Stand Up Stand Ready

What do you believe and why do you believe it?  Merely because you have been told something?  Or because you have come to know it by what you read, by what you hear, by what you see, by what you have personally experienced?  Like many of you I have had a week off between Christmas and the New Year beginning.  I have taken the time to rest and enjoy one of my Christmas gifts, a ten episode documentary by Ken Burns on the Civil War.  I was moved.  Sure, I was inspired, and I learned some things, and I have have been challenged in my thinking.  However the more I learn the more I want to know.  And I do not want to merely observe and learn, I want to learn and do.  I want what I am learning to be the basis for what I am doing.

Adolf Hitler was well received by the members and leadership of the German church when he became Chancellor in 1933.  His rhetoric on Christian restoration, morality and traditional values were believed to be a “gift of mercy from God’s hand”.  However, in the days that followed, his actions (a new constitution on the unity of the church requiring subservience to the Nazi regime and superiority of the Aryan race was introduced) revealed his true agenda and intentions.  On this day, January 4th in 1934, German theologians like Karl Barth, Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up and took a stand, presenting a declaration against the Nazi government based on what they believed and why they believed it.  And it cost them dearly.  In the words of Dr. George Grant, “They kept alive the independent proclamation of the Gospel”.  Similarly, in Acts 4, we read how the disciples stood up and stood ready, and how their stance was supported by their actions.  They were willing to pay the price, standing up for what they had come to believe, by what they had seen and what they had heard…what they had come to know to be the Truth.  There is a lot to know and therefore a lot to learn.  However, based on what I have seen and what I have heard to this point, I am standing up and standing ready.