Introduction: Ever seen the film The Pianist? It’s a film from c. 2002. Adrien Brody plays the protagonist. It centers around Jews from Poland (Warsaw in particular) being ostracized, abandoned by the masses, rounded up, put in ghettos, then put on cattle cars and trains, then put behind fences, then put in camps, and then put in ovens. I have walked many of the places the film portrayed–places in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, etc. And when I saw just this week in America how university presidents (University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, MIT, and more) are unwilling to condemn antisemitism, and are more concerned about retaining their labels, positions, and paychecks, it struck me that the late 1930s and 1940s are back. Once again academia is complicit in propagating evil. Propagating, as in propagandizing. Breeding, spreading. That’s what they’re doing.

The Pianist explores, among other notable themes, the power of commitment to the beautiful and true as means of redemption. Brody’s character is the pianist, a Polish Jew (Szpilman), a piano savant. Szpilman and his family are, like thousands of other Jews, scapegoated and rounded up for extermination by the conquering military thugs. And the masses of people go along. Why? Well, not their problem, you see. It’s “those people,” of course. It’ll not happen to us.

Connection to Today: And yet here we are. Again. Ignorant (or worse) taxpayers send their naive urchins to the indoctrination camps of Harvard, University of PA, MIT (and countless other camps of ‘women’s/gender/black/gay/trans/DEI studies’ programs), and then are surprised when the kiddos graduate as propagandists with sophomoric attitudes replete with the wisdom of teenagers who just learned to drive a manual transmission.

Reality Check: In Scripture God raised up a mighty and true prophet in the Old Testament named Jeremiah. The following words are from his book:

The wise men shall be put to shame;
they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
so what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 8:9-11 ESV)

Question: See it there? Greed for unjust gain (in short, corruption/the swamp/the wicked human heart) traffics in dealing falsely and healing lightly. In other words, in not healing at all, but only in spouting bromides about peace in our time.

The thing about history is that it is drenched in blood. Ideas have consequences. But most folks don’t tend to learn until Hamas shows up at your door. Not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but the workers of iniquity don’t ask permission for your wives and daughters; that’s kind of the way evil works. Evildoers are not confused about their pronouns or safe spaces or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So, while the West TikToks its ways into further imbecility, and pays for the indoctrination of their progeny, and lights up the White House in rainbow colors, the serpent of old coils ever tighter around the necks of a civilization of Neville Chamberlains. “Peace, peace,” spout the soft, as the serpents scale the walls in scaled and cold celebration.

But What If … But what if we had some committed Szpilmans who refused, who used their gifts for beauty and truth to stand for the good, true, and beautiful? One man (yes, Szpilman was a real man, not just a character). God used Jeremiah in the Old Testament. God used Daniel in Iraq (Babylon). God used Jonah in Nineveh. God used Szpilman in Poland. What if Proverbs 16:3 was actually lived out by Christians?