Fritz
Haber is probably one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century
you've never heard of. He was a Jewish chemist who lived in Germany and started
to make his mark just prior to World War I. Before the war, in the midst of a
looming food shortage in Germany, Haber discovered a way to separate nitrogen
out of the air, which produced an ammonia drip. This ammonia could be put into
fertilizer. Fritz Haber is the one of the main reasons that the world today can
support almost seven billion people through fertilizer. He was awarded the
Nobel Peace
Prize for his groundbreaking work in 1918.
If
this is all you know about Fritz Haber's life you might think, “This was a good
man because he made a tremendous difference in the world.” But there's more to
Fritz Haber's life. He was also a very loyal German who signed up to fight in
World War I. As the war progressed, he developed an ammonia gas that could kill
enemy soldiers.
In
1915 at Ypres, Belgium, Haber turned on his gas machine, and a great green
cloud emerged. The soldiers on the other side could see it coming across no-man's
land. As it approached, every living thing in its path dried up and died. Then
it hit the Allied soldiers on the frontlines, and it killed every last soldier.
The lingering gas even hurt innocent civilians. Haber thought this was a grand
success. The German officials agreed.
So
Haber went back home to visit his wife, Clara, and when she was told about the
destructive force of his new invention, she expressed outrage at his gas
machine. The very thing that he had used to save lives was now an instrument of
death. Clara confronted him, but he did not want to listen to her. So in the
middle of the night, she took his service revolver, walked out into their
garden, and shot herself in the heart. The next morning Haber put on his
uniform and went back to the frontlines to unleash more of his deadly gas.
After
the war. Haber tried to help Germany pay the tremendous war reparations by
devising a process to distill gold from seawater. But when Hitler rose to
power, he decreed that all the Jews who worked for Haber had to be fired. Haber
resigned in protest and left Germany, but no one would receive him. He died
alone and bitter of sudden heart attack in 1934. In the cruelest of ironies,
his work was developed by the Nazis to create the Zyklon gas which used to
murder millions in the Holocaust—including his relatives. Albert Einstein
concluded, “Haber's life was the tragedy of the German Jew—the tragedy of
unrequited love.”[1]
Is
the world better or worse because Fritz Haber lived? How do we categorize
Haber’s legacy and influence since he caused life and death to millions. Was he
more Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? I think it’s safe to say he was both. Yet, you and
I are no different from a moral standpoint than Fritz Haber. We, like every
human on the planet, have the capacity for evil or good. The fallen nature
doesn’t every totally disappear, even after we’ve converted to Christ and
received the Holy Spirit.
The
apostle Paul understood the civil war that rages inside each believer. He wrote
in Romans 7:14-17, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the
flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do
what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I
agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but
sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is,
in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to
carry it out.”
Every
Christian has two natures. Frist, there is the old Adamic nature that we all receive
at birth. We all come into this world depraved and fallen as David said in
Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me.” However, when we are born again (John 3:3), God creates in us a
new nature that does not desire sin (1 John 3:9). These two natures—the flesh
and the Spirit—are incompatible and irreconcilable. “For the desires of the
flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the
flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things
you want to do” (Gal. 5:17).
This
explains why the Christian life is not for push-overs. Everyday our feet hit
the floor our sinful flesh raises up and declares war against the Spirit of God
dwelling within us. The battle is fought on all fronts—the lust of the flesh,
lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Imagine a tug-of-war contest going on
inside your heart everyday—on one-side is the world, the flesh and the Devil,
meanwhile the Spirit of God is on the other. Each side competes for your allegiance.
C.S.
Lewis wrote of this struggle, “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried
very hard to be good . . . Only those who try to resist temptation know how
strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by
fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by
trying to walk against it, not by lying down . . . We never find
out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and
Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also
the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.”[2]
As
difficult as this battle is we can experience victory. We must hate, starve and
outsmart the flesh. Years ago a simple poem expressed a winning strategy: Two passions beat within my chest, the one
is foul, the other blessed. The one I love, the other I hate; the one I feed
will dominate. Regular worship, Bible study, prayer and fellowship with God’s
people fuel spiritual growth. If you want to win the war within then don’t give
the flesh a beachhead to launch an invasion. -DM
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