GN Commentary: November 9, 2009 - When Walls Come Down

We can tear down the physical walls, but until we allow God to tear down the walls in our hearts, we will not have peace.

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Video Transcript

November 9, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the day when the East German government finally allowed its citizens to cross the Berlin Wall into West Germany. Crowds from East Germany poured over the wall, at long last able to see the other half of their still-divided country. In the following weeks, Germans on both sides began to smash away at the concrete edifice that had divided them for almost 30 years.

On this date Germany will commemorate this event with a "Festival of Freedom," during which one thousand 8-foot-tall foam dominoes will be set up along the wall's former location and then toppled. The festival will celebrate the day that paved the way for the reunification of a divided Germany.

But is it united?

A 2004 Forsa Institute poll showed that one in five Germans want the wall to be rebuilt. Even though it has been 20 years since they became one, there remain sharp cultural differences and even resentment between East and West.

Meanwhile, countries like Yemen, Cyprus and Korea continue to experience extreme division between opposing factions. Tensions in the Middle East remain unresolved as Palestinian and Israeli cities live under the constant threat of missile fire and gunfights.

We can tear down physical walls; we can topple corrupt governments; we can even enforce rules that produce the ideal environment for cultivating peace—but how much closer are we to achieving it? Our world is one where the tensions between two closely related tribes can lead to genocide of over 800,000 people, as we witnessed in Rwanda; where a war between two quarreling sides can bring about rape, pillaging and hundreds of thousands of deaths, as demonstrated in Darfur; where feelings of racial superiority can lead to the slaughter of some 17 million men, women and children in an international Holocaust.

Peace? No, we do not have peace. For six thousand years of recorded human history, man has striven for some kind of peace—and for six thousand years, it has eluded him. There is something fundamentally wrong in our world that, despite our most well-intentioned efforts, continues to render useless every step we take toward peace.

We will not have peace until we come to accept what our failed attempts prove:  that we are incapable of overcoming our own human nature.

But there is One who can. We read in the Bible, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:13-14, NLT).

We can tear down the physical walls, but until we allow God to tear down the walls in our hearts, we will not have peace.

Christ tells us, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). If we as a people will turn to God, we will find peace—for ourselves, and for the world.

For GN Magazine, I'm Jim Franks.