsible, individually and collectively: represents the basic spirit of America. Hitler is ruled only by his own diseased and criminal will.; The tragic mystery is that the German people should have selected as their Dictator and the object of their worship a man who ought to have been a patient of Dr Freud. There .'ire many reasons for that, and they do not all concern Germany alone. They have to do with the general failure of men and women to see to it that the whole of life, public as. well as private, was thoroughly permeated with the Christian ethic. In Germany there had not only been a decline of that ethic; its place had been taken by another, the ethic, of race-worship and brutal violence. And that only serves to point the moral that has been driven liome to us bv suffering, namely, that there is no hope for Christendom save in Christianity. !