Thursday, February 11, 2010

Einstein, Iran, An Impossible Dilemma, and HOPE

Iranian President Ahmadinejad announced that the Islamic Republic had produced its first batch of 20 per cent enriched uranium. This comes on the heels of the promise by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Iran will deliver a ‘punch’ that will stun the West to mark today's celebrations.

As I was reading Einstein's bio, I was most interested in the events and circumstances in developing and using the atomic bomb. The irony was that the momentum to develop the greatest weapon of mass destruction came from a staunch passivist as Einstein worked so hard to implement.

Then something strange happened to Einstein's 'theory of passivity'........ and that is, it ran into this thing called 'reality'.

When Hitler came to power, Einstein immediately knew that he had been wrong on so many fronts and even wrote a series of letters apologizing for his error. Indeed there are regrettable times when evil must be confronted, constrained, and destroyed.

Einstein was so disappointed that his famous meeting with Freud offered no answers to removing the threat and reality of war. Freud made it very clear... as long as there are humans with wants- there will be war.

Then Einstein did his darkest thought experiment ever- indeed he had been tipped off on two previous encounters- nuclear fission was not only possible, but horribly accessible.

He wrote a now famous letter to Roosevelt where he expressed concerns about the German's access to the technology and the uranium. In actuality, Hitler had kicked out all the scientists who were capable of achieving this because they were all Jewish.

'Oppenheimer's deadly toy' was dropped by Truman, the cold war erupted, and here we stand as a tinderbox still...... more fragmented and destructive as ever.

Now the world has an unsolvable dilemma. I find it dastardly ingenious what Iran did today. They announced they had the uranium enrichment capability, but denied wanting to make a weapon. "Would you like some ketchup with that load of crap?"

But adding that caveat, buys more time for the doves to fight the hawks. And Obama is in an impossible situation.

What do we do?

Well, at the risk of unleashing the 'rancor of the theologians' I want to propose that ultimately we can do very little. That doesn't mean we don't try. We should work like everything depends on us and pray like everything depends on God. And sometimes that means tough, tough calls. But appeasement does not work..... our softness will not turn away their wrath.

Now, some strange 'good news'- this is in the Book. It would take too long here to lay out my whole view of Revelation, prophecy, and eschatology. But I believe Rev 16 points to a time in the future. It did have a type or shadow of fulfillment in the past, but God's final BOWL (remember that it built up seals, trumpets, thunders which were cut short, and finally bowls of God's wrath) appears to me to be nuclear.

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