Michnik on Conscience and Humility

Christianity Today has posted an article with some extraordinarily insightful comments about conscience, humility, politics and religion. Entitled, "Why Adam Michnik is Afraid of Theocracy," it discusses the political situation in contemporary Poland and highlights some worrisome parallels between fundamentalist worldviews and the totalitarian mindset.

This article is valuable reading for Mainstream Baptists and church-state separationists.

Here's a quote:

"Moral absolutism, which rejects compromise, can be a virtue in extreme situations, but becomes a misfortune when government aspires to it. It is often a mask for hypocrisy, always the means of discriminating against others. . . . That is why the democrat-skeptic does not trust moral absolutes in politics. He prefers compromise. For him this is not moral relativism. It is an act of faith in compromise as democracy's daily bread."

And compromise needs a conscience. Michnik admits this as he remembers "the intellectual acrobatics of liberal friends" who rationalized their approval for dictatorial regimes. It was conscience, not compromise, that tore down the Berlin Wall.

Amid Michnik's on-the-one-hand-on-the-other, one group, mentioned only briefly, earns his unqualified respect -- and not a hint of skepticism. They are not rationalists, democrats, skeptics, compromise-seekers, or Catholics of any stripe. They're people with conscience, and with humility: "The democrat-skeptic bows his head before the memory of the evangelical churches in Westphalia, which confessed their participation in the Nazi crimes, admitting to cowardice and to preferring their own safety."

Perhaps there's a lesson here for evangelicals in a very different set of circumstances.