June 6th marks the 65th anniversary of D-Day -- the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces. A massive and mighty armada of British, Canadian and American troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and cracked the Nazis' grip on western Europe. There were 150,000 Allied forces who stormed the beaches, backed-up by another 200,000 personnel in warships and air support. It was the largest invasion in the history of war. According the the American National D-Day Memorial Foundation more than 4,400 Allied soldiers died in the first 24 hours of that military campaign.
The German resistance they met was so withering and ferocious that many troops were killed before they hit water. Hundreds died as soon as they set foot on the beaches. Eyewitnesses tell of the water turning and churning blood-red that day. The sand on the beaches was turned to mud from the blood of dead and dying soldiers. That was just one day of one battle in a six year war!
More than 400,000 American soldiers died in World War 2, 43,000 Canadians and more that 326,000 British soldiers.
WHY?
Why would so many young men be willing risk their lives and die? We get a hint about the threat of that terrible time from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when he addressed the British House of Commons a few years earlier, on the eve of the Battle of Britain. He said, in part:
"Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization... The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. ... If we stand up to him [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
Churchill did not overstate the dire situation facing the Western world. Everything worth holding dear was at stake! I don't see from my reading of the historical record howls of derision or protests arising from the public, the liberal elite or the British media decrying Churchill's reference to defending a Christian civilization. People understood that everything they
knew and cared for grew out of that western Christian civilization which was being threatened.
SUNLIT UPLANDS OF WESTERN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION
Western
Christian civilization was based upon the reality of
Christ. And out of that reality came a flood of Christian love and creativity that provided the Western world with its religion and customs, its laws and legal traditions, its cathedrals, art, literature and music, hospitals, schools and universities for the better part of two thousand years.
The Nazis were ultimately defeated. Allied soldiers returned home to move forward into
broad, sunlit uplands to which Winston Churchill alluded earlier. That generation (of which my father was a part) wanted us to be spared from the horrors and deprivations they endured and witnessed not only in WW2 but the Great Depression that preceded it. They wanted us to bask in opportunities and prosperity possible in a sunlit upland.
PEARLS BEFORE SWINEPerhaps they coddled and pampered us too much for we became demanding, self-absorbed and spoilt. We were the babyboomer generation and we squandered the heritage our fathers fought to save. It was like throwing pearls before swine.
We 'Boomers sneered at our parents and sang rousing choruses of "All you need is love" when most of us knew little or nothing about real sacrificial love. The 'Boomers confused lust with love and licence with freedom. In our willful superficiality the 'Boomers mistook feelings as truth. Objective truth was replaced with subjective, relative truth. 'Boomers thought the idea of selfless love was naive and foolish; commitment and fidelity became arbitrary and uncertain. We made ethics situational and rejected interdependence for unrestrained personal autonomy.
ANTI-CHRISTIANSIn large measure, the 'Boomers turned their backs on the Christianity that made the culture they inherited great. They eventually became anti-Christians just like the Nazis (and that's what we have today). I saw my own spiritual bankruptcy, repented, and began to distance myself from my generation.
They spoke of love without God, but love without God turns to lust, self-service and brutality. Dostoevsky addressed this when he wrote, "Love toward men, but love without belief in God, very naturally leads to the greatest coercion over men, and turns their lives completely into hell on earth."
Even well intentioned compassion that is godless or bereft of Christian love eventually translates into evil and death on a mammoth scale. This was evident in pre-Nazi Weimar Germany that accepted mercy killing as "merciful" and good for the health the population (
volk). A series of gradual mental shifts occurred that allowed the thought to be entertained, then accepted, that there was such a thing as a life unworthy of life (
lebensunwertes leben) . The lines were blurred between healing and killing, compassion and death.
A current manifestation of godless self-serving brutality is evident in the creeping but steady acceptance of euthanasia consciousness into the Western world's public mindset. The entrenched practice of abortion on demand across Canada and America, whereby millions of unborn children sacrificed annually, is an even clearer example of compassion devoid of Christian love being translated into evil and death.
The 'Boomers made abortion a right when previous generations condemned abortion as a wrong, dating back into antiquity. Thirty to forty years ago abortion was ushered into public policy acceptance based on the "hard cases" and imagery of coathangers and thirteen year old rape and incest victims. (Only 1-2% of North America's abortions involve rape or incest.) Things have become so perverse that now a prenatal child can be aborted for any reason or no reason (often at taxpayer expense). Compassion without proper morality becomes corrupt and cruel; love without Christ becomes self-serving and brutal.
The monumental arrogance of the 'Boomers allowed the loathsome generation (of which I am a part) to believe they knew better than the wisdom of the ages. They are changing the definition of family and marriage based on no sound social science but plenty of special agendas.
Marriage and family are the building blocks of society and the 'Boomers, and their adult offspring, have made them a social experiment. They have embraced perverted science of embryonic stem cell research and cloning. They are embracing the darkness of euthanasia. The Babyboomers have taken western civilization to the edge of an abyss. What was a sunlit upland is filling with creeping shadows of that new Dark Age to which Winston Churchill alluded; they have mutated society to resemble something akin to the Nazi vision of society.
In a span of forty years the self-indulgent 'Boomers have torn the Christian civilization apart from the inside out and made a mockery of the sacrifice of their fathers. They declared war on the Christian culture they inherited. Their weapons are not bombs, rifles or tanks, rather deviations, perversions and stone-hearted ideas -- seductive anti-Christian ideas capable of turning sunlit uplands into parched deserts hostile to the weakest and most vulnerable life.
The pearl of Western Christian culture was thrown before swine and is being trampled asunder.
MP
