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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 26, 1985
directions. The white man's technical skills will still be needed far into
the future.
In the final analysis, the struggle over political power--who will rule,
and how, and over whom--is central to the whole conflict. Arguments as to
how better off economically South Africa's blacks are than blacks elsewhere
in the continent matter little to those who crave political power. "Power"
and "freedom" seem to be paramount concerns, not what you do with the power
and freedom. And it is a sad habit of human nature for people to want to
always compare upward, never across or down (which would make most people
thankful for what they have). Improper comparisons (note II Cor. 10:12)
unfortunately lead to jealousy, envy and strife.
The late political scientist Robert Strausz-Hupe made some very interesting
observations in his autobiography, IN MY TIME. He had personally lived
through the first colonial breakup in the modern world--that of Central
Europe after World War I. He said:
In most parts of the world the peoples who most stridently demand
self-government themselves contain in their midst one or several
national minorities.
These national minorities, too, can and
usually do claim the right of self-determination--and so on ad
infinitum. Thus, for example, the Czechs as soon as they had
achieved national independence and ceased to be a national
minority within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became themselves
the target of national minorities under their rule, namely,
Slovaks, Sudeten Germans, Carpatho-Ukranians, and Hungarians••..
Thus World War I, far from settling the nationality problems of
Eastern Europe and the Near East, created at least three new ones
for each problem purported to have been solved. On the reduced
scale of European geography the conflicts of nationalism in
Eastern Europe after World War I anticipated virtually every turn
and twist of the drive toward national self-determination in Asia
and Africa after World War II. I am deeply convinced that there
is no such thing as "just nationalist aspirations."•••
In� world order under justice, a people should have the right to
speak its own language, cook its favorite dishes, and enjoy the
good things that its labor produces. And this is about all there
is to the cussed business of national self-determination.
If
these conditions are met, then it should matter little whether a
people flies a flag that is red, white, and green, or black and
blue with a unicorn rampant, or no flag at all.
A "world order under justice" is coming--the government of God, to be
imposed over the nations. Then the nations will be able to relieve them
selves of the burden of politics, of endless majority-minority disputes, of
the agonizing need to find humanly-devised formulas to provide equitable
governmental arrangements for this group or those sub-groups (such as in
South Africa, where all groups are minorities)� One is reminded of the old
slogan of the Greyhound Bus Company--"Leave the driving to us." Leave the
instruments of authority and power in the hands of the government of God.
Relieved of the burden of politics, the peoples of Africa--taught also to
respect and profit from each other's talents--will prosper in a future
golden age.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau
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