Aware of Evil

The Incoherence of Atheism by Christian philosopher, Ravi Zacharias

We think we are aware that evil exists. Yet, do we know how to recognize its seeds? Its roots can be very deceiving, appearing to promise something far different from what we expect. I, therefore, think we do not recognize many seeds of evil; I think we are more likely to train ourselves unwittingly to bear silently with the wrongs that we see developing.  What some of us see is a creeping inhumanity cloaked in social compassion. That's a hard thing. If carried to logical conclusion, it is deadly. And death can enter the mind and the social fabric parading as a flower.

When I had read half of a biography of  Mao Tse Tung, the leader of China whose portrait remains at the entrance to the royal gardens of the past, I put it down. His cruelties and hatefulness sickened me. I will return to it these two years later. I want to know the strategies and the lives of influential evil actors on their generation's stage, disguised as purveyors of good for their countrymen and the world.

The video link above, if you have not yet opened it, contains a talk by Christian philosopher Ravi Zacharias. He mentions Dachau and Hitler's inspiration, a book by Nietzsche. But that is not why I post the link. I hope you will listen.

I have visited Dachau, and I had thought as Ravi says he had, there was no need to visit Auschwitz, which unlike Dachau was a death camp. I have turned away from the evils evident in some places of history. I remember that I did not want to visit Robben Island when in Cape Town, South Africa. My husband convinced me to take the ferry with him. It was a troubling and, because of its later change, a hopeful story. Yet, still a troubling place to visit for more than a few hours, a last institutional face of apartheid.

Having heard Ravi Zacharias on YouTube again, I have decided to read beyond Malcolm Muggeridge, who eventually renounced atheism and was ridiculed by former so-called friends. I need, I think, to read Nietzsche, and I expect to see the reason behind the need after reading.

Atheists blame evil on God whom they not only reject. They deny His existence. Who can break barriers of closed minds? It is not their fault but their failure to think it through, what they think about the non-existence of God. One cannot help being unable to see through closed eyes. That is not blindness, but a failure to open the mind, to entertain the possibility of God. 

I have written about these things before. Hearing Ravi Zacharias's arguments I see the importance to ask, "If man kills belief in the existence of God, where then would notions of what is moral come from?"

What got my attention most was Ravi's story about Stalin, overseer of the murder of million of USSR citizens, and the chicken. The lesson Stalin taught was his belief that tortured people will follow their torturer anywhere. This would mean, if true, that mistreated people will follow their cruel master or leader, that beaten-down people will follow the one responsible for causing their low estate. Learn how Stalin accomplished this, but not forever. His secret, he believed, was to feed them, give to them, something.

I thought of men, women, children under the thumb of Hamas terror in their apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, markets, and everywhere else. I also, on the other hand, thought of the pack of U. S. politicians that continue to add legal burdens to the backs of USA citizens. I thought, as well, of careless leaders among Christians, those who have gained authority by many means. No generation is immune to wrongs; every generation is faced with trying to prevent and/or right those wrongs.

For every one who is devoted to Jesus Christ there is a need to trust God fervently. He is good. He gives us everything we need, wrote St. Peter, for life and godliness through Him who gave Himself for us.

Evil  is here. Atheism is here. The battle is here.

Christian philosopher, Ravi Zacharias:
The Incoherence of Atheism

China: A Hundred Flowers, National Book Festival, and My Recommended China Books

Pictured here is former Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong announcing the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1 1949... (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Readers interested in more about China, as well as aspiring book reviewers, should read Eugenia Zuckerman's review in The Washington Post today (September 21, 2012), "A bloom in the dark of Mao's China." It's about Gail Tsukiyama's novel A Hundred Flowers from St. Martin's Press. 

     Author Tsukiyama is expected at the National Book Festival this weekend, on the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. The festival, initiated by former First Lady Laura Bush and in its second decade, is entrance-free. If you cannot get to the festival, you can check out C-Span if you have TV cable. They will cover some authors speaking about their books, and I hope that author Tsukiyama might be one of them. 

     I was in Beijing after Mao's rule, and I saw his Little Red Book at sidewalk displays near Tienanmen Square. U. S. news magazines in the book's hay-day did not, in my view, take Mao or his red book seriously enough; if they did, they hid it well. However, Nien Cheng, in her book, Life and Death in Shanghai, told how she used the book's declarations to state her case often when brought before her inquisitors, when she was in prison under one of Mao's purges. 

     A Hundred Flowers is mainly about people thrown together in a hard time and scraping from their miseries some different kind of beauty. The novel is based on history under Mao and the review describes it as a book of "secrets, guilt and regret swirling through" the story; the reviewer adds "it might have been a book about betrayals - from those of Mao to those within the family" of the story. 

     I plan to read A Hundred Flowers next. 

     

I recommend-from my collection on China:

--Life and Death in Shanghai-a memoir by Nien Cheng 

--Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

--The Unknown Story of Mao by Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans, and Jon Halliday. Time called it “An atom bomb of a book.” In the same vein, if is a bombshell of disclosure of evil at work in the life of one man and his tyrannies toward “friend” and foe.  

--Mao and China: a Legacy of Turmoil by Stanley Karnow, Introduction by Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai-“Anyone who wishes to understand the Communist revolution in China should read this book”- from the Introduction

--Hudson Taylor and China's Greatest Century-series by A. J. Broomhall

--A Higher Kind of Loyalty by Liu Binyan

--Man of Suffering by Watchman Nee

--The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun

--Bill Wallace of China by Jesse C. Fletcher_pre-Mao

T--he Good Earth by Pearl Buck_pre-Mao_ (author withstood literary criticism for this book that was appreciated by many people in China)  

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