Our Post-Christian Society
"It is often said that we live in a post-Christian society. That is true, but its meaning is generally misunderstood. A post-Christian society is not merely a society in which agnosticism or atheism is the prevailing fundamental belief. It is a society rooted in the history, culture, and practices of Christianity but in which the religious beliefs of Christianity have been either rejected or, worse, forgotten.
"In other words a post-Christian society is a particular sort of Christian society. It is quite different, for instance, from a post-Muslim or a post-Buddhist society (if we can imagine such things). At an emotional level, its Christian character explains why many agnostics and atheists nonetheless find Christian hymns suitable and comforting at occasions such as funerals and weddings.
"Intellectually, its dormant Christian beliefs — notably those about the nature of Man — underpin our ideas on politics and foreign policy, as for instance on human rights. Even the Enlightenment — which strong secularists like to cite as the foundation of Western liberal polities — is an extension of Christianity as much as a rejection of it. In short, though much of what Christianity taught is forgotten, even unknown, by modern Europeans and Americans, they nonetheless act on its teachings every day.
"But there are consequences to forgetting truths. One consequence is that while we instinctively want to preserve the morals and manners of the Christian tradition, we cannot quite explain or defend them intellectually. So we find ourselves seeking more contemporary (i.e., in practice, secular) reasons for preserving them or, when they decay completely, inventing regulations to mimic them. When courtesy is abandoned, we invent speech codes, which are blunter in their impact and repress legitimate disagreement along with insults. When female sexual modesty and male sexual restraint are discredited as puritanical, we draw up contractual arrangements to ensure that any sexual contact is voluntary on both sides."
I encourage you to read the whole article. We are repeating the cycle of Prosperity-Complacency-Corruption that occurred over and over with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament:
"You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. Make certain that you do not forget the LORD your God; do not fail to obey any of his laws that I am giving you today. When you have all you want to eat and have built good houses to live in and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; be sure that you do not become proud and forget the LORD your God who rescued you from Egypt, where you were slaves. ...So then, you must never think that you have made yourselves wealthy by your own power and strength. Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to create wealth. He does this because he is still faithful today to the covenant that he made with your ancestors." (Deut. 8:10-14, 17-18)
Even with the warning "be sure that you do not become proud and forget the LORD," the Israelites did exactly that: time and again they fell into idolatry and depravity, borrowing pagan customs from their pagan neighbor nations. We too are prone to repeat the same cycle of Prosperity-Complacency-Corruption, thinking we have it made with our prosperity, only to fall into complacency by forgetting that it is God Who gave us the ability to create this wealth. Then we turn away from God and end up in the corruption of depravity that brings us to the edge of destruction. Lastly, like the Israelites, we call out to God for help, He comes to the rescue, and we begin the cycle all over again.
How can we break out of this cycle? Israel tried to escape the domination from Assyria to the north by forging an alliance with Egypt to the south, but that effort failed. Fleeing from the demon you know to the demon you don't know just doesn't work. The solution is to go back to the basics, to return to the fundamentals of our Christian faith. What are they?
God is a caring Father Who loves the whole world: He is not an angry demi-god who hates you and has a horrible plan for your life. We reject the idea of a god who would damn 95% of humanity to burn in hell forever. God loves all of humankind so much that He sent His only-begotten Son so that anyone and everyone who believes in and receives Him will have eternal life.
We believe that God's Son is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One promised to Israel, born of the Virgin Mary. He lived an exemplary life doing good: healing the sick, feeding the poor, driving out demons, teaching His followers how to do the same... and then the authorities, the jealous powers-that-be, arrested and executed Him by the cruelest method of torture known to man: crucifixion.
We believe that Jesus Christ then rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sent us the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit now fills us with divine power to purify us from our depravity and transform us into the likeness of the glorified Christ.
We believe in one baptism for the remission of sins that joins us into the Body of Christ on earth, the Church. We believe that by partaking of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ mystically enter into us and we into Him - we regularly renew our participation in the Body of Christ. By this we are members of one family, we vow to love one another and build up each other in the faith and in practical good works.
These are the basic Christian truths that undergird Western civilization. We need to forge alliances not with the latest passing political fad; rather, with those who can honestly confess the above truths as found in the Nicene Creed, the only statement of faith that is accepted by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and most Evangelical Protestants.
This month marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther began by attempting to bring about reform within the Roman Catholic Church, not to lead a rebellion against it. Then he appealed to the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople with the plea that he was returning to the original Orthodox faith. After many centuries, the Roman Catholic Church is recognizing that many of Luther's complaints were legitimate. So it's time to stop fighting and to see what we agree on, instead of what we disagree about. This is how we can restore our post-Christian society and rebuild it on its foundational truths!
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