As I continue in my reading (Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas) I am being brought closer in familiarity with the road that led to World War 2. As distant as it seems in the past it is of critical importance to our present. It ended 65 years ago and many witnesses to what occured are still with us. At any rate part of what led to the atrocity of the war was the arrogant sense that such a thing could never happen again after World War 1 – the so called "war to end all wars". Part of what led to WW1 was that same arrogant sense (born out of the enlightenment) that humanity’s progress would inevtably lead to a world of peace because the human race was moving out of its adolescence and into a mre mature adulthood. We could manage ourselves and required no gods and certainly no autocratic God. Is it reasonable to suggest that our human arrogance has not abated much since WW2? Is it possible in fact that it has grown even? I stumbled across a great and clearly prophetic quote from Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, a German poet of Jewish background. In his book – The History of Religion and Philosophy of Germany, (written more than 100 years before World War 1 and 2) Heine observed the following:
"Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals….Do not smile at my advice — the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."
Very powerful and prescient as well. But rather than focus on what Heine clearly saw coming it might be worth considering the current state of affairs in the world. What happens when the cross falls in other places? What idols rise up in its place? This is a question no one cares to ask (or thinks worth asking). What happened in Germany is evident…but what happens in Canada? What rises up? Freedom? Equality and Justice? The very concepts were safeguarded by the cross and it is foolish to think somehow we would be better off without it. What happens in a country like the United States, a country forged in blood and war? How about Africa or South and Central America or Britain? What rushes in to fill the void? It seems we never take the time to think about the value of the ideals we are so ready to throw away. We tend to learn through painful error.
The Third Reich was not fond of Heine’s ideas. In 1933 in the Opernplatz in Berlin the Nazi’s held a massive book burning rally. Amoung the thousands of books burned at a midnight rally hosted by none other than Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels were Heine’s. It is worth quoting another bit of terrible prophetic wisdom from Heine in light of his books being burned (again written over 100 years before the incident) and perhaps take some time to think deeply about the value of things and ideas we are so willing to burn and the possible consequences:
"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.")
Harnessing Chaos 