Erwin Lutzer’s When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany is a book
whose time has come. Lutzer combines painstaking research detailing
Germany’s tortured path to National Socialism in the 1920s and
1930s with biblical insight, producing a clarion call for
faithfulness addressed to today’s church. In each chapter he traces
the cynical machinations of Hitler’s Nazis and the failure of
Germany’s Christians, and then brings the lessons learned to bear
on modern-day American Christianity.
The first major lesson has to do with
what happens when God is separated from government. When a nation
scrubs clean from its market places, courthouses, and legislatures
any references to God and His rule, judgment inevitably follows. It
might not be the immediate judgment of some cataclysm, it may be
condemnation to a slow, inevitable decay but nonetheless, divine
wrath follows.
The
second lesson concerns the economy. Lutzer shows that when economic
disaster strikes, whether through manipulation or unintended events,
a nation will trade freedom for economic safety even if it means accepting
totalitarian control. Germany’s roller-coaster economy in the 20s
and 30s left the people ready for a dictator.
The third major lesson reveals the consequence of eliminating God as the ultimate source of law. Lutzer pursues
the telling adage, show me your source of law, and I’ll show you
your gods. He demonstrates that
when the principle of law is unhooked from belief in a divine
lawgiver who sits in ultimate judgment over mankind, all hell breaks
loose in a society.
Fourth,
the power of propaganda is exposed. Lutzer explains Hitler’s
penchant for big lies as opposed to small ones, and shows how a
society can be conditioned to accept the most outrageous propositions
as truth. Through media, through setting the terms and tone of a
national conversation, through the promise of acceptance and
approbation combined with the threat of mockery and scorn (and
worse), the German people were transformed from a normal nation into
one that perpetrated horrors unspeakable.
Compulsory
public education was another major channel through which the primacy
of National Socialism was inculcated into German society. The author
exposes the methods (and goals) of secular “Values Clarification”
and demonstrates that this methodology is the dominant feature in
American public education. He who controls the education of children
controls the future.
In chapter six Lutzer lays down a
positive lesson: people make a difference. He speculates that history
might have been different had German pastors and Christians stood
firm against the secular darkness of that era. The writer shares
stories of Christians who have made a difference in their time,
even at great cost to themselves, and he calls on the church to once
again be such a witness.
Finally Lutzer challenges the modern
church to exalt the cross in the gathering darkness. The gospel
message must not be confused, diluted, or corrupted with a false
message of prosperity, psychological comfort, or even good causes. We
must preach the cross and live the suffering to which it calls us,
keeping our eyes upon Christ.
If I have any criticism of this book,
it is a mystifying failure of Lutzer in chapter three. The chapter is
an exposition of its title: “That which is legal might also be
evil.” After tracing the changes in law in Nazi Germany that made
possible its pograms, Lutzer looks at America and finds two flaws
that have weakened the impact of Christianity on American law. He
cites the onset of evolution and theological liberalism and makes a
good case for the destructive tendencies of both. But nowhere does he
even mention American Christianity’s acceptance of slavery in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There was probably no greater
damage done to the influence and credibility of the church than its
failure to stand against the scourge of human slavery. Like Nazi
Germany, many of the arguments made in favor of slavery centered
around the question of whether African blacks were subhuman. As I was
reading this chapter I was expecting Lutzer to say something,
anything, by way of critique on this subject. If he said it, I missed
it. It is a crucial failure that ought to be corrected in the next
edition.
That criticism notwithstanding, this
book combines three great qualities: first, it is firmly anchored
with excellent research in a faithful representation of both history
and the modern day. Second, the insights it contains are profound and
thoroughly biblical. Third, it is brief and accessible. Every person
concerned about the direction of our nation, and our churches, should
read this outstanding book.
