We do NOT live in uniquely sinful times

Machen's prophetic words from the 1930's on a very current issue

by Brad Isbell

Hitler learned of eugenics largely from America. This is not a misprint—again, Hitler learned of eugenics largely from America. The ideas that led to the abortion holocaust (which continues) and Hitler’s “Final Solution” (which some would downplay) germinated and developed in the United States of America before World War II.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. - (Edwin Black at the History News Network)

Note: the movement’s supporters were called progressives, just as today. Most Americans in the 1920s and 1930s were unaware of eugenics, and if they did know about it they took a neutral or positive view of it. These issues were rarely on the radar of what we would now call evangelicals in the hinterlands. But J. Gresham Machen read the academic journals, rubbed shoulders with cultural elites, and read the big-city newspapers…and not just because he showed up in their columns so often.

In one of his mid-1930s Philadelphia radio addresses on the subject of sin, Machen shows how little has changed in the last nine decades, and he once again displays his brilliant, almost prophetic perception¹ of the world around him and Bible truth:

We have seen in the newspapers recently a good deal of discussion about “mercy-killing” or “euthanasia’” Certain physicians say very frankly that they think hopeless invalids, who never by any chance can be of use either to themselves or to anyone else, ought to be put painlessly out of the way.  Are they right?

Well, I dare say a fairly plausible case might be made out for them on the basis of utilitarian ethics.

I am not quite sure – let me say in passing – that even on that basis it is a good cause.  This is a very dangerous business – this business of letting experts determine exactly what people ‘never will be missed.’  For my part, I do not believe in the infallibility of the experts, and I think the tyranny of experts is the worst and most dangerous tyranny that ever was devised.

But, you see, that does not touch the real point.  The real point is that the the modern advocates of euthanasia are arguing the thing out on an entirely different basis from the basis on which the Christian argues it. They are arguing the question on the basis of what is useful – what produces happiness and avoids pain for the human race. The Christian argues it on the basis of a definite divine command. “Thou shalt not kill” settles the matter for the Christian. From the Christian point of view the physician who engages in a mercy-killing is just a murderer. It may also turn out that his mercy-killing is not really merciful in the long run. But that is not the point. The real point is that be it never so merciful, it is murder, and murder is sin.²

One would struggle in vain to find a clearer pro-life statement today! The danger of believing that we live in uniquely sinful and evil times is that such misconceptions tempt us to adopt new measures or radical solutions out of fear and desperation. As ever, churches that teach and preach Biblical truth which Christians apply in their own lives and stations are the only hope for any society. And the refuge these churches provide is the only reliable refuge for Christians.

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1. See this earlier essay - “Machen Saw What Was Coming”

2. From The Christian View of Man, quoted here. Also contained in Things Unseen (chapter 33). You can listen to a wonderful reading of the chapter here.

“On a Sunday afternoon in 1935, J. Gresham Machen stepped into a broadcast booth at WIP Radio in Philadelphia and began something no one had tried before: teaching Reformed theology over the radio. In the vein of C.S. Lewis’s landmark “Mere Christianity” talks, Machen’s addresses are a crystal-clear articulation of the basics of the Christian faith, unfolding into an exceptional and persuasive explanation of Reformed theology.” (click photo for link)