WAR WITHOUT END
Friday, May 19, 2017
This past week I
thoughtfully reviewed Ken Burns PBS documentary THE WAR. It presented photos,
commentary, and testimonies on WWII. I was reminded of life then. Three
outstanding actual personal memories are 1.) Unlike today’s detached attitude
among many, our country was totally enmeshed in the war effort. 2.) My and
other childhood friends’ elation in 1945 when the war ended. 3.) My naiveté
thinking it was the end of war.
Exactly when I
woke up to the untruth of point 3 I don’t know, but I do know that I saw and
finally accepted the truth when I read Jesus’ words recorded by Matthew and
Mark. (24:6; 13:7) Prideful partisanship apart from godly love is in our
unregenerate nature ever since the first rebellion!
Then yesterday I
read the following essay provided by the Colson Center as part of Wilberforce
recognition.
The attempts to create a
master Aryan race are not the stuff of science fiction or history books
anymore. By John Stonestreet with Roberto Rivera
I’m going to tell you a story about an
attempt to build a strong nation by breeding better babies. These babies “would
be superior in quality, intelligence, looks, and other aspects.” They would be
taller and fairer in complexion that their peers. These babies hold the key, we
are told, to national greatness.
Now you’re probably thinking the story comes
from the Third Reich or maybe a science fiction novel. But you’d be wrong. This
story is not from 1930s Germany nor is it the stuff of dystopian novels. It’s
from contemporary India.
A group in India, Arogya Bharati, which means
“Indian Wholeness” in Sanskrit, is working with couples to produce, in its
words, “customized” babies. It hopes to “have [produced] thousands of such
babies by 2020.” Its long-term goal is to build a strong India through these
children.
What’s required to produce
such a child? “Three months of [purification] for parents, intercourse at a
time decided by planetary configurations, complete abstinence after the baby is
conceived, and procedural and dietary regulations.”
The pay-off? According to the head of Arogya
Bharati, “extremely bright,” “fair-complexioned,” and “tall” babies born to
less-bright, dark, and short parents.
As this suggests, the groups methods aren’t
rooted in modern genetics. Instead, they’re indebted to a combination of Indian
folk medicine, astrology, and Hindu beliefs.
Yet it would be unwise to discount the
seriousness of what’s taking place here. When one commenter said that the
group’s project was “straight out of the Nazi playbook,” it wasn’t hyperbole.
While the two groups’ methods may have differed, their goals were the same:
strengthening the nation by promoting racial purity.
In fact, the groups share more than just a
common goal; they share a central idea–the Aryan. While the Nazi myth of the
Aryan is well-known, what’s not as well-known is that “Hindutva,” the Hindu
nationalist ideology of groups like Arogya Bharati and its parent movement, the
RSS, also has the idea of the Aryan at the center of its national myth.
Unlike the Nazis, who believed that the
Aryans were from what’s now the border between Kashmir and Afghanistan in the
Himalayas, Hindu nationalists insist that the Aryans were from northern Indian.
Despite this disagreement,
the RSS expressed admiration for Nazi efforts to promote racial purity. In
1938, its Supreme Leader said that Germany “has shown how well-nigh impossible
it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be
assimilated into one united whole.” He called it “a good lesson for us in
[India] to learn and profit by.”
It’s a lesson his ideological successors are
now trying to put into practice, not in birthing clinics but in the curtailment
of religious freedom across India, which, in recent years, has become an increasingly
hostile place for Christians, as well as Muslims.
And I’d be remiss if I left you with the
impression that this quest for “customized” babies was only limited to
religious fanatics and Nazis. The (un)holy grail of modern genetics is to, as
some have put it, “shape our own evolution.” While proponents of this quest
would howl in protest if they heard me say it, this, too, is a quest for a kind
of racial purity.
While their definition of “race” is
infinitely more generous than the people in India, never mind the Nazis, it’s
still an endeavor that has no place for the weak, no matter how the planets
align.
Source: the Colson Center
War, slavery, racism, eugenics, and countless
other wickedness are still with us. Though we may hinder we cannot heal the big
picture. We can, and should, present the cure as we faithfully continue as God’s
Matthew 5:9 blessed peacemakers and 2Corinthians 5:14-21 diplomats in family,
friendship, neighborhood, town, village, crossroads, to one and all in our
personal world.
EBB4
