Sunday, November 9, 2014

Christianity Tears Down the Berlin Wall

The slogan "No Violence!" (Keine Gewalt!) was used by more than 300,000 people during the demonstrations and yet the whole East German revolution remained peaceful.  It was around a Christian nucleus that the protest against the Berlin Wall formed in East Germany and, notwithstanding the posturing from Reagan, those Christians and the people who joined around them are what took down the Wall.  (WIKI:  Monday Demonstrations)

Pastor Christian Führer may well be the best focus for why the Berlin Wall came down. He knew STASI could kill him at any time for what he did.  I'll bash the church as appropriate but even a heathen has to admit the facts and the above is exactly what happened.  Pastor Christian Führer may well be one of the greatest saints of the 20th Century and very much in the finest tradition of Gandhi.

The protest centered around religion and the church in bringing down the Wall. I don't know or care if any God had anything to do with it as the comedy in it with me is that Republicans steal credit for Reagan but, in so doing, they denigrate the religion they say is so important to them.  As with WWII, Reagan was off giving speeches somewhere and had nothing to do with it.  There were half a million people in Berlin when East Germany fell.  Reagan wasn't one of them.

Gandhi may have looked at Pakistan as his failure but Berlin was his success and Pastor Christian Führer his greatest student along with Martin Luther King and some others.  The important thing is that there isn't such a shortage of such people as humans are pretty damn good when we have a chance.  For such people to excel, what's needed is the opportunity and they will rise to it every time.

As to the troubles just now, one will come.  One always does.  That's how people do and how we always have.

The Christian perspective, at least from some, is that God was there but he didn't say anything to Pastor Führer but rather provided the sounding board for the Pastor to work out his ideas.  Fair enough and why should I try to argue this.  I relate to my ol' dead Dad in exactly the same way.  How should I know if it's real.  It feels real.  I don't feel him too much in Texas, tho.  He just wasn't the cat to hang about with these whackjobs.  He could have done it as we was very cool in dealing with people but all of the time he would have been thinking, "This is silly."


The Berlin Wall is a heritage many of us can celebrate as we are Germans too.  The Germanic tribes went North to build Porsches and eventually spread into England and then America where they made more cars.  The Romantic tribes went South to have lots of sex and invent pizza and flamenco guitar playing.  They wound up in England also so, yep, they're here too but they don't have as much influence because they like sex and pizza so much.  Still, it makes no difference as they were all Celts so we're still the same stuff.

So, wie geht's, mein Bruder.

Kennedy gesagt, "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Das ist richtig und auch alle sind ein Berliner.  We are all Berliners.

That Wall was between the people of the world.  Governments put it up.  The people took it down.  So has it been throughout all human history.  There hasn't been a Wall yet the people couldn't tear down.

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