David Mamet Thinks Jesus was an Anti-Semite

David Mamet Thinks Jesus was an Anti-Semite

Nov 30, 2023 | Western Civilization

In the response to the horrific invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, antisemitism has been much in the news. It’s been an eye opening experience for many who consider themselves liberals and of the left to see the blatant Jew Hatred of their fellow leftists. One of those who used to be of the left but woke up some time ago is the great playwright, filmmaker and author, David Mamet, himself a Jew. In fact, back in 2008 he wrote a piece called, “Why I am no longer a brain dead liberal.” He is now a consistent critic of all things left and Democrat, so this recent piece by him didn’t surprise me: “How the Democrats betrayed the Jews,”  In it he laments how Jews can so consistently vote for a party that hates them. That, thankfully, is slowly changing, the shock of October 7 increasing the pace.

Modern Jews are mostly white, so in the perverse universe of wokeness where oppressor and oppressed dominate their worldview, of course Jews are no better than Christians. You’ll see in these leftists diatribes that Jews are accused of being “colonizers,” the worst thing white people can be. It was, after all, white Christian men from England who colonized indigenous people throughout the world, including the most heinous of all, America. This was known as the British Empire which gets top billing on the woke Marxist Hall of Shame. The Jews in 1948 were added to that wall when they founded the nation-state of Israel. Prior to that they were an oppressed people, so considered good. After all, a genocidal maniac named Adolf Hitler tried to wipe the entire race off the face of the earth. That’s gotta be worth a few oppressed points. But they blew it when they entered what was called Palestine and occupied it, dispossessing the Palestinian people. Before the woke mind-virus infected the entirety of elite leftist opinion, Jews had their sympathy, but that started to change with the cultural devastation brought to us by the 1960s.

Mamet’s Slander Against Christians
The reason I’m writing about this here, and Mamet’s take on it, is not because of these slanders against the Jews, but because of Mamet’s slander against Christians. As I’ll show, it is an understandable slander, but a slander, nonetheless. He is speaking specifically of “the West’s oldest, most reliable, and most permissible sick entertainment: the call for Jewish extinction.” He blames “the West,” but while there is plenty of blame to go around there, “the call for Jewish extinction” goes back much further, as I’m sure he knows. But it is the West and Christianity here who get the blame, and in that he is not completely wrong. In fact, Jew hatred has been a staple of Western Christian history, but in no sense did Christians “call for Jewish extinction.” I haven’t studied this in any depth, so I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Even Martin Luther who could easily be labeled an antisemite would never have imagined let alone desired a “final solution.”

Mamet states that this call for “Jewish extinction” goes back to the words of Jesus:

It began with the fall of the Jewish state in 77 CE (i.e., AD). Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews killed Christ, the medieval information that we slay Christian children to bake their blood into matzoh, that we were the cause of the Second World War; and, currently, that we exist to murder Moslems.

It’s all one horrific attack, and its earliest recorded instance is John 8:44 (of the Jews): “You are of your father, the Devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the Beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Christianity came into being with the destruction of the Jewish State — the adherents were Jews whose Temple and culture had been destroyed.

As he rightly says, the first Christians were Jews, so it makes little sense antisemitism as we know it today originated with them. But what about his assertion that Jesus’ statement about the Jews was the “earliest recorded instance” of this Jew hatred? I’m pretty sure I’m on safe ground when I say that Mamet’s understanding of orthodox Christian theology is limited. He certainly knows the Bible, but more like a shallow creek than the ocean it is.

If you do a Bible word search, it’s interesting to see the word Jew begin to show up around the time of the Babylonian exile (c. 580 BC), while prior they were called Hebrews. The reason is because during the exile they came to be known as the people from Judea, hence Jews. The first reference to a Hebrew as a Jew is in Jeremiah 32:12, but in Jeremiah 34:9 we see Hebrew and Jew used in the same sentence indicating a time of flux in how a people describe themselves:

everyone should set free his Hebrew slaves, male and female, so that no one should enslave a Jew, his brother.

Jeremiah lived from approximately 650 to 570. The Lord kept him in Jerusalem as a prophet to the kings of Judah, while the younger fellow prophet Ezekiel became part of the exiled Jewish community in Babylon. The context of this verse is King Zedekiah declaring all Hebrew slaves are to be free while the Babylonian armies are fighting against Jerusalem and other Judean towns. I’m guessing the Babylonians coined the word as they slowly took over the land of the Jews.

The History of Jewish Persecution
The desire for Jewish (i.e., Hebrew) extinction goes back well before the time of Christ. While we can’t say the Egyptians wanted to rid the world of Hebrews because they needed slaves, the Exodus could have easily led to mass slaughter (i.e., genocide) if God had not ordained their miraculous escape. In a universe without God, I can easily imagine Pharoah so furious he would want to rid the world of the Hebrew people; he’d find another people to build the pyramids. The slaughter of people was common in the ancient world, but kings and armies were more interested in keeping people alive to turn into slaves than killing them all. Free labor was necessary for an ambitious king to build an empire. The very first true antisemitism comes after the Babylonian captivity when the now Jews were back in Israel, over 400 years before Jesus was born.

If you go back to the Bible word search for Jews, you’ll notice in Esther the word Jew appears almost 50 times, in Nehemiah 10, and Ezra 6. The Jews, no longer called Hebrews, and primarily speaking the Aramaic of Babylon instead of Hebrew, are back in Israel. These three Old Testament saints lived in the mid-400s, approximately 483-425. When the Jews were first allowed to go back to Jerusalem, the first thing they wanted to do was rebuild the temple, which covers approximately 538-516. So by the time these three historical books were written, the Jews were fairly well established back in their homeland. The story, if you’re not familiar with it, is a simple one. A young Jewish women, Esther, becomes queen of Persia. The second in command to the king, Haman, hates the Jews and lies about them to the king because Mordecai, who raised Esther, would not bow down to him. His response is the first instance in history of a “final solution”:

5 When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. 6 Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

Haman’s plot is exposed because of Esther, and Haman is hanged on the gallows he intended for Mordecai. This is the only book in the Bible God is not mentioned, but his sovereign providence in protecting His people against a Jew hater is everywhere.

The Jews of Jesus’ Time
The Jews had a tough time of it for the next 400 years, oppressed by various kingdoms except for a brief period in the second century under the Maccabees. Judaism changed a lot in that time specifically with the development of the Jewish professional class of religious leaders, priests, Pharisees, Sadducees; they were the religious establishment of the first century. As Jesus shows, these men became the enemies of true religion, setting themselves up as a class superior to average people, not to mention “sinners.” They thought and taught that acceptance before God could be earned by a righteous life, but one dictated by their customs and rules, not God’s law and word. This infuriated Jesus because it turned God’s covenant promises upside down. It was to them all outward performance of arbitrary rules that had nothing to do with mercy and grace, or obeying the greatest commandment to love God with all your being. They also rejected the Messiah, God’s true answer for sin, something Jews had been expecting for 400 years.

It was these Jews who Jesus was picking fights with throughout his ministry, not Jews as a class of people or race. It was these same Jews who fought against the Apostles until 70 AD when Rome destroyed the temple and Jerusalem with it. There is nothing antisemitic about early Christianity because the first 10 or 20 years before Paul began his outreach to Gentiles, all Christians were Jews, and thought of themselves as Jews. In fact, you can see in Acts the reluctance of the first Jewish Christians to embrace Gentile Christians. We see this clearly in Acts 10 when Peter has a vision of God telling him nothing is unclean He has declared clean. Then the Roman Centurion, Cornilious, shows up at the door, and he and the Gentiles (non-Jews) with him received the visible sign of the Holy Spirit as the first Jewish Christians did at Pentecost. Peter and the other Jews were shocked. Even after this it was difficult for them to accept Gentiles as part of the New Covenant community as we see in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem council. Paul’s call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles, and obedience in carrying it out in spite of persistent opposition from the Jews, changed all that.

Romans 9-11-All Israel Will Be Saved
To answer Mamet directly, Jesus’s condemnation of the Jews in John 8 is not the beginning of antisemitism in the West. Just because Christians, or those claiming to be Christians, perverted Christ’s words and the gospel and turned it into Jew hatred doesn’t mean Christianity is the cause. The worst calumny of these Christians, or so called Christians, is saying it was Jews who killed Christ. Whoever God in his sovereign providence used to accomplish that horrific event, it was our sin that crucified Christ. We are the guilty ones, not Jews, or Romans for that matter. God loved us when we were his enemies, and was willing to lay down his life for us to pay the penalty for our sin and reconcile us to God. I would suggest that our attitude toward the Jewish people be that of the Apostle Paul.

Mamet should spend some time in Romans 9-11 and carefully consider Paul’s words and argument. If he did, he would find that antisemitism is the very last thing you can infer or deduce from Christianity rightly understood. Here is how Paul introduces his argument:

 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

For Paul, the tragedy of the Jews, his people, rejecting the Messiah is so great he would give his own eternal destiny for it. Christians owe a massive debt of gratitude to our Jewish brothers in faith whose eyes have yet to be open to their Messiah. It is clear reading these chapters that God’s plans very much include the Jewish people, and we should pray for them and their safety. According to Paul, their salvation is in God’s plans.

 

Have More Babies! One Woman’s Regret and the Demographic Apocalypse

Have More Babies! One Woman’s Regret and the Demographic Apocalypse

Nov 27, 2023 | Western Civilization

Of course, I qualify this exhortation with if you’re married and able to have babies. If not either one or both, encourage other married couples to have more babies. The blessings are worth every sacrifice.  

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, the environmental hysteria of the day was too many people—overpopulation. There were predictions of massive famines by the 1980s because of too many mouths to feed. This started the trend among environmentalists of never having to say they’re sorry for their mistaken predictions which are always blatantly wrong. This mentality or worldview of the earth not being able to sustain the life upon it goes back to Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). The poison he inflicted into the stream of Western ideas has caused untold misery because it is based on an anti-biblical, anti-God lie. According to Britannica and put simply,

Thomas Malthus was an English economist and demographer best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that the betterment of mankind is impossible without strict limits on reproduction. This thinking is commonly referred to as Malthusianism.

The Power of Assumptions
One of the best things I’ve learned in developing my apologetics skills over the years (i.e., my ability to defend the truth claims of Christianity), is the pernicious power of invisible assumptions. I get into this in some detail in my book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, because understanding the nature of assumptions, and how pervasive they are, is critical to developing a life-long faith in our children and ourselves. Never forget, everyone has assumptions. In other words, they have points of view that cannot be proved, and are most likely unexamined. In fact, people generally don’t even know they have assumptions! A fantastic exercise with your children when you’re watching TV shows or movies is to stop them (the clicker is your apologetics friend) and ask them to identify hidden assumptions. In due course they will realize assumptions are everywhere and inescapable, and more often than not, mistaken.

Let’s look at something that likely informed the assumptions of Thomas Malthus. From the Britannica bio:

His father, a friend of the Scottish philosopher and skeptic David Hume, was deeply influenced by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book Émile (1762) may have been the source of the elder Malthus’s liberal ideas about educating his son.

No wonder Malthus became Malthusian! If you’re familiar with the thinking of Hume and Rousseau this won’t surprise you, if not, you’ll have to trust me. Even though Malthus was ordained in the Church of England when he was 31, it was the skepticism of Hume and hedonism of Rousseau, and not the Bible, that informed his worldview assumptions. If it had, he would never have become a “Malthusian,” and the lie that God can’t provide for his creatures would never have become a common assumption in the modern world. His non-biblical assumptions also display a lack of foresight. He obviously couldn’t imagine food production would ever change, and thus would always be limited. In the modern world the problem is obesity and too much food.  

Can you identify the assumption in Malthus’s assertion: “the food supply and that the betterment of mankind is impossible without strict limits on reproduction”? I haven’t read his “Essay on the Principles of Population,” so I’ll have to take it from the many other people I have read that this is an accurate reflection of his thoughts. He believed there are limits on the ability of creation to sustain the creatures God created. Thus he saw the necessity of “strict limits” on having babies if we’re to have a good life. I can’t think of anything more biblically upside down than this. In Scripture children are blessings that lead to human flourishing, full stop.

Why did Malthus get it so wrong? When he wrote his treatise, world population was likely less than a billion people. Today there are 8 billion people, and fewer people starving than at any time in history. Why? Human ingenuity and the technology has allowed food production to grow exponentially, something Malthus thought was not possible. Read Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder to see the contrast between a scarcity and poverty mindset and a wealth one—assumptions make all the difference.

One last point about assumptions before I get to babies. I recently read a book, The Black Swan, and the author is clearly not a Christian, nor likely even a theist. He uses the phrase “mother nature” a lot. Anyone who uses such a phrase, no matter how intelligent they may be, does not understand their own assumptions. First, the phrase is dishonest. If someone doesn’t believe in creation, that the world had a designer, then it’s disingenuous to introduce purpose by using such a phrase. I see and hear this all the time, and it’s amazing what “mother nature” can do even though “she” is mere material randomly thrown together. “She” can’t do anything! Everything just is, and the only valid explanation on this worldview and its assumptions is that it’s all a fortunate coincidence. I will hand it to the author, though, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He ends the book with this bit of honesty:

We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.

That’s it. We’re lucky dirt! And that’s all we are. So his conclusion? And I’m not kidding: “So stop sweating the small stuff.” As much as he might try, life in a universe as a meaningless concoctions of atoms that fell together for no reason at all is a very difficult place to find meaning.

We, on the other hand, don’t believe we are merely lucky dirt. I started a saying with my children I hope they use when they are raising theirs, God willing. My daughter has two very young ones, so she’ll be able to practice soon. I know she got it when we were texting about the most recent incredible full moon, and my response was, “God!” Her reply, God bless her, was, “Praise chance!” I used this phrase with them growing up all the time, and even now as they are grown. Children know intuitively that it is silly to attribute all the beauty, complexity, and sheer awesomeness of creation to chance. BTW, bonus tip: I never use the word nature because in our secular world people can read their God-less assumptions into that word. They can’t do that with creation. Now to babies.

The Pain of Regret
The inspiration for this post was an article by a British woman, Mary Wakefield, with the title, “Why I should have had more children.” That is clickbait for me! She spent her twenties and thirties pursuing her career and didn’t give any thought to having a mate or children until she was almost 40, and had a child at 41. Then it was too late to have more. Women in their 40s have a difficult time getting pregnant. She didn’t realize the assumptions driving her younger lifestyle until it was too late:

The tacit assumption was always that children are an obstacle to the noble process of self-actualization.

As if “self-actualization” is a worthy goal for creatures made in God’s image. Jesus said if you want to find your life, lose it for his sake. If you want to be first, be last, and those who want to be great must be servants—kind of upside down from self-actualization. You can see here someone going through much of her life never questioning assumptions because she likely didn’t realize she even had them. Only in hindsight (life is very often 20/20) did she realize there were reasons she never even thought about having babies until it was almost too late. She writes, “The single-child family is a popular subject in magazines these days,” with headlines such as “One and Done.” She reads such articles and they leave her empty. The message being, having one is easier. Her reply reveals the shallow and unfulfilling nature of the secular worldview: 

But what’s ease got to do with having children? If ease is your aim, why have kids at all? And why does no one ever mention the only-child situation from the child’s perspective? What if your one child would like there to be others? 

To those driven by the sovereign self where personal gratification is all, it doesn’t matter what a child wants. It only matters what the mother and father want. She finds it surprising, although she shouldn’t:

It’s just curious, given all the hand-wringing over birth rates, that regret is taboo. Perhaps it’s because although we all face the same predicament, every nation has its own preferred explanation. In some countries the received idea is that childcare is too expensive, in others that women work too much or men too little.

I would suggest the answer is that talking about regret in polite secular society is not acceptable. Editors determine what is allowed in those magazines, and regret might get people thinking the me-first lifestyle isn’t working out so well. 

The Demographic Apocalypse
The word apocalypse has come to mean ultimate disaster in Western culture, but it’s a biblical word meaning “an unveiling, uncovering, revealing, revelation,” thus the name of the Book of Revelation in English (coming from the Latin revelationem). The revealing reflects what I wrote about recently, the death of secularism. Because of feminism, and many other things in the modern world, anti-natalism not only came to be accepted, but something worthwhile and good. The poverty stricken worldview of secularism is apparent in the idea that having babies is an option. Non-Christians can do whatever they want, but Christians understand that God made man male and female for a reason, and marriage to populate heaven and earth. Having babies is most certainly not an option for followers of Jesus. I believe far too many Christians have accepted anti-natalist assumptions, and limit the number of children they have. I was guilty of that. If I knew then what I know now we too would have had more blessings from God.

Demographers, those who engage in the statistical study of human populations, have realized for a while that humanity is not having enough children. We’re told that human global population will stabilize and shrink at some point in the 21st Century. We will see an inflection point in the not too distant future as the number of old people will soon exceed the number of young children, and that creates all kinds of problems. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson commenting about dropping birth rates around the world writes, “nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake.” As he says, he is not exaggerating. This piece titled, “A World Without Babies,” is a sobering read of what that world might look like.

The flourishing of a society can only happen when more people work and produce wealth than don’t work and only consume. That is the way God intended it. Not to mention loneliness kills. The stories of Japanese old people without families dying alone in their apartments is sickening (watch this documentary if you want to see what that feels like). God has different plans for his creation, and His people must lead the way. When God commanded, not suggested, Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, it implied He never intended there ever to be more older than younger people. When Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (that would be the devil), but that he came to give us an abundant life, life to the full, that life includes lots of babies.

The left, whatever we call them (liberals, progressives, Marxists), are masters of unintended consequences. For instance, they believe giving people something for nothing is “compassionate.” This gained steam with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty  in the 1960s, which didn’t get rid of poverty but destroyed the black family and created intergenerational dysfunction. Good intentions without wisdom leads to suffering. We’re not exactly sure what the consequences of the demographic apocalypse will be, but we know it won’t be good. The solution is, as God told us, have more babies!

 

 

 

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)

Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)

Nov 23, 2023 | America, Gratitude, Notable Quotations

he year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. 

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Conversion: The Poverty of Atheism and an Eschatology of Hope

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Conversion: The Poverty of Atheism and an Eschatology of Hope

Nov 20, 2023 | Explanatory Power, Uncategorized

My next book, currently in the publishing process, has Great Awakening in the title. Those familiar with Western Christian history know that phrase refers to two periods of spiritual renewal and the spread of Evangelical Christianity in America and England. I believe we are in a third period of great awakening, thus the inspiration for the book. I loved being able to lay out my red pill journey which has also happened to millions of people since Trump came on the scene in 2015. If you are not familiar with the term red pill, watch this short clip from the 1999 hit movie The Matrix with Keanu Reeves and you’ll understand why the phrase is so apropos for our times. If you’ve never seen it or it’s been a while, I encourage you to watch it. The dialogue is nothing short of prophetic. Morpheus ends telling Neo, Reeve’s character, “All I’m offering is nothing more than the truth, nothing more.” This revealing of truth has been happening in the Western world for more than ten years and preceding Trump, who just happened to be the very unlikely man God used to trigger untold millions to their own red pill journeys to truth.

What Brought Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Christ
First, I was surprise this confirmed atheist had become a Christian, but reading her testimony, “Why I am now a Christian,” I was doubly blown away by her confirmation of the main thesis of my book. God is doing something amazing, something revealing, in our time amid all the chaos and suffering. In fact, all the turmoil and misery is allowing many people’s eyes to be opened, and not just to spiritual realities, although they are all connected to God. We pray they eventually embrace Jesus as the only one who can make sense of it all. Unfortunately, human beings must often endure suffering (physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial) to realize the truth of things beyond their own parochial interests.

Ayaan is an example of someone who didn’t become a Christian merely to go to heaven when she dies, although that was a significant motivation for her embracing Christ. If going to heaven when we die, and personal holiness, both of infinite importance, are all Christianity is, then it is a terribly impoverished and truncated view our transformational faith. I don’t think such a narrow kind of Christianity would have persuaded her of its truth. Rather, it was the magnificent breadth of what salvation from sin means in Christianity that grabbed her in spite of herself. She saw that it affects everything, spiritual, material, personal, cultural, societal, political, every single thing. What her story displays is the power of Christianity to transform not only individual lives, but lives lived in community as nations. This is why Jesus commanded the eleven disciples to “make disciple of all nations,” not just individuals.

Who exactly is Ayaan Hirsi Ali? In case you don’t know of her, she describes herself as a, “Human Rights Activist & Author.” She grew up Muslim and, as she explains in the piece, got serious about her faith in 1985. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 shattered her Islamic worldview, and in due course she embraced the New Atheist kind of atheism, although she was not an arrogant blowhard like many of the New Atheists were. She was in the Dutch Parliament for a few years, and eventually moved to the United States and became a US citizen. In addition to being widely published in the media and an author, she has been employed by several conservative think tanks where she consistently defended Western civilization. 

When I saw the headline that she had become a Christian, I was very pleasantly shocked. I have what I call a “heathen prayer list” I pray over weekly. It has on it well-known atheists and non-Christians, among others, who God has placed on my heart to lift weekly before the throne of grace. Ayaan was not on the list, but her conversion gives me hope that my prayers are not uttered in vain. Here is what drove her to Christianity:

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools . . . But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

She then contends everything we value in modern Western society came from Christianity, citing Tom Holland’s wonderful book, Dominion. She adds:

Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

The Poverty of Atheism
Her final sentence understates the fundamental problem of atheism and the materialist (matter is all that exists) worldview: Atheism cannot answer any questions—not one. The only possible answer atheists can give for why anything is, is, just because. That’s it. Atheists have no idea, and cannot argue persuasively or logically, why anything happens or the way it happens. As I often say, if all we are is lucky dirt, mere matter in motion, then chance is the only explanation for everything. Atheists will often fall back on the “evolution of the gaps” argument. It is remarkable what they believe matter without purpose can do, what it can supposedly accomplish. When you read or hear them say evolution or natural selection does such and such, just put in the word God and the meaning is exactly the same. Only God doing or causing something is a far more plausible explanation because, well, he’s God! Biblical theism maintains God is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator and sustainer of the world, of all material reality. God has explanatory power, atheism by contrast has none, as Ayaan discovered.

We can expose the poverty of atheistic materialism on many levels. But before I briefly mention a few, it is important for those of us who want to defend the veracity of the Christian faith in a secular age that we understand everybody has a worldview, an understanding of the meaning of reality based on faith. In other words—everyone is religious. Everyone lives by faith regardless of if they practice something we would recognize as a “religion.” The question is, what do we have faith in, what do we trust, and is it justified true belief. The best we can get in this life is beyond-a-reasonable doubt faith (a very good reason to exercise humility toward people who do not share our faith), and Christianity is the only one that can get us there.

It is also imperative if we’re to effectively defend Christianity’s truth claims to know that for three hundred years starting in the so-called Enlightenment, and the resultant growth of secularism, Christianity has been on the defensive. Christians have done an admirable job in defense, but somewhere along the way the idea was accepted that Christians must defend their worldview and faith, while the atheist secularist skeptical sorts do not have that obligation. That became the default position in the secular nirvana of the modern age. There is, however, no default position that doesn’t require a defense. Every faith makes claims, and those claims need to be defended if people are to believe them. I used the phrase explanatory power above, which means the persuasive power of an explanation for something. In this case the question before us (and one we should ask ourselves, loved ones, and friends every single day) is what best explains reality, and everything in it. The materialist atheists are the ones who should be on the defensive because they have to defend the indefensible.

How does, for example, matter and chance explain morality, right and wrong, good and evil? It can’t; they just are. Where do these phenomena come from, these things that are deep within every human being? The only answer is that they don’t come from anywhere, they just are. We have to suck it up, deal with them the best we can, and move on. Or take meaning and purpose in life, what Ayaan calls a “simple question.” Mere matter and chance can give no answers to that, as she discovered. The only solution the atheist materialist can give is, make your own meaning and purpose and hope it’s enough. That doesn’t seem to be working well for the almost 50,000 people last year who killed themselves, and many more who likely tried. How about beauty? Chance doesn’t really satisfy as an explanation. Just compare a Jackson Pollack “painting” to a Rembrandt. It is difficult to call paint randomly thrown on a canvas beautiful, while the great Dutch genius Rembrandt’s work is breathtakingly beautiful. It leaves one in awe.

The Necessity of an Optimistic Eschatology
What Ayaan understood, and what attracted her to Christianity, is that she sees it as a totalizing life and worldview, as is every life and worldview. I recently wrote here, and often talk about, the myth of neutrality. When secularism came to dominant the once Christian West in recent decades, there was nothing to stand in the way of the dissolution brought about by the new paganism. Whatever worldview rules America and the West, it will have specific answers to ultimate questions just as Christianity has, including about meaning, morality, truth, justice, why we are here, and so on. In addition, and this is what Ayaan saw with her own eyes and experience, every worldview that informs a society and culture has consequences. If that isn’t Christianity, the results will not be good, as we see all around us.

What Christianity brings to the societal table is the truth about the why of everything. It gives us the big picture answers and promises of God revealed in creation, Scripture, and Christ. Many conservatives think something called natural law and a vague theistic religiosity is enough to provide the foundational supports for civilization, but that won’t work. As Ayaan discovered, every blessing of the modern world came as a result of Christianity, and it can only be saved by Christianity. This won’t happen, however, without an eschatology of hope. Such a view of “end times” (i.e., eschatology) is only available on the view that Jesus came to win, to bring the kingdom of God to earth. The “end times,” or last days in biblical terms, started when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God. 

Every Christian wants their faith to influence the culture, to bring righteousness and justice and peace, but few think it’s possible because they don’t have the theological framework that says such a thing can happen. I was one of these Christians not too long ago. I expected everything would inevitably get worse, then Jesus would return to save the day. Needless to say that’s not the best mindset for winning culture wars or political battles, both inevitable living life in a fallen world among fallen people in fallen societies. We are told throughout Scripture that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, and that Christianity will ultimately win in this world. This is not wishful thinking, but biblical affirmation. The Apostle Paul says this clearly in I Corinthians 15:25 that, “Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” Paul also said Jesus did this, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” Col. 2:15. He also tells us that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” Eph. 1:21. This is no pipe dream, but what God intended when he sent his Son to earth to strike the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15) and redeem His creation. 

Such an eschatology of hope, what is called postmillennialism, is in my humble opinion, required if we are going to daily engage the battles for the soul of Christian Western civilization.

 

Notable Quotations-Strunk & White

Notable Quotations-Strunk & White

Nov 17, 2023 | Notable Quotations

Up to this point the book has been concerned with what is correct or acceptable, in the use of English. In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which writers may shape their course. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

 —William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style