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I have a piece of the Berlin Wall on my desk at home that someone bought for me in a store in Germany. It’s possible that a budding East-German entrepreneur newly introduced to the wiles of capitalism produced it by spray-painting their driveway before jack hammering the cement for the desired effect, but it looks authentic and I’m happy to believe it is.

It’s twenty years since the Wall came down so suddenly, unexpectedly and joyously. The edifice that so powerfully symbolised the might of Soviet Communist oppression is now—in large and small pieces—a treasured possession of museums, hotels, and universities and of artists, historians and tourists. Ironically and poetically it has come to symbolise freedom, beauty and creativity.


It’s a stunning reversal for those who grew up during the Cold War with the threat of nuclear annihilation casting a morbid shadow over fragile human attainments and hopes. This was a time when images of Red Square military parades and faceless men on Kremlin balconies, along with the film and novels of the period, created a mystical aura of vast, impenetrable evil. These were days when it was hard to imagine that the ‘iron curtain’, stunningly represented by Berlin’s bulwark of concrete, would ever fall. But fall it did, and this week we are recalling those strangely euphoric days.

It reminds me of an earlier time when the Apostle Paul stared through the bars of a Roman prison cell upon an empire he had experienced as immense in scope, lavish in achievement and brutal in dealing with potential opposition. It was to this empire that he took his message of an obscure Galilean teacher being the key to life. His chances of success in spreading this news must have looked as improbable as the gospel he preached. But two-and-a-half centuries later, within the same empire that periodically tortured, crucified and fed to lions adherents of this novel faith, followers of Jesus had slowly and peacefully gained influence and numbers to the point where an ambitious emperor could think it worth converting. The walls of pagan religion and unbelief were inexorably eroded, and the cross—a macabre symbol of cruelty and oppression—came to represent the greatest story of freedom and hope ever told.

Simon Smart



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Simon Smart | Monday, November 09, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink