Reflections on Witness, by Whittaker Chambers

When you are a brilliant, atheistic, Communist spy who comes face to face with the fact of a holy, personal, all-powerful God, what do you do? “Witness” is the testimony of Whittaker Chambers, who “outed” his fellow spy and mole, Alger Hiss. Hiss served in the highest levels of the US State Department and Justice Department. Hiss was at the Yalta Conference, where eastern Europe was allocated to the Soviet Union. To this day, liberal apologists claim that Hiss was innocent and that Chambers was not a believable witness. Hiss was convicted of perjury, but not of treason. While Witness covers the evidence against Hiss and the ordeal of the various high stake political and legal maneuvers, the primary importance of the book goes far deeper, to the heart of the religious, philosophical and political debates that continue to divide people. This is the book that caused Ronald Reagan to move from being a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican.

Chambers wants everyone to know that Communism is the natural ideology that flows from the rejecting God in order to worship a closed humanistic system of science and technology. Nazism and Communism are two sides of the same philosophy, where the ends justify the means and there is no eternal accountability to a holy God. Chambers’ reflections on his own journey from a hard-core atheistic Communist to a follower of Jesus Christ are compelling and powerful. The comments below are reflections upon Chambers’ forward to Witness, which is written to his children in the hope that they will understand his heart, not just the facts of his life. Chambers’ reflections do two things: (1) they demonstrate the grace and power of God to rescue someone as lost as he was; and (2) they expose and gut the philosophical heart of humanism in all its godless forms. Q=quote; C=comment.

Reflections on the Foreword:

Q: This “is a terrible book. It is terrible in what it tells about men. . . . it is more terrible in what it tells about the world in which you live.”

C: As much as we want to believe in and hope for the best in ourselves and our fellow men, the reality is that we are wretchedly evil apart from the transforming power of Jesus Christ in us. Paul begins his doctrine of salvation in the book of Romans with the sin and depravity of mankind. The Gospel is not good news until we first understand the really, really bad news of sin.

Q: “Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.”

C: All of life is the continuing struggle between faith in man or faith in the Judeo-Christian God. When God is at the center of life, all of life and eternity is given perspective. When man is at the center, the depravity of man is accepted as normal and the unaccountable power and influence of elite people are allowed to suppress and destroy others in the name of progress. We all have to choose faith in something – whether it be (1) in a gracious, loving, holy God who has created man immortally in His image, to live for His glory; or (2) in mankind, where everything is measured by what man thinks and does – there is nothing more. Nazism and Communism both arose from the latter view.

Q: “This terrible book is also a book of hope. For it is about the struggle of the human soul – of more than one human soul.” The “tragedy [of this case] will have been for nothing unless men understand it rightly, and from it the world takes hope and heart to begin its own tragic struggle with the evil that besets it from within and from without . . . .” The whole world “is sick unto death” and needs to deal with the evil that has made it so sick.

C: Here, he is referring to western civilization. Francis Schaeffer traces the Enlightenment ideas that have led to death instead of life in western culture. Again, the terrible nature of our societal predicament must be seen before we are ready to embrace the hope of the Gospel.

Q: “I was a witness.” Not so much a witness against something, but “a witness for something.” “A witness . . . is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences.”

C: “Witness.” In Greek, the word is martyr. A witness gives testimony for truth. So often, the Bible’s message of hope is seen as a message against sin and evil, and it is, but that is only the beginning of the message. The totality of the message is that God has called us to a glorious, confident, joyful right relationship with Himself that begins in this life and continues on forever, from one degree of glory to another. As we walk with Jesus, our life is a witness for the power and presence and peace of God. We are ultimately witnesses for God, for truth, for hope. The world must hear the message of its sin, but then rejoice in the hope-filled rest of the story. If our life and faith are completely one, we will accept the challenge to step out and testify for faith, disregarding risks and accepting all consequences.

Q: “I do not know any way to explain why God’s grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it. . . . I am an involuntary witness to God’s grace and to the fortifying power of faith.”

C: Time and time again God reaches down and touches and rescues and redeems the most unlikely people. No one is beyond His reach. His touch enlightens and illumines and gives light and life where there is nothing but hopelessness and darkness. Chambers knew that he was such a man. Each of us, in our own ways, are such people. We can’t explain God’s grace, we only thank and praise Him for it. Our response to God’s unexplainable grace is to live by faith – faith in Who He is and what He has done and faith in His call on our lives. There is no other acceptable way to live for the person in awe of God’s unmerited grace.

Q: Karl Marx: “Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world.” Communism is “the power to hold convictions and act on them.” Such a power is “an unfailing power to move men . . . to bear witness – for its faith.” The faith of Communism is the faith that “ye shall be as gods” – the faith in a “vision of Man without God. . . . the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world.” It is the vision of man without the image of God – man, not God, is the ultimate sovereign.

C: The deceptive message of the snake in the Garden of Eden is the same message bombarding us every day in our schools, our media, our government, in almost very source of influence on our society: you can control your own destiny, you don’t have to believe in a God who has revealed what is true. Communism is just one manifestation of that philosophy, which has become sufficiently sophisticated that it now goes by more acceptable alternative names. There is either God’s truth or we create our own truth. All of life is a battle between those two ideas. Our choice makes all the difference in this life and the next.

Q: The vision “is an intensely practical vision [the tools of which are] science and technology, whose traditional method, the rigorous exclusion of all supernatural factors in solving problems, has contributed to the intellectual climate in which the vision flourishes. . . .” “For the vision is shared by millions who are not Communists (they are part of Communism’s secret strength).”

C: Just this morning I heard President Obama say that his policies are “expedient.” In other words, they are practical for the moment. With expedience, the ends justify the means. That is the modern morality and it will justify anything. The starting point of humanistic science is the a priori assumption that there is no God and there cannot be a supernatural explanation for anything. Any explanation of anything that includes a reference to God is assumptively wrong and those who make such assumptions are labeled as stupid and dangerous.

Q: Communism provides people with “a reason to live and a reason to die. No other faith of our time presents them with the same practical intensity.”

C: We all need a reason to live, something to give perspective and hope to life. Material things will fail to give purpose and satisfaction – there must be something more. A faith in man that is so intense and so complete that it caused people to live and die for that faith is such a reason to live. I am convinced that people admire conviction, even if it leads to violence and atrocities. It is hard to justify the modern fascination of youth with Che Guevara  and other violent humanistic revolutionaries, apart from the willingness of such “heros” to thoroughly act on their beliefs. Evan radical Islam becomes attractive for that reason. For the Christian, when we boldly and confidently live governed by the truth of the Gospel, and empowered by the consistency of our faith in Christ, there is an unmistakable attraction for a world looking for meaning.

Q: “. . . spiritual vagrants of our time, whose traditional faith has been leached out in the bland climate of rationalism.”

C: Are you a spiritual vagrant? Has your faith in Jesus Christ and the truth of Scripture been leached out by the relentless rationalism of our culture? Every person who meanders away from Christ fits in this category. Instead, we are called to daily abide with Christ and to measure everything by the Word of God.

Q: “. . . man without God is just what Communism said he was: the most intelligent of the animals . . . man without God is a beast, never more beastly than when he is most intelligent about his beastliness.” “Man . . . uses [reason] to be more beastly than any beast.”

C: Man without God can never be good, only an intelligent beast. Without God, there are no absolutes, no right and no wrong, only what is expedient for the moment or for the goal. There is never ultimate accountability and there is no basis for judging any person or nation as evil. Hitler and Stalin are only evil if there is a God who created mankind in His image for His glory. Otherwise, Hitler and Stalin were only effectively expedient in accomplishing their purposes and they faced no accountability when they died.

Q: Chambers tells the story of the humanistic Communist sympathizer whose perspective was changed only because of the screams of those being expediently tortured. The screams of tortured souls pierced beneath the humanistic logic and touched his own neglected and forgotten soul. As soon as anyone admits that there is something beyond reason, something like a soul, the light of Almighty God begins to dawn in their lives. This is why Communism persistently and thoroughly uses all available and expedient means to “re-educate” such people.

C: God always calls, but never compels. God’s effective call penetrates and kindles light in the soul. Only Satan and his demons attempt to compel, lest the image of God in every soul awakes and seeks after its Creator and only hope.

Q: Initial awaking of the presence of God in Chambers’ testimony:

“My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear – those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design. The thought was involuntary and unwanted. . . . I had to crowd it out of my mind. . . . Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.”

C: God reveals Himself in so many ways: the sunrises and sunsets; the ordered mechanics of the universe; the highly intelligent, systematic and beautiful design of humanity and animals; the complex, yet highly programmed nature of cellular structure, atomic and subatomic worlds; and in a multitude of other ways. If we stop, look and listen; if we contemplate what we see and reflect on the implications, we will see the handiwork of God and know that there is a creative, powerful, loving God who is the author of everything. Chambers caught a glimpse of the image of God in the life of his two year old daughter.

Q: All ex-communists broke with Communism “because they wanted to be free. . . . Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. . . . A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between irreconcilable opposites – God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism.”

C: Jesus said, “if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32.) Truth is found in God’s Word. Abiding in the Word and in daily relationship with Jesus Christ is the only ultimate source of freedom. In that abiding relationship, even persecuted and oppressed followers of Jesus can rejoice in their freedom – freedom unknown to their oppressors. Without a foundation in the Word of God, what poses as external freedom is transitory and illusory. Today is the day to choose both God and freedom.

Q: “Communism is what happens when, in the name of Mind, men free themselves from God.” A nation’s view of God is what shapes and gives character to the essence of a nation. “. . . history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became indifferent to God, and died. . . . The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree in which the Western world actually shares Communism’s materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the materialist interpretation of history, politics and economics, that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only possible answer to the Communist challenge” is Faith in God instead of Faith in Man.

C: In watching the Amazing Race this year, I learned that Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world. How is that possible when Moscow used to be the capital of all things Communist – including the ideal of economic equality? The answer, perhaps, is that the material ideals at the heart of Communism have been externally remade, but have the same humanistic heart. Those who were in power under Communism seem to have managed to stay in power as capitalists, and continue to use the system for their own benefit. What is missing is a spiritual renaissance (rebirth) that encourages people to live in light of their eternal accountability to a holy God. At the same time, in many former Communist nations, it was a spiritual awakening that led to the casting off of Communistic oppression.

Q: Addressing his children directly and reflecting on his ten years of post-Communist life with them: “you experienced two of the most important things men ever know – the wonder of life and the wonder of the universe, the wonder of life within the wonder of the universe. . . . you knew them with reverence and awe – that reverence and awe that has died out of the modern world and been replaced by man’s monkeylike amazement at the cleverness of his own inventive brain.”

C: Are you still thrilled with sunrises and sunsets and the vast array of stars? Are you still in awe of how your fingers move in response to your thoughts and your diaphragm can force air through your throat, mouth and tongue in order to make complex and intelligible sounds that your ears communicate to your mind? We are surrounded by intelligent complexity that reflects extraordinary design, for our benefit and for God’s glory. Are you giving Him the glory and awe and wonder and praise that He deserves, or is the white-noise of this world drowning out awe and wonder in your life?

Q: “True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.” Again, directly addressing the journey of life faced by his children: “. . . in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha – the place of the skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. . . . For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.”

C: We all painfully deserve the cross, but Another took our place, and in painful agony bore our sin so that we might bear His righteousness. The cross that hangs on those who receive this supernatural gift of atonement and salvation is the reminder of the love of God for us, love that spared no expense to rescue and redeem. We now take up the cross as the anchor of our souls, the basis for our confidence as we live this life in light of our knowledge of the glory of God. Only in that cross is there ultimate wisdom for every person on this earth.