The infidel scholar of Chaim Potok’s The Promise, describing the legacy of the Holocaust, lamented, “The concentration camps destroyed a lot more than European Jewry. They destroyed man’s faith in himself” [1].
It wasn’t the first time. Since the so-called “Enlightenment,” various ones have from time to time nurtured the illusion that the human race can outgrow ignorance and savagery through its own efforts, apart from supernatural intervention. The French Revolution was perhaps the first such experiment, whose idealism—articulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man [2]—dissolved beneath the blood of the Reign of Terror. Similar optimism flourished during what became known as the Belle Epoque (Beautiful Epoch) in European history (1871-1914) [3], only to shatter in the shots of Sarajevo and the ensuing slaughter of the so-called “War to End All Wars.”
There were those who had assumed that the international proletariat would at this time forestall the clash of nations that had hitherto defined so much of the human story. But aside from a few scattered voices, historian Barbara Tuchman writes that:
. . . there was no dissent, no strike, no protest, no hesitation to shoulder a rifle against fellow workers of another land. When the call came, the worker, whom Marx declared to have no Fatherland identified himself with country, not class. He turned out to be a member of the national family like anyone else. The force of his antagonism which was supposed to topple capitalism found a better target in the foreigner. The working class went to war willingly, even eagerly, like the middle class, like the upper class, like the species [4]
The same author writes of that conflict and its aftermath:
When the effort was over, illusions and enthusiasms possible up to 1914 slowly sank beneath a sea of massive disillusionment. For the price it had paid, humanity’s major gain was a painful view of its own limitations [5].
And the Limitations Persist
As the world reels from the grotesque violence raging just now in yet another Middle East war, humanity is forced once again to recognize the limitations noted above, and to confront the painful reality that decades of genocide, torture, and dispossession seem to have taught the world next to nothing so far as tolerance and peaceable co-existence are concerned. While it may seem that heeding the entreaty of Rodney King (“Can’t we all just get along?”) wouldn’t require conversion in the Biblical sense, only an instinct for survival, the facts of history and contemporary life inform us that, as Mark Twain observed, “common sense ain’t common”—that human depravity has sunk so deep that even the most elementary features of human goodwill possess little power on their own.
As the present Middle East conflict has unfolded, with its attendant atrocities, commentators and others have expressed shock that so little seems to have been learned by the human family since the Holocaust. As such developments multiply in the coming years, as inevitably they will, we pray that more will come to acknowledge that the world’s only hope is truly the second coming of Christ.
Conclusion
When I read the cynical disbelief in the tenets of classic Adventism voiced by certain “intellectuals” among us, in particular their doubts regarding the Bible/Spirit of Prophecy end-time scenario, I find myself—in more reflective moments—thinking that if only humanity were to demonstrate a genuine capacity for natural self-betterment, one might conceivably forgive those who nurture doubts regarding the transcendence of the inspired writings and the prospect of ultimate accountability before an eternal Creator.
But no matter how long time lasts, it seems humanity is determined to demonstrate the limitations Barbara Tuchman wrote about. No matter how advanced our technology, no matter how rapid and comprehensive our capacity to transmit knowledge has become, the one area in which the race persistently fails to advance is—as Robert F. Kennedy once said—in taming the savageness of man, and making gentle the life of this world.
Only God can accomplish this. Human beings cannot, unless they yield to the Word and power of the divine. The horror and tragedy now unfolding in Israel and Gaza have again proved the helplessness of humanity to make progress on its own where it truly counts. As the struggle rages in the skies over the ancient cities of the Philistine plain, it is self-sufficient humanism that has taken the most destructive hit.
REFERENCES
1. Chaim Potok, The Promise (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1969), p. 315.
2. “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen
3. “Belle Epoque” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque
4. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), p. 462.
5. Ibid, p. 463.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan