The fight for what is good and true in our culture has turned contentious. At times, it appears that righteousness is losing. The normal, human reaction is to become despondent, even give up. It’s much easier to go with the flow of conventional wisdom that to “go along to get along” and “do the most good with what you’ve got” is a life well lived. After all, there’s so much fighting for our attention today. To be single-minded is to be irrelevant, or worse yet, a zealot.
Sometimes, though, God uses the humble of the world to focus our attention. Sixty-eight years ago, in Nazi Germany, God used a 21-year old medical student named Sophie Scholl. Her unyielding stand against the entire force of Hitler’s evil serves to remind us even today that what is right is usually not what is expedient.
“Somebody, after all, had to make a start.”
Sophie Scholl was a middle child in a middle class family. She had a happy childhood, did well in school, and went to a Lutheran church. Her parents taught all their children that because of God and through Christ’s death, every person has worth and “essential dignity.” Sophie took these tenets to heart, and later, they became the guiding philosophy of her short life.
Like most Germans, Sophie and her brother joined The fight for what is good and true in our culture has turned contentious. At times, it appears that righteousness is losing. The normal, human reaction is to become despondent, even give up. It’s much easier to go with the flow of conventional wisdom that to “go along to get along” and “do the most good with what you’ve got” is a life well lived. After all, there’s so much fighting for our attention today. To be single-minded is to be irrelevant, or worse yet, a zealot.
Sometimes, though, God uses the humble of the world to focus our attention. Sixty-eight years ago, in Nazi Germany, God used a 21-year old medical student named Sophie Scholl. Her unyielding stand against the entire force of Hitler’s evil serves to remind us even today that what is right is usually not what is expedient.
“Somebody, after all, had to make a start.”
Sophie Scholl was a middle child in a middle class family. She had a happy childhood, did well in school, and went to a Lutheran church. Her parents taught all their children that because of God and through Christ’s death, every person has worth and “essential dignity.” Sophie took these tenets to heart, and later, they became the guiding philosophy of her short life.
Like most Germans, Sophie and her brother joined Hitler Youth. But unlike most Germans, they came to the realization that the Nazi regime was evil and leading their country to destruction. They simply could not believe that a movement that treated people the way the Nazis did the Jews was a good one. They held up the teachings of the Nazi’s against the teachings their parents, particularly their father, had instilled in them—and found them wanting. They began a peaceful resistance movement called “The White Rose.” They distributed Nazi resistance documents all over university campuses, encouraging Germans to critically think through the Nazi philosophy and resist.
Eventually, Sophie, her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst were caught and brought to trial. She was given several chances to take the pragmatic approach and renounce her resistance so she could live to fight another day. Instead she chose to remain resolute. “Somebody, after all, had to make a start,” she said.
It is not coincidental that the same premise is at the heart of one of our most bitter culture battles today.
“Personhood” is defined by the truly pro-life group Personhood USA as “the presence of a particular set of characteristics that grant that individual certain rights such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, to be a person is to be protected by a series of God given and constitutionally protected rights.” In other words, because of God and through Christ’s death, every person has worth and “essential dignity.”
In the United States, the last bastion of “one nation under God,” Personhood supporters have begun their resistance to the blood-thirsty culture of death known by many names: abortion, choice, reproductive rights, population control. Why mince words—let’s call it what it is. Murder.
Personhood is also a resistance against the ultimately anemic attempts of the last 40 years to legislate, compromise, and negotiate with the industry of abortion. Under the guise of good, these attempts have naively legitimized killing babies in the name of waiting periods, late term bans, fetal pain, and parental notification. In the end though, all of this legislation ends with the theoretical words, “Then you can kill the baby.”
Personhood thwarts these attempts by doing what Christian and pro-life activists should have been doing for the last 40 years, stating that all life is given by God, all rights are given by God, and rights and life can only be taken by God. No exceptions.
“You know the war is lost. Why don’t you have the courage to face it?”
At her trial, no one spoke in Sophie Scholl’s defense. Her own lawyer, petrified of the Nazi regime and its fierce system resorted to a Pontias Pilate-type deflection: “I can only say fiat justitia. Let justice be done.” No one dared to speak out against the prosecutor, who had been flown in from Berlin to try the three young people.
Except Sophie. At one point, her clear, unshaken voice rose in the courtroom and asked the simple question: “You know the war is lost. Why don’t you have the courage to face it?”
For those of us with a biblical worldview, we know that outcomes are the Lord’s. The ending of the war against evil has already been written: Righteousness will prevail, evil will be cast away forever. How and when that happens is not for us to determine, in fact, even Jesus when he was here on earth said that the day and time of this victory was something only His Father knew. We can rest assured of the victory, but we should not rest now, nor rest comfortably. Now, is the time for us to fight.
It seems that evil is winning the culture war. We slide daily toward more debt, destruction, indifference all the while, the bad guys seem to be getting more powerful, more entrenched, more unbeatable. They are a fierce foe, supported by a supernatural evil that is only limited by a man’s devious human nature. But, even in the face of this, we have our hope in the day of the Lord.
The conundrum comes in the form of those who say they are with us for life, yet continue to chastise those who take the principled stand on personhood. Life and righteousness have already won, but there are those “on our side” who continue to compromise with evil. They refuse to support the legislation that reaffirms that ALL life is sacred, given inalienable rights by God, and is worthy and dignified. They choose instead to take “the sure thing.” Then, they turn and look to the man-made courts, wash their hands, and cry, “Let justice be done.”
“Remember Jesus, said her mother.” “Yes. But, you too.”
The three young Germans were convicted and sentenced to be beheaded. Sophie and Hans were allowed one last visit with their parents. Witnesses say that neither Sophie nor her brother shed one tear, even though their parents were devastated. As Sophie was led away from her brief reunion, her mother grabbed her arm and said, “Remember Jesus!” Sophie smiled and her and replied, “Yes. But, you too.”
It’s not enough to send good people to do the fighting in government to take a righteous stand. Those of us left behind have to be vigilant in our support of them and our support for righteousness. One thing Sophie Scholl’s story teaches us, is that parenting is of utmost importance. Imagine what this fight we are in now will look like in 20 years when our children are at the forefront? Are we raising a generation of Sophies? Can our children look to us for the guiding principles of fighting the culture war? Are they learning to stand and fight? As Paul said to the Galatian church, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that he will reap.” What will be the harvest for the next generation of culture warriors?
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause?”
The day of Sophie’s execution dawned. All who saw her that day described her as calm, steadfast. Her last words before she was lead to the guillotine were:
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
At the age of 21, Sophie saw her death as inescapable and necessary. But what’s more, she saw it as a victory. And she was right. The Third Reich was toppled and those who fought in the resistance were anointed as heroes by the subsequent generations. There are squares, streets, and university buildings named after Sophie and Hans, there are movies about her life, and in 2003, she (with Hans) was named as one of top ten most important Germans of all time. But most importantly, she leaves us the legacy of a modern day example of what it means to be truly courageous in the stand for what is right, not what is expedient.
So, to those who have chosen to take the principled stand, thank you. Please don’t be discouraged. You have chosen to be those who “make the start” and “give [yourself] up individually to [this] righteous cause.” You are willing to suffer “death”–political death, career death, friendship death, social standing death—and are still able to consider it a victory. Because of you, others are given the strength to stand for what is right.
