Mangers, Crosses, and Tombs

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/16/22

            It has been said that if there were no God, man would invent one. In other words, we either strongly sense or deep down in our being we believe or suspect that there really is a God and we aren’t it. Natural design drives us to make a decision. Did the natural world – air, the seasons, plants and animals, the beauty of the earth – or humanity happen all by itself? Can there really be such grandiose design as the universe displays without a designer? Can an unintelligible Grand Poof produce what we see when we look outside our windows during springtime?

            Different faiths and philosophies answer these questions differently. I have a terrific friend whom I deeply respect. He tells me that neither the design all around us nor anything else points to a supreme designer. He believes that “the highest non-human reality is matter and energy.” This friend is not critical of those who believe differently. I have to wonder, though, if this great friend is not troubled by the fact that if there is a supreme designer, he – like it or not – bears a relationship to that designer. I wonder if it bothers him to think that he would be the lesser one in that relationship and that he, necessarily, would be answerable to that designer.

            The Easter season compels us to give thought to these questions. Easter lays claim to an event. That event was the resurrection of a dead man. The claim was first made by men and women who saw this man before, during, and after his death. It is recorded in ancient literature of the 1^st century, in both narratives and epistolary writings.

            For some this will be a jaw-dropper, but a major television network, Fox Nation, is now showing a special in which celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford testifies to how her relationship with this reportedly resurrected man changed her life as well as the lives of many of her friends. Surprisingly, Gifford has been sought by several news outlets to tell her story. Surprisingly because the modern media has not been inclined to grant the opportunity for people of faith to do what Gifford is doing.

            Viewing Gifford’s program reminded me of the life and work of another celebrity who came to believe in this reportedly resurrected man. Lee Strobel was an investigative reporter and legal editor for the Chicago Tribune when he was sent to Kentucky to cover the hillbillies (Strobel’s term) who were arguing for creation to be equally presented with evolution in their county’s schools.  An avowed atheist, Strobel was initially driven toward faith by two things: the humble and kind people he had intended to ridicule and his formerly agnostic wife after she turned to belief in the resurrection. Determined to extricate her from her new “religious cult,” Strobel was stymied by the positive changes in his wife, changes in her personality, character, and values.

            Putting on his investigative, journalistic cap, Strobel still set out to show his wife the error of her ways. However, his much reading and interviewing of both people of faith and of other atheists like himself led him to embrace that which had changed his wife and many other friends and acquaintances as well. Strobel has written that “actually it was Easter that killed my faith in atheism.” In over 20 books Strobel has argued for the veracity of the claims of Easter.

            A similar path to faith was taken by President Richard Nixon’s lawyer and “hatchet man,” Chuck Colson. Imprisoned after pleading guilty to obstructing justice during the famous Watergate hearings era, Colson professed his faith and soon founded Prison Fellowship, a ministry to families of the incarcerated. Having taught in prison for ten years I can attest to the genuineness, longevity, and effectiveness of Colson’s still functioning organization.

            Symbols shape us far more than we know. Manger scenes remind us of cows and sheep. A manger is a trough for feeding livestock. Long ago a couple who had just had a baby placed him in a manger. How humble and lowly is that? Crosses were a major means of execution in the ancient world, certainly no symbol we would wear around our necks, yet today we do. Tombs we logically view as deathly things unless we believe in the miracle of Easter.

            Kathy Lee Gifford’s special is titled “The Jesus I Know.”  Lee Strobel’s pertinent book for the season is “The Case for Easter.” Fittingly, one of Chuck Colson’s most famous books is “How Now Shall we Live?” And that is the question Easter poses. A corollary question is “With hope or without it?”

 

Roger Hines

April 13, 2022

           

             

 

                    Why Conservatives Should Be Smiling

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/9/22

             Throughout the country political re-alignments are occurring. The corporate world has essentially switched parties, Republicans are finally wooing the American worker, and the grandchildren of the 1960’s flower children/Vietnam War protestors have abandoned their grandparents’ free speech movement. They now call for censorship. Why? Because views with which they disagree make them feel unsafe. No wonder conservatism is rising.

            Weary conservatives often ask if conservatism is conserving anything. Noting that conservatives are often little more than the toothless opposition, they argue that before conservative values can be conserved, they must first be reclaimed. There is much truth to this line of argument, yet conservatives are now in a posture to do some reclaiming. Consider how the following realities bode well for conservatives in this election year.

            The political left now has a new weapon. For many decades the left’s weapon of choice was the courts. Sue, sue, sue. Sue the states, sue Pro-life or Tea Party groups, sue anybody who disagrees with you. Whether it was the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or other such leftist groups, the judiciary has long been their refuge. With issue after issue, the tactic was to go to court to contest any law or policy they didn’t like.

            Surprise, surprise! The political left, that has always hated those big, rich, Republican-leaning corporations, now enjoys their favor and power. Yes, corporations, those former Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover/national Chamber of Commerce types that generally favored Republicans are now embracing the far left. Corporations are now ok with Black Lives Matter tactics, the LGBTQ gospel, transgender indoctrination, so-called “equity,” and anything else the left pressures them to support. Whether it’s Coke, Delta, Disney, or any other corporation, call it progressivism in the board room.

 Middle sized corporate heads, desiring to be cool, rush to follow Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. They too want to be CEO activists, telling us lesser folks what we should think, especially about abortion, immigration, homosexuality, and all the transgender euphoria. No longer satisfied with being intellectual defenders of capitalism and free enterprise, even the Koch brothers are now pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro-amnesty. The good news is that polls show Middle America is repelled by this development.

            It can no longer be claimed that the essence of liberalism is tolerance or that the essence of conservatism is restraint. That claim was once true. Liberals always took a broad, broad view of everything. Their motto was “… but on the other hand…” Today they embrace and practice the suppression of expression whenever the expression differs from their own. For decades Republicans went along to get along. That too is changing. A strong, growing bench of conservatives – including Governor Desantis of course – is echoing the sainted William F. Buckley who declared, “A conservative is one who stands athwart history yelling ‘Stop’ when no one is inclined to do so and is impatient with those who so urge it.” Republican leaders are now fighting back with much more vim and vigor on social, economic, and foreign affairs issues. Talk radio ignited this fighting spirit. Cable television sustains it. Conservatives still haven’t touched education, but they have cracked the media. That’s reason to smile.

            The essence of liberalism today is sexual chaos (denial of biology), socialist economics, excusable violence, and the John Lennon (of the Beatles) refrain, “Imagine no countries.” Google this song – “Imagine” – anyhow. The music itself is beautiful even though the compelling lofty words comprise a liberal manifesto. Lennon’s song is a good example of how and why so many youths are swooned into embracing ideologies before thinking. As sociologist Allan Bloom noted, “Nothing is more singular about today’s generation than its addiction to music.” Nothing is more surely in control of today’s music and entertainment than the dead-end ecstasy provided by the very liberal movie, entertainment, and publishing industry. But parents are taking note of this fact and are raising the topic at their “rowdy” school board meetings.

             There are many fronts from which conservatives can take encouragement, issues that is, which are pulling voters away from progressive thought and toward more sensible policies. For instance, the progressives’ war on parents’ rights has awakened an army of mama bears in both red and blue states. Over half of the states have Republican governors. 28 progressives in Congress are choosing not to run for re-election. Republican control of the U.S. House is all but a foregone conclusion. Winning back the Senate is a distinct possibility.

            Alas, even President Biden’s party supporters know what a danger he is to their political future. Even the media is slowly backing away from him. Now that’s something to smile about.

 

Roger Hines

4/6/22

           

           

 What Can Russia’s Turbulent Past and Present Teach                                                       Americans?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/2/22

The long sad history of the Russian people rolls on. Their plight for century upon century has been tyrants and tyranny. One is prone to ask where is a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin when Russia and the rest of the world need them? The brief interlude of governance by these two men wasn’t exactly western democracy, but as Margaret Thatcher said of Gorbachev, “We can do business together.” President Reagan’s assessment of Gorbachev was that under him the USSR was “less evil than it had been before.”

Our minds are primarily on Ukraine today and they should be; however, we should not lose sight of the full picture of the Slavic world. Ukraine and its neighbors, including “Mother Russia,” are of the same Slavic language family. Contested, split, and ruled at one time or another by Poland, Austria-Hungary, and the Tzarist Romanov family, Ukrainians have struggled  for decades, eventually becoming an independent nation in 1991. It’s abundantly clear that Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin and who considered Gorbachev and Yeltsin weak, desires the restoration of a Soviet Union-like country with iron-fisted power. Sadly, yea dangerously, President Biden has shown neither courage nor savvy in dealing with the world’s most dangerous man. Would that he could be a decisive Truman, Kennedy, Thatcher, Reagan, or Trump.

As for governmental power, can anyone seriously argue that the lives of Russians, Ukrainians, and all of their neighboring lands were made better when Lenin displaced the Romanovs in 1917? Practically all Slavic lands had suffered under the 304-year reign of the Romanovs (1613-1917). Slavs soon learned, however, that Lenin’s socialism wasn’t very social. It was tyranny under a different name proffered by a fellow we all know about, Karl Marx. Even though the “Christian” Romanovs behaved like self-appointed royals behave, they did not send their 97% peasant population to work camps. Socialist Russia did. Seems there’s always a catch to socialists and their claims.

Please do the following things. Compare the continuing unsettled political climate of the Slavic nations to that of the USA. Ask yourself the question, “What’s the difference between brutal and subtle?” In Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central America, political change has typically been brutal. Not so in America. We have not experienced military take-overs, or power-hungry men who raised an army and marched to the seat of government, or work camps for those who disagree with the government. Those who apply the word insurrection to the January 6 goonish caper at the U.S. Capitol haven’t consulted a dictionary. Unlike the rest of the world, America has never known experientially what an insurrection is like.

Yet we have known and have been experiencing for many decades the subtle, invasive march of governmental power and the subtle but steady march of bureaucratic/regulatory/executive order rule and Orwellian governmental creep. Draw a map of the United States. Leave space between the states, viewing them as the entities they were meant to be. Ponder the 13 states (“colonies,” actual outposts of the British Empire), those subjects of the British crown who got together and declared they would be free. Consider the document they adopted that delineated the powers their new central government would and would not have. Read slowly the 28 words in Amendment 10. Finally, mentally list the areas of life which our central government involves itself in but which are forbidden in these 28 words. Being a Teddy Bear, I’ll get you started: education and healthcare.

How hard to handle has public education gotten? How many chefs in the education kitchen are there? Who really controls our schools and what they teach? How big a mess is healthcare? Why do at least three entities – the central government, the insurance company, your beloved doctor – have to be involved in your health? If you’re just dandy with all of this, have a good day. You might also like Eastern Europe, Russia, and China. But please understand that subtle, slow-moving, entangling administrativia birthed in our national legislature equals power, and that school curricula which you don’t like or believe in means you’ve given your children away and you never noticed. No tanks or guns or insurrection brought you to it all. Your inattention to current events, your dislike for history, your abhorrence of politics, your dismissal of the poetic line, “No man is an island entire of itself” brought you to it.

Tyranny is tyranny no matter how it arrives, no matter how strong or moderate its grip. In the end we’ve all lost our freedom and have been either too busy, too lazy, or too uncaring to realize it.

 

Roger Hines

March 31, 2022

 

                       What Happened to my Four Children?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/26/22

            I have questions. Why did my oldest child Christy choose to mix public education and private education for each of her four children? Why has Christy’s younger sister Wendy chosen to home school her three children entirely? Why has their younger brother Jeff chosen to place his daughter in a private school? Why has their younger brother Reagan chosen private pre-kindergarten for his two small children?

            I ask this because Ole Dad was in public schools all of his life as a student and then as a teacher. That enjoyable journey of learning and teaching took place from 1950 (his first grade year) through 2021 (his last year to teach). Why, after being in public schools themselves and after expressing love and appreciation for their public school teachers, did my children not take the public school route for their own children? Where did I or the public schools go wrong?

            I believe I have answers. Those answers have little to do with their teachers but much to do with the culture in which and by which their schools were influenced. My twelve public school years as a student were from 1950 to 1962. Theirs were from 1975 (Christy’s first grade year) to 2000 (Reagan’s senior year). How different do you think the cultural influences on schools were during those two separate time periods?

            I believe I can illustrate the difference with a true scenario. It occurred at Wendy’s high school graduation in 1990. At Roswell Street Baptist Church my North Cobb faculty colleagues and I were lining up the seniors to march into the auditorium. Seeing Wendy across the way I walked over to her and asked, “Wendy, what did you enjoy most about high school?” Her quick smiling answer was “My teachers!”

“And what did you least enjoy?”  She answered with a frown, “The cigarette smoke in the girls’ restroom.” I will not hold up this single infraction as a symbol for all other educational ills. There are far more serious things than cigarette smoke in restrooms such as curriculum, discipline, student achievement, and the role of parents in their children’s’ education. However, little things unattended to can pile up and become big things.

As a matter of choice, my four children chose something other than public education for their children. Jeff’s wife Anna stated the following: “We wanted a school that presented a Biblical world view.” Notice she only said “presented,” not fostered. “For instance,” she continued, “I was taught in school that the earth evolved over billions of years and we wanted Saige to know there were other beliefs about origins.”  Anna also dispelled the argument that private school students don’t get a broad exposure to people different from themselves: “Saige’s school has a special program that reaches out to children of incarcerated parents and she attends school with them.” Our daughter Christy stated, “We wanted our children to have smaller classes, less influence from peers, and more welcomed parent involvement.”

Ah, “less influence from peers.” I observed long ago that the chief influence on teens in public schools is other teens. Teen culture, birthed by the American high school, has rendered adolescence dangerous. This cannot be blamed on teachers. Fault lies primarily at the feet of parents. It takes a strong family for teenagers to withstand the peer pressure of hundreds of other teens who surround them daily.

Schools can be blamed for certain things, however. If your local school board has been protecting your children from indoctrination on race and sexuality politics, be glad, because quite a few school systems throughout the nation are not so careful. Don’t take my word that public schools across the nation are indoctrinating students with Critical Race Theory, LGBT values, “preferential pronouns,” and transgenderism. Read the newspaper.

The momentum for school choice is undeniable. Covid has increased it. So has gender ideology that runs amok. For a century and a half public education has been the glue that held us together or, better put, it has been the pillar of American civilization. However, nationwide that pillar has been slowly crumbling. Cobb County’s good schools are not representative of the nation’s schools. Overall, public education has become uncontrollable. The countless influencers parents know nothing about – professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development – are only a few of  the powerful groups pushing progressive education.

What happened to my kids? They studied the matter, drew a conclusion about education’s future and decided “not with my children.” And I couldn’t be more proud of them.

 

Roger Hines

March 22, 2022

 

 

 

                                                Evaluating the Evaluators

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/12/22

            The lead editorial in this past Tuesday’s Marietta Daily Journal was music to many ears. It was titled, “Cognia due for a review of its own.”

             What’s Cognia? Good question. First of all it is one of those many prissy words/names, the likes of which are popping up everywhere for businesses of all stripes. Remember how we twisted up our faces when we first heard the name “Truist”? I mean, a baseball park and a bank  named “Truist”? There are other examples of facial-distorting names here and there, but you get the point.

             Cognia is the name of the private accrediting agency that either accredits or doesn’t accredit the school systems that employ it to evaluate their schools. As for the agency’s name, I’m just guessing that Cognia was chosen because it sounds like “cognition” or is perhaps a play on the educational expression, “cognitive skills.” Lord, I don’t really know. I only know that AdvancED and Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, two of Cognia’s former names, are fairly clear and don’t make you wonder quite so much what the organization does.

            Yes, the MDJ editorial struck a chord with me. First, it clearly stated the reason Cognia is in the news, that being its findings on Cobb’s public schools which it recently voided, but only after “school administrators lost hundreds of hours preparing hundreds of pages of rebuttals to Cognia’s original special review report.” Cognia’s findings came from an interim evaluation prompted by the Democrat members of the school board. Its report showed more concern for infighting on the board than on things that matter most such as student achievement. Has there ever been a school board that had no infighting?

            The editorial also claimed that Cobb County schools are “among the best; our students among the most well-educated; and the district among the most well run.” I can only testify that  I taught in Cobb County Schools for 32 years from 1971 to 2003. From working at three high schools and the central office I can say that my colleagues and superiors were the best that anyone could desire. Names like Kermit Keenum, Stanley Wrinkle, Larry Hinds, Betty Gray, Jim Traylor, Don Murphy, Roger Russell, Dexter Mills, Dale Gaddis, and Wade Scholes will dance around in my brain and heart for as long as I live. The same is true for fellow classroom teachers who stepped into administrative leadership like Corky Kell, Carole Kell, Grace Calhoun, Terry Poor, Stella Ross, Carla Northcutt, and Hilda Wilkins. Cobb’s teachers and administrators have been the finest of people and the finest of educators.

From all accounts, except for Cognia’s original ill-conceived “volunteer” assessment of the current board, current superintendent Ragsdale and his team are still carrying high the torch. I can assure you that school board member and former student of mine David Chastain is equipped to serve, by both intelligence and love for his home county. I hope Chastain still has that touch of benign mischief that helps people around him lighten up and have a good day.  I’m also immensely proud of former students Ashlynn Campbell, principal of Harrison High and Keith Hansen, head baseball coach at Allatoona High.

Since our schools are good, that necessarily means our county must be good.  Cobb County has always reminded me of my hometown of Forest, Mississippi. Forest was a forward looking place with political and community leaders who worked hard to affect the quality of life for everybody, even those out in the county. Its aristocracy was a friend to every commoner. They all knew and respected my tenant farmer father. Forest had its own separate school district and for reasons I don’t recall, bused in and educated quite a few county kids. Like my own hometown and county, Cobb County is still a good place and its schools reflect it.

What then should we make of Cognia and its recent stumble? The editorial, penned by Vice President of Content J.K. Murphy, addresses that too: “Cognia holds our schools and students hostage and Georgia taxpayers cough up the ransom. That, on its face, is wrong.” Murphy went on to tout the work of Senator Lindsey Tippins who has filed legislation that would “change how Cognia goes about its business.”

 There are things about public education generally that drive me nuts, but with the present majority of our current school board at the helm, I’ve no doubt common sense will prevail. Senator Tippins is good at fixing things. So let’s get back to mathematics, science, history, English, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson!   

 

Roger Hines

March 10, 2022 

           

 

                          Who said the World is Changing?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/5/22

            It’s 1939. After invading Poland on September 1, Hitler secures a Nazi victory within a month. Declaring war on Germany two days later, Britain and France would stand by for eight months before giving any substantial help to their European neighbor. It would be a full two years later before the United States came to Poland’s aid. Meanwhile, Hitler parades down the streets of Danzig celebrating his growing power.

            It’s 1954. World War II is only 9 years in the past. I’m 10 years old and my younger brother Carlton is 7, but Carlton is just as enrapt as I whenever our sister-in-law Antonia tells us about the evil Mussolini: “He no good. He the reason we must run for shelter from Amedicans and others who bombed Italy. My Pa-pa no like him. He glad that Italy finally turn against Germany.”

            It’s 2022. Men still love power, nations are still fighting each other, and America’s president wrongfully preaches that unity is the answer to everything. Thanks to Russia and debilitated Ukraine, we have been awakened from the assumption that ground wars are passé.  We’ve watched as, in a matter of days, political winds have blown our leaders from “Follow the science” to “You may now de-mask.” We’re told by educated people that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. With apologies to Thomas Paine, “These are the times that” … make us shake our heads in disbelief.

            The nation of Russia sits at the top of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China. Racially, Russians are westerners. Philosophically/politically, they are not. Like the history of so many Asian nations, Russia’s history is tyrannical, autocratic, and unspeakably disregardful of individual rights. Russia’s history is sad. For the 304 years that the Romanov family ruled, right up to the 1917 Communist takeover, approximately 90% of the Russian people were peasants. Lenin and Stalin certainly did not improve upon the Romanovs. Remember, theirs was a union of “socialist” republics.

 When poet Rudyard Kipling, who loved his adopted land of India, wrote “Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” he was faulted for guess what: racism. But Kipling was referring to the vast difference in how Easterners and Westerners think. Consider: did the United States lose the Vietnam War in part because Westerners are impatient and results-oriented while Easterners are more patient and willing to stick it out? Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

As Ronald Reagan reminded us often, freedom is always one generation away from extinction. One reason for this is that too many people like goodies and ease. An abundance of college professors has pulled our youths toward leftist politics that decries capitalism and hard work and preaches income equality, free education, and a wholesale remaking of the economy to fight climate change.

Of the starving French peasants who could not buy bread, Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution reportedly said, “Let them eat cake.” John Kerry, just after Putin started targeting Ukrainian citizens, stated he hoped that “after this Ukrainian conflict,” Putin would turn to fighting climate change. The more things change … the more the world’s elites reveal their scorn for the masses.

The mind of the tyrant doesn’t seem to change either. Long is the list of tyrants who have affected humanity for the worse. If the dawn of a new age of tyranny is upon us, it could well be because we just didn’t care enough about history to read a simple 10^th grade world history textbook, or to take Western Civilization seriously in college, or to read an occasional newspaper. Freedom requires a little bit of knowledge.

The former KGB colonel Putin, tagged by some as a KGB “throat slitter,” is a brute and his attack on innocent Ukrainian civilians has been brutal. When, oh when, will we hear from NATO or the European Union? European unpredictability hasn’t changed either.

Tyranny isn’t always initiated by brutes like Putin. Sometimes it comes from the globalists among us whether they wear the suit of the corporate CEO, the jeans of the tech company head, the robe of the college president, or the condescending smirk of the Hollywood actor. All enemies of freedom of speech, these players are using the ploy of the Genesis serpent and the spider who said to the fly, “Come into my parlor.” It is these tyrants, not the Putin type, who without guns wish to “transform” America.

Either way, tyranny is tyranny. It hasn’t changed.

 

Roger Hines

3/2/22

           

                 

 

                       Oh, for a 21^st Century Bonhoeffer

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/26/22

            Is Atlanta close to leading the nation in crime? We’re all aware of Chicago’s crime rate, but the crime news in our local newspapers and on television became alarming long ago. What is happening?

            What’s happening locally and around the world is the loss of civility. We call it civil-ization, forgetting that civil-ization is based on civility and that when too many people choose not to be civil there can be no civil-ization. Yes, we can have the forms of civilization such as laws, police, commerce, and a governing class and still not have civilization. For instance, forget the normal, evil criminal for a moment. What if those who are being governed have begun to express in no uncertain terms their dissatisfaction with those doing the governing? What if populists – that is, the people – are fed up with the governance they’re being handed and are no longer hesitant to say so? What if, say, typically quiet parents, or truckers, or good folks without college degrees decide it’s time to organize and take action to show the governing class what they’re thinking? What if your next door neighbor who has never raised his voice leaves his house with a sign that reads “Listen to the regular folks,” places it in his car, and drives away? What if next time you join him?

            Today around the world civilization itself is at risk. In practically every nation there is unrest with either a small or a large number of ordinary citizens rising up to speak their piece. These newly aroused citizens are not contributors to incivility; they are rising in opposition to it. How many times have we heard of unrest in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, all English-speaking lands characterized by British pomp and politeness? But there’s unrest there also, all because ordinary citizens are fed up with oppressive government, particularly mandates and the government’s unwillingness to deal with crime.

            The world’s loosening civilization is twofold. Sadly the murderer and the thief we will always have with us. He or she is only one part of the two-headed monster of incivility. The other part is the governing class – mayors, sheriffs, county executives, district attorneys, governors, or bureaucrats - who scornfully disregard the cries of the people they supposedly serve.

            Commentators view the rising incivility differently. Some believe that in America the elections of 2022 and 2024 will settle much of the unrest and that the large numbers showing up at school board meetings will wane because normality has returned. For the rest of the world, pundits are not so sure. The Russian bear is showing his claws and will probably never be intimidated by our current president who is observably asleep at the wheel. As for China, according to most journalists the Chinese people are as far from true political freedom as they have ever been.

            To put it mildly, domestically and internationally nothing is going swimmingly. A fit question would be “What would Dietrich Bonhoeffer do?”

            I know. He’s not in most history books but he should be. For decades evangelical Christians have read this martyr’s books, observed his humility, and admired his absolutism regarding governmental evil and life itself. This German, Lutheran pastor hated tyranny and also believed there were some things worse than death. That’s why he opposed Hitler openly from the pulpit and from the point of his pen. He paid for his stand with his life. He was hanged by the Nazis in 1945 at age 39.

            Anti-vaxxers, traditionalists, and people of faith are not in danger of being hanged in America, but we are blind if we cannot see how Covid became a weapon in the hands of those who believe in strong governmental power. Proof of their purposes and slyness is the fact that so many mayors and governors are backing away from their firm mandates, seeing how political winds are now blowing. That doesn’t mean their views have changed. They will emerge another day with other weapons.

            Bonhoeffer did not believe in the perfectibility of man, as most liberals do, via government largesse and programs. He wrote, “Peace is confused with safety, but peace must be dared. Peace is the opposite of security.”

            If America and the European nations who once honored the Judeo-Christian ethic are to return to the God of that ethic, Bonhoeffer can help them make the return trip. Currently though, we are, as poet Matthew Arnold put it, without “peace and help for pain / And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

            Bonhoeffer, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

 

Roger Hines

2/16/22