Oh Heck!

The waters thundered as it cascaded over a hidden curved cliff of Horseshoe Falls. The very shaking of the ground emphasised the intensity of the force generated as the waters of Lake Erie falls into the Niagara River, leading to Lake Ontario, which is 51 metres lower in elevation. So after standing at the edge for a considerable time, this young and slim 24-year-old backpacker made his way downstream to the start of Rainbow Bridge which spans the Niagara River, which flows to the lake. Sectioned off from the main, traffic-bearing international highway by a steel barrier, is a footpath, from which one can look back towards Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side, and the less impressive Bridal Veil Falls and the American Falls, both near the city of Buffalo, New York State.

Halfway across the bridge there was a double line painted across the path. By sitting astraddle on the lines with one foot in Canada and the other in the USA, for a moment I felt truly international. When I got back up on my feet, I was able to proceed along the footway towards the passport control on the American side. And because I had the passport on me, which back in 1977 carried a valid US visa, I could have passed through into the USA proper there and then. But I didn't, because I knew that the very next day I'll be on the Greyhound Bus on an overnight journey from Toronto to Chicago, crossing the border at Detroit in time for a breakfast stop before switching busses for Chicago, if I can remember, arriving at "the windy city" on the shores of Lake Michigan somewhere between twelve to fourteen hours after boarding the bus at Toronto Greyhound terminal.

Nevertheless, on the southeast end of Rainbow Bridge, I was as much in New York State as anyone in the city of the same name. Sitting on the painted line was something big for me. It represented a spirit of internationalism, something I have always fervently believed in. And in this case it was between Canada and the US, each with its own Head of State - Canada with its Governor, a Commonwealth representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and the other, a President, Head of a Republic (in 1977 it was President Jimmy Carter occupying the White House.) Two very different nations yet sharing the same English language. At least I could be understood easily in either.

It was even easier for the apostles of the risen Christ to travel from one country to another, as far as I know, there was no such thing as passport controls. I guess that at any port around the Mediterranean, one can disembark from a ship, straight onto the street as easily as one stepping off a bus at a High Street bus stop. Even recently in the seventies, all railway stations in Italy were open stations. There were no ticket barriers, and I recall backpacking Italy between 1973 and 1975 and stepping onto the platform from the station concourse without passing through any gates, turnstiles, or barriers. A very different system to that in the UK, where the presence of barriers manned by scowling ticket inspectors made me feel that I couldn't be trusted to board a train without first paying the fare. 

It is a universal culture of inclusiveness. And among the Diaspora, the Jews living in foreign lands of former exiles did not feel any different from those living in and around Jerusalem. And on special occasions they all showed unity despite speaking multiple languages. On one Pentecost festival, Jews from up to fourteen different nations identified themselves (Acts 2:7-12) yet they were all united in worship and purpose. But far more important than this is how the Crucifixion, death, burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was the beginning of a unity of all God's people - Jews and non-Jews - into one body of Christ.

Poor Peter! He was already given by Jesus "the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" of Matthew 16:13-20. He preached the very first sermon after the Resurrection, and three thousand Jews were converted. So it can be said that the apostle used his keys to open heaven to the Jewish people en masse for the first time in church history. But a later incident took far more effort on God's side. Peter had to be shaken by a series of visions before he felt comfortable enough to use his keys at the house of a Roman centurion, with the apostle somewhat reluctantly witnessing the first Gentile conversion since the Resurrection (Acts 10). Some time later, Peter could be seen sitting, or more likely, reclining very tentatively at a table in Gentile company at a house in Antioch. But even then he had some fellow Jews with him, including Barnabas and Paul, among others. Although Peter was not alone in an ethnically diverse company, he was feeling ill-at-ease. Then, when a house servant announced that men sent by James had just arrived, Peter and Barnabas suddenly arose and separated themselves in fear of the new arrivals (Galatians 2:11-14).

The sternest rebuke Paul could deliver to his fellow apostle demonstrates the removal of the ethnic barrier which before separated the Jew from the non-Jew. Peter's fear probably arose from a couple of incidents when just before Jesus healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman, to whom Jesus himself called a dog, and then told her that he came to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21-28). Also Jesus, in sending out the Twelve, specifically instructed them to avoid the Gentiles and the Samaritans alike, and minister to the house of Israel only (Matthew 10:5-6). Therefore I can imagine how cautious Peter must have felt being in Gentile company, without fully realising the effect of the Cross in removing the ethnic barrier. It was after the Cross and after his Resurrection when Jesus instructed his followers to "Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." (Matthew 28:18-20, also Matthew 10:8). No doubt in my mind, Peter thought that his Lord meant to go out and make disciples of all the Jews living in the furthest corners of the Earth. And his retention of such a belief restricted him to minister to the Diaspora, even if as far away as Babylon in modern day Iraq (1 Peter 5:13).

But Paul's rebuke to Peter has shown that the Cross has removed all ethnic barriers, even to the extent that he later wrote,

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28.

Therefore, when a poster appeared on Facebook earlier in the week, I thought, Oh heck!

The poster was a lobby to have Toby Young fired from his post as University Regulator. What was quoted was a real shocker for a responsible person who suppose to represent a country with a Christian constitution. For this is what the poster read:

Toby Young - Theresa May's new university regulator - thinks state school undergraduates are "stains", wheelchair ramps are an example of "ghastly, politically correct inclusiveness" and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes.

Toby Young, University Regulator.

Oh heck! It took me a while to recover from the shock. During that moment I actually signed the lobby to have him kicked out by the Government. But it was afterwards, when I realised "I'll shoot first, then ask questions" - that I decided to investigate further into such accusations. Although the right-wing national newspaper The Daily Mail had shoved such statements under the carpet and defended his right to keep his job, I had to turn to The Guardian newspaper to try to dig into the facts. On his views of of state school undergraduates being "stains", he was referring to students from state schools entering prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge without achieving the "proper" qualifications for admission. As I see it, if all state school students can be so generalised, then that gives the impression that only privately educated students are clever enough to study at Oxford and only they should be admitted. If this attitude does not have a connection with eugenics, then what does?

But most hurtful was his perception that wheelchair ramps are ghastly, and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes. The meaning of the word troglodyte is that of a caveman, a Neanderthal Stone Age entity totally deprived of any civil and academic attributes. This is the basis for the science of eugenics which was the groundwork for the slaughter of the Jews during Adolf Hitler's holocaust. And here is Toby Young, a staunch English Tory, a self-confessed snob, and of course, a devout Brexit supporter and voter. It is my desire that Toby Young will never set his eyes on my beloved wife, who is confined to a wheelchair whilst out of doors.

Eugenics and its Dire History.

Lately I have been reading in a journal* about the history of eugenics. In the light of the above revelation, it is an interesting study. 

I have always been aware of the Roman Catholic Church's hostility towards the Jews since the fourth Century. During the eleventh and twelfth Centuries, Catholic Crusaders have a history of persecuting Jews, even to the point of locking them inside their own synagogue and setting the building alight. Rome offered a choice of two options: Convert or die. Not surprisingly, the Jews preferred death in order to keep their race and their faith alive. Even after the Reformation, Martin Luther took a hostile attitude towards the Jews for killing Jesus instead of submitting to him, and called their meeting rooms "Synagogues of Satan." As a result, the Church's hostility towards the Jews became the initial bedrock for the rise of predominately German eugenic scientists and academics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The first of note was Englishman Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He advocated Social Evolution, the advancement of human intelligence for the betterment of society with the consequential elimination of people with lower intelligence and hereditary physical impairments. This is the basis of eugenics, and such a concept drew in a number of brilliant followers, especially from Germany. These included Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena University, who specialised in zoology, and was a devoted follower of Charles Darwin. In the 1860's he wrote a book, Die Weltratsel (The Riddle of the Universe). In it, he advocated the killing of those with bodily defects, cretins, the crippled, the retarded, along with others who don't match the ideal model of the human race. 

Nineteenth Century Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau used Darwin's theory to discourage the interbreeding of different races while advocating the superiority of Northern European peoples. His works resonated with anthropologist Alfred Ploetz, who was the founder of the German eugenics movement. Ploetz wrote The Fitness of our Race, a book which had heavy influence on future Nazi leaders and intellectuals, along with his 1904 work, The Journal of  Social and Racial Biology. Other disciples of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, J. A. de Gobineau, and Alfred Ploetz included Fritz Lenz, Ernest Rudin, Karl Pearson, Charles Davonport, August Forel, and psychiatrist Wilhelm Schallmayor. #

All these were German and English intellectuals who laid the groundwork for the rise of Nazism, and gave Adolf Hitler the sceptre to "solve the Jewish problem" for the advancement of his own Germanic Aryan Race. Along with the elimination of the Jews, those on the death roll also included the Slavs, along with the imbecile, slow learners, the cripple, the hereditary deformed, the homosexual, the negro, and anyone else who did not fit the ideal model of perfect human society. And whether you may agree with me or not, I cannot help see a connection or continuation of the spirit behind these past academics and that in the likes of Toby Young. 

Darwinism, to my mind, must be thoroughly unchristian because we can see the fruits of it above. Indeed, Toby Young is no Christian, yet he is highly respected by both Government and intellectuals, and many among the middle classes would honour him with a curtsy, I guess, including those who attend church - if they are unaware of his creeds. By such reading and research into his ideas, I can't help but come to the conclusion that Darwin, Galton and Young are out and out against the teachings of Jesus Christ in reference to caring for the poor, the lame, and the needy. Paul's nine fruits of the Spirit is dynamically opposed to Young's philosophy, along with Hitler's. These fruits of the Spirit are Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, and Self control. And these are all apt between every race, every nationality and between every physical state of health and looks.

The Yad Vashem, for the Jews killed in Hitler's Holocaust.

And furthermore, Darwinism is a direct denial of Jesus Christ and his atonement made on the Cross. Evolution denies the historicity of Adam and Eve, their Fall and the beginning of death for all mankind. If death was in existence before Adam and Eve, then the death Jesus suffered has no relevance at all. Instead, if he had ever existed, then he died in vain. 

Jesus instructed his followers to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give (Matthew 10:5-8). Something Toby Young can certainly learn.

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*Journal of Creation, Vol. 31 (3) 2017, page 103.

# Ibid, page 107.

Correction of error: Chicago is on the shores of Lake Michigan, and not on Lake Superior, as I have originally stated on paragraph #2. This has now been corrected, and I apologise for the original mistake.