Hero Or Villain

  Fritz Haber might have saved more lives than any other human history. Having one of the great minds in history for chemistry, figured out how to convert the commonest of chemicals —the nitrogen in the air— into a chemical fertilizer. With cheap industrial fertilizers now available, farmers no longer were limited to compost piles or dung to nourish their soil. Even by the time World War I broke out, Haber had likely saved millions from starvation, and we can still thank him for feeding most of the world’s 6.7 billion people today.

  Yet Haber was a monster. He cared little about fertilizers. He actually pursued cheap ammonia to help Germany build nitrogen explosives. But his most deadly work was in chemical weapons. He created the formula, Haber law, to calculate just how much poison was need for how much time to be deadly. He created and oversaw the use of deadly gas attacks in World War I. His wife so horrified by his actions she killed herself. Haber didn’t even bother to stay for the funeral, he had to get to the eastern front to oversee a gas attack.

  Harber won the 1918 Noble Prize for his life-saving work in nitrogen. A year later, he was charged with being as a war criminal.  Prosecuted for a campaign of chemical warfare that had maimed hundreds of thousands of people and terrorized millions more, He left a contradictory, almost self-canceling legacy.

  It is a strange state of humanity. Evil men can repent (Think Ahab, 1^st Kings 21:25-29). Good men can behave wickedly (Think David, 2^nd Samuel 11). A person can be bold in a moment and a coward in the next (Peter, Mark 14). When we try to measure the morality of a man, the ratio of good to bad, it can be a difficult puzzle.

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;

Romans 3:9-10

  That is why it is important to remember our salvation will not rest on ourselves but our Lord. If I am trying to get to heaven by being good enough I’ll never get the math to work. Heaven is made up of the saved not the good. Hell will contain the ‘not so bad’ yet totally lost. I can’t rely on my good to cover my bad. I can only rely on the only perfect One to be the difference for me.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus

Romans 3:23-24

  Hero or villain, man or monster, a good bad man or a bad good man, it won’t matter.

  Only my Savior will and my state before him.