There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience. Because if people touch God anywhere where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?The Ox-bow Incident is a short (1 hour and 10 minutes) 1943 film about a group of men who decide to take the law into their own hands.
This letter quoted above, read by Henry Fonda, is written by a man who had to suffer at their hands.
What struck me most in the letter were three words: God, civilization and conscience.
Without God, there is no (true) conscience. And it is this conscience that brings forth civilized men, and civilization. God is therefore necessary for civilization.
All those barbaric societies, and savage acts by men, can be cured - or disciplined - into civilization once God becomes part of them, and a true conscience is developed.
This is something I have thought often about. Why does a country like Zimbabwe turn into a cesspool of blood and gore? What is missing? Although this may be a simplistic answer, and it may not be the whole answer, part of their cure is to return to true conscience, and, as this young man writing this letter testifies, they have to ask a higher figure to help them achieve this.
Out of this, one thousand miracles can then begin to happen. Nothing else has worked.
