It's not all that much a racial thing, what sort of civilization or culture you get. It is to some extent but in the case of Western Civilization and its unique achievements in human rights which Loury rightly says belong to him as much as to any of us who inherited that legacy, it should be ascribed to the influence of Christianity,. I know that's "Controversial" among the atheistic secularists who run things today, it's a truth that needs to be recovered.
Whereever Christianity took hold it would have transformed a culture in the same direction, it just happened to take hold more in the West than anywhere else. Not without detours and conflicts, a millennium of pagan Roman Catholicsm mixed with the Christian influence and so on, the mixture of iron and clay described of the final Empire in Daniel perhaps. The Magna Carta was forged during that period, and that is certainly one of the historical milestones on the way to the rights and freedoms the American founders aimed to establish.
Such concepts come from God, they certainly don't come from fallen human nature, but what Christ did for us on the cross was make it possible for our nature to be transformed. He overcame the effects of the Fall for all those who belong to Him, who are born again, born of the SPirit, growing in conformity to the character of CHhrist. Under that influence society as a whole grew more and more into the character of Christ. Infants the pagan world abandoned to die, the dlderly the pagan world put out to die, the sick, the unwanted for whatever reason, were erescued by those under the influence of Christ and given shelter. Hospitals were started, orphanages were started, all the provisions for the weak that have now been taken over by government were started by Christians.
And from the same source came the concepts of rights and freedoms that led to the curtailment of overbearing kings. None of this could have come from the pagan world. It isn't in fallen human nature to free the slaves or regard humanity as created equal. That comesw from God. That comes from the understanding that human beings are made in the image of God. The concept of natural rights comes from that same source, we are born into rights because we are made in the image of God.
All this needs to be recovered, and that today is certain to be an uphill battle because the fallen mind has reasserted its contrary vision. The Enlightenmentnt to which American liberties are ascribed these days was really such a reassertment of the fallen nature. The liberties that derive from the biblical God were at least partly reshaped in the image of fallen humanity, and we can see where that goes by looking at the bloodbath of the French Revolution. We can also see a twisting of biblical concepts in Communism. Their twisting makes a tyranny out of what in the Christian context is genuine liberty.
I wanted to watch Christ Pinto's latest film again, the one titled "The True Christian History of America" but my eyes are so bad I couldn't make all the right buttons function for me. I tried to watch it at Amazon but for the first time they asked me to sign in and I could barely see the sign-in form, and what I managed to enter kept getting rejected so I don't get to watch the film again. But I think he did a good job of putting together the Christian foundations of the rights and freedoms of the West that came down to the American Constitution.
We need an army of scholars pursuing these points and pushing back against the resurgence of tyhrannies. What we need is a sweeping revival, a HOly ASpirit revival, of Christ in our world.
That's the legacy of the West Glenn Loury possesses, but we're in a time when it is rapidly getting swallowed up in the paganism it once overthrew, and in twisted redefinitions of its own contributions. But a genuine revival of true docttrine through the Holy Spirit, would transform this nation and potentially the whole world back to the original vision of the American founders. Glenn Loury wants to see black communities themselves make the changes that would bring them into the prosperity and peace promised by the Constitution, but what I'm saying is that for this to happen requires a great move of God in those communities. When people are brought under conviction of the Holy Spirit they emancipate the slaves, they abandone crime and establish a rational system of justice, they seek the good of their neighbors, they promote sane education, they establish orderly societies. T
There's a lot standing in the way of such a recovery. We have decades of twisted laws and politices that need to be undone, we havde a couple centuries of pagan claims to "science" such as evolutionary theroy that has contribued greate greatly to the destruction of western civilization, now Marxism , COmmunism, have taken hold of people. Aand as I keep noting, it doesn't look like God is going to give us the revival we need. I haven't comjpletely given up hope but ....
Seeking God again
7 years ago