The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Rise of the Human Spirit

Twenty years ago today was far more than just the fall of the Berlin Wall. No, it was not "the end of history", as Fukiyama suggested a few years later. This event, coinciding with the fall of the brutal Soviet Empire, and made possible by Communism's failure in the Eastern bloc of Europe, was not a catalyst to a new utopian human existence. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not guarantee that there would be no future enemies of freedom to enter the human struggle. But what the fall of the Berlin Wall does signal is that when the enemies of totalitarianism make a stand, and the forces of moral courage are allowed to win over the forces of ethical relativism, freedom can be had. Freedom is not absolute. Its defenders do not get a rest. Today, twenty years after that glorious day in Berlin, the road to serfdom is alive and well. Violent enemies of freedom exist all over the globe. The total depravity of man is resolute. And yet for those who understood the forty-year struggle against tyranny in Berlin, and then watched that wall torn down to the ground by people who wanted nothing more than to live a free life, there can be no ambiguity that freedom is an achievable goal. The recipe involves far more moral clarity than we have today, where the west fumbles the reality of terrorism, and ethically challenged people routinely invite more statism into their lives.The fall of the Berlin Wall did not tell us that everything will be okay. It just told us - that everything can be okay. My prayer is that we kiss the Prince of Peace who makes things like Berlin's freedom possible, and that we feel the moral conviction incumbent upon us to resist and defeat evil, before it defeats us.