A Change of Heart Needed

HOW long will the struggle between tyranny and freedom go on? Answering that question the secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, said: “As long as human beings are human beings.” And why did Mr. Hammarskjold take such a pessimistic view of the struggle? Because, according to him, “this is basically not a struggle between political systems and ideologies, but a struggle within and for the hearts of men, including our own.” “Even in a restricted political sense of the word democracy,” further observed Mr. Hammarskjold, “we are still far from the goal.”—New York Times, February 14, 1954.

Here, then, is the explanation why there is war today in Indo-China, a stalemate in Korea, a South African race question, strained relations between India and Pakistan and between the Arab nations and Israel, and why the cold war between the East and the West, with its atomic- and hydrogen-bomb race, is worsening. The United Nations organization may be an imposing structure, but what can be expected from it when the materials going into it have no tensile strength, no soundness of heart, and when there is no cohesiveness between them, no altruism, no love of neighbor?

The Bible, God’s Word, rightly stresses the importance of the heart. “Guard your heart with all vigilance, for thence are the well-springs of life,” it tells us. And by means of it God says to us, “My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.” Since “God is love,” for us to give him our hearts and observe his ways is to wean them away from a selfish course to one of unselfishness.—Prov. 4:23, AT; Pr 23:26, RS; 1 John 4:8.

This can be done and is being done, and the fruits from this course of action bear out that Mr. Hammarskjold is correct in stressing the heart as the key to the problem. Objective observers attending the national assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses in Northern Rhodesia in 1953 marveled at what they saw: thousands upon thousands of representatives from many different warlike African tribes meeting together in peace, unity and love. What is the explanation? It is an understanding and appreciation of the truth of God’s Word that gives them the desire and the ability to make their minds over, to put off their old pagan warlike personality with its voodooism, polygamy and like tribal customs, and to put on the clean, peaceful and unselfish Christian personality. And the truth regarding Jehovah God and his purposes is accomplishing this remarkable change of heart not only in Northern Rhodesia but in 142 other lands as well.

True, these cannot make an end to the struggle between freedom and tyranny in the world, but by making over their personalities, by changing their hearts, they are demonstrating themselves as being worthy of living in the new world that Jehovah will create by making an end of all tyrants, which he will do at Armageddon. Living together in peace, love and unity now, and having the hope of God’s new world of righteousness in which the righteous will inhabit the land forever, these are now the happiest people on the face of the earth.—Ps. 72:4; Isa. 14:4-7; Ps. 37:29.

And quit being fashioned after this system of things, but be transformed by making your mind over, that you may prove to yourselves the good and acceptable and complete will of God.—Rom. 12:2, NW.