I just watched a news report of a New Yorker who moved to Ukraine and was a pacifist. He expressed how he’s a completely changed person after seeing “actual” weapons, war, and death. As long as weapons exist, he expressed, there’s no way one can be a pacifist.
Did he not know this before? It demonstrates that until we actual see the consequences of evil in this life, through the atrocities like war, we can live with ideologies and ideals that are completely incompatible with the reality of the corruption of the human heart in its capacity to sin. Evil needs to be stopped, people need to be defended from tyrannical oppression, lawless aggression must be averted, etc.
Just as the horrors of WW1 changed the optimism of the peoples and rooted out the subjectivism of the romantic and Victorian ideals of the previous era, one wonders, if this war escalates to WWIII, how it will shift other current ideologies that presently champion the progress and goodness of humanity, but simply are not sustainable in the face of such evil and destruction. How far must this wickedness go to prove this basic point to us?
What we need most right now is an authority outside of ourselves that provides a true answer and solution to our sorrow. Until around 1650 people used to ask, “What did God say?” Now people say, “And who is God? Who cares what he said.”
God has spoken to us his Word from Heaven that diagnoses the problems of humanity in sin and rebellion, and the solution through a savior who suffered in our place for sin and who is able to unite, in the gospel, the peoples of the earth in love and peace.
This truly is and remains the only solution for humanity’s sad plight.
Abounding Grace Radio