Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -
George
Santayana
In
recent days this phrase has been more often paraphrased as, “Those
who do not learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat
them.” I cannot help but
reflect on this notion as the year unfolds…
This
past week has been full of tragedy and horror. First
a shooting in Louisiana, then a shooting in Minnesota, then a mass
shooting in Dallas. Just last month forty-nine people were
slaughtered in a nightclub, a toddler was eaten by an alligator, and
a well-known youtuber was senselessly murdered after a show. To state
the obvious: quite a number of people have died.
Before
these horrors, for the first part of 2016 we had the presidential
nominating debacle. We watched as the parties that have come to frame
politics and public discourse across the land almost literally ripped
themselves apart and two of the most heinous people to have ever run
for the office of president of the United States of America took the
leads.
People
compare Trump to Hitler but the same has been done to Hillary for
many a year. Now there are those who are legitimately pointing out
the flaws in such comparisons but others who have illuminated the
uncanny similarities.
Public
discourse is all over the place on the topic as the nation jerks on
towards the inevitable nomination of these two, convulses
violently as the FBI abdicates
its role as a part of the justice system, writhes and roils as
faction turns on faction:
citizens on officers and
officers on citizens, Muslims on gays and gays on Christians, and
anti-gun fanatics on gun-rights fanatics.
Many
are convinced the nation is imploding. Frankly, it would not surprise
me. I've said it before and I will say it again (not a week after the
4th
of July, mind you) that united we stood
but divided we will fall. Nay, we shall plunge.
“But
can't we stop it?” you ask. “But can't we, as reasoning people,
look back on those mistakes made in history and move toward a
brighter, better future?” “Can't we look past our petty
differences and squabbles and turn and love one another as fellow
human beings?” “Can't
we all just get along?”
My
answer to you is simple, “Can
we? No, we cannot.”
You
see, cute little platitudes tweeted and re-tweeted by a general
populace that on average only barely uses half their brain-capacity
still don't carry any weight. But there is a sliver of truth there,
shining like the speck of a star in a very dark sky.
That's
what got me to thinking. Really, there is a lot more to the specks of
stars in the night sky then one would ever guess, and I mean more
than even the smartest scientist can see. Pray for wisdom on the
subject sometime. But only if you're brave enough, because God will
answer you.
I
thought about the past as our future, the Germany of the early 1900s
as the America of the 21st
century. What could we learn that would change our course? So many
people say one thing, and so many others another… What was the
common theme?
The
comparison that is most apt and terrifying is between the mindsets of
those days and now. The schemas that allow
for the undermining of who a person is:
“If you're black you're less of a person and probably a
criminal.” “If you're gay you're abnormal, diseased and a lower
class person.” “If you're unborn you're not a person at all and
can be legally murdered.” “If you're a gun owner you're a psycho
waiting to happen and should be feared.” “If you're a police
officer you're a sadistic monster that should be hated
or killed.” Not that these are
actually vocalized very often, but they are the whispers on the
prevailing winds as it were. They all sound an awful lot like: “Jews
are less than human beings, they are monsters that ought to be
eradicated.”
But
then it hit me: As awful and horrid as these schemas are, they are
not what the fundamental
mistake is. The mistake, the flaw, the lie is underneath them,
supporting and giving them sustenance, feeding them with a steady
diet of poison.
The
destruction of Germany's and America's societal understanding of what
a human being really is came from three “great” people: Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. These gods of the marketplace
have told us that we're little more than apes, have very little
singular worth on our own,
and are sexually depraved monsters to boot. They told us that we are
the highest authority and that our desires are the highest good. They
knocked their point home with the gavel of “science” and crowed
that we have no choice but to believe. They are their ideas and their
ideas are poison.
You
see, their poisonous legacy has all but killed the old way of
thinking, the old way of understanding human beings. Human Beings are
made in the image of God! Human Beings are created, each one of us,
by the one and only God!
Human Beings are glorious works beyond compare in the physical world,
a union of immortal spirit and mortal body!
“'And
for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I
will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a
reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man
shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.'” -
Genesis 9:5-6
If
man is a work of God who is eternal, perfect, and righteous, then
what happens when we forget that? Even worse, what happens when
society's schema turns on those truths and buries them in favor of
their lies? Hitler happens, people. Abortion happens. Slavery
happens. Mass shootings happen and rampant, riotous disregard for
human life takes hold.
No
one gives a rip about anyone else anymore because how can
they? They have no reason to
regard human beings as special or valuable at all! If God didn't make
human beings then who the hell cares if they die? What difference
does it really make if we're descended from apes and pond-scum?
In
the prevailing schema of the times human beings are essentially
worthless, pawns in everyone's individual game of chess, to be used,
abused, or thrown away per the whim of the strongest, fastest, most
“evolved” person on the playing field. They say the strong will
survive. Too bad the
strong don't seem to survive bullets very well.
Does
my sardonic tone upset you? Sadly, if there is no intrinsic value to
every human being I don't have to care about your feelings. This
is why I say we cannot look to history
and better our future and
we
cannot see past our petty
differences to
love one another and we cannot just get along.
The lies that destroy human
worth also make self service, self gratification, and self worship
all so much more appealing and
possible.
No
one wants to admit that they were wrong, that society has been wrong,
that scientists have been wrong. Too many people want it all to be
true so that each and every one of them can play god in their own
lives. Don't like guns because they are used a lot to kill and hurt
people? Take them all away so we'll all live happily every after and
never die again. Don't like black people because they supposedly make
policing harder? Shoot them while you think no one is looking and
claim self defense. Don't like babies because of the inconvenience?
Simply abort them and don't think about it. Don't like police because
they're all somehow evil? Pick them off with a sniper rifle while
they're trying to protect you. Don't like gays because you think they
are evil beyond all reason? Just go slaughter a few dozen for the
cause! Don't like Muslims because they make you nervous? Let's just
throw them all out of the country!
Sorry,
this is making me sick just writing about it.
We are about to take a plunge as a nation like we've never seen
before, people. And without dealing with the root cause in
each and every person's heart,
the idea that human beings
aren't created by God in the image of God,
every evil you can think of is possible. Hitler,
Hillary, Trump, who gives a
rip? Let's pick a poison and
die! All are from the dust, and to dust all return.
After
all, who really cares if no one is worth a thing?
“Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued
wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;”
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;”
- The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Proverbs 17:10 “A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding
than a hundred blows into a fool.”
