BLOG 12/26/17. NO ONE EVER WANTS TO BELIEVE THAT …

It was Winston Churchill who said that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Yet, still, no one wants to believe that his/her national leadership is wicked, alas! In the early 1930s, in one of the most enlightened nations in the world, Germany, there arose a charismatic figure who capitalized on the discontent of so much of the population, and promoted the vision of a whole new and prospering and dominant Germany: The Third Reich. Adolph Hitler was not, by any standard, a particularly gifted person, … except that he knew how to manipulate the masses, and to inflate their pride. In the course of his emergence, he also manipulated the Christian church and insisted that to be a true German Christian, one would be supportive of the Third Reich, and of Adolph Hitler.

Amazingly (horrifyingly?) too many of the masses ‘bit’ and passively went along as things became progressively more destructive. Very few Christian leaders stood up and opposed Hitler, and when they did it was at the risk of their lives. One who was most vocally opposed was the young Christian theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who designated those compliant with Hitler’s regime to be religious Christians vis-a-vie true Christian disciples. That small community of opponents had to operate underground, and voiced their opposition in the illuminating Barmen Declaration.  A French contemporary of Bonhoeffer was Jacques Ellul, who fought with the French underground forces, and later became a giant figure in sociology and theology. He wrote that it was the failure of those professing to be Christians in German to pray that was so distressing. When the wickedness of the leadership in German became inescapable, the church was too compromised, or captive to the dominant order to pray. Ellul attributes so much of Germany’s descent into national wickedness to the church’s failure to pray.

No one ever wants to believe that the leadership of their nation is wicked. Yet, here we are with a national leader who gives lip-service to the Christian faith and yet whose whole life contradicts the ethics of the Kingdom of God and the teachings of Christ. He is arrogant, proud, captive to mammon/wealth, careless with the truth, espousing policies that ignore the helpless poor, the sick, the strangers/refugees, the homeless, and the marginalized, … while living in lavish residences, and promoting those economic policies that favor the rich and powerful. And globally, he promotes what sounds frighteningly like the Third Reich: “America First.” He is untruthful, bullying, personally amoral, and totally without personal integrity, i.e., wicked.

Ah, so what is the alert believer to do? How to respond redemptively (other than voting for persons of peace and order and justice)? Good question. My own reflection takes me back to wondering who was praying for the wicked Saul of Tarsus when he was laying waste the infant church in Palestine and surrounding areas. How did they pray to be delivered from that menace in that brilliant, zealous Jewish prodigy? However, they prayed, one can only surmise that they never could have conceived for them to be delivered by Saul of Tarsus being dramatically and inescapably confronted by the risen and glorified Jesus. Saul was blinded, rendered helpless, made totally contrite, … and then fashioned into the diametrically opposite of what he had been. It wasn’t any minor alteration; it was a radical new life of humility and servitude that recreated his natural gifts to make him the giant proponent of the Christian faith that he was to become.

I don’t pray that our wicked leader will be removed (impeached?). I pray that he will have an encounter with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, humbled, made contrite, have all his arrogance stripped away, deprived of his wealth, and become a witness to the grace of God to the most wicked through a new life of obedience in whatever form God chooses. I pray for the unimaginable “Damascus Road” conversion of this wicked leader. Do you want to join me?