Things Worth Noticing: 8/5/22
The Ghost of Christian Past, a Free Book, and a Bit of a Plug
Friends,
This Sunday, I’ll be preaching on Psalm 88—a sad song of lament that ends in darkness. Perhaps to add a bit of levity to my otherwise dreary efforts, God saw fit to cut the power out at our church twice this week, including this afternoon.
Thankfully, the lights came on a short little while ago so that I can send you this equally short little newsletter.
After the Post-Pagan Light, Post-Christian Darkness
This week, I read Bradford Littlejohn’s review of Tom Holland’s Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Typically, I’d consider it poor form to share somebody else’s review of a book rather than my own, but I haven’t gotten around to Dominion yet and Littlejohn’s review is an helpful little piece in itself.
Here are just a few of the highlights:
Where did we get our ideas about human rights and equal treatment?
The irony of modern discourse is that, for all the vitriol poured on Christians for their failure to love those who are different, care for the marginalized, or stand up for the rights of women, few pause to consider why we should care about doing any of these things. Certainly the pre-Christian worlds of pagan antiquity did not. For your average Persian, Greek, or Roman, argues Holland, it was self-evident that foreigners and the poor were the scum of the earth, good for little except enslavement, and that women’s bodies existed chiefly for the gratification of powerful men. Holland goes out of his way to remind the reader that crucifixion, before it became a symbol of Christ’s triumph, was a symbol of Roman brutality, an ingeniously cruel form of torture that signified the stark power politics of the ancient world. The fact that the Christians would dare celebrate the ignoble end of their leader in a death fit only for slaves is proof enough of the sheer radicalism of the “Christian revolution”; the fact that we scarcely bat an eye at the sight of a crucifix attests to the astounding success of that revolution.
If the secularist are right, then Nietzsche was right, which means nothing is (morally) wrong:
If the argument of Dominion is correct, then Nietzsche, not Julian the Apostate, was right: there is no halfway-house between Christianity and unbelief; the death of God must mean the death of everything that has been built, these past two millennia, on the foundation laid by the “pale Galilean.” Although the self-assured Enlightenment philosophes declared that a new order of reason, fraternity and equality would be built on the ruins of Christianity, their dark and disturbed contemporary, the Marquis de Sade, saw far more clearly than them: “The doctrine of loving one’s neighbour,” Holland quotes de Sade, “is a fantasy that we owe to Christianity and not to Nature” (407).
Beware the ghosts of pre-Christmas past:
As Christianity fades into the twilight, Holland tacitly warns, we should not be surprised to find monsters that we thought long since slain again stalking the darkness that lies behind the death of God. Perhaps there is some neutral, universal, secular ground for holding at bay the predation of the strong upon the weak, the casual use of women’s and children’s bodies for the gratification of powerful men, the perpetual domination of the privileged over the poor. But if so, we have not yet discovered it; and if our society wishes to persist in its attempts to exorcize the ghost of Christianity, it may find that what it had thought a tormenting demon turns out to have been its guardian angel.
Go read the review. It’s well worth the five minutes. Now, I’m convinced Holland’s book will be worth the five or so hours… as soon as I can find them.
Get Yourself a Free eBook
In my last newsletter, I commended Rebecca McLaughlin’s The Secular Creed. This week, I learned that this book could be had for free in digital form. My apologies to those of you who went out and bought it on my recommendation. For the rest of you, I hope this spurs you to give this little book a read.
Hey Jude, Do Be So Sad
Last week, I started a sermon series on the “negative” emotions—sorrow, anger, frustration, isolation, and the like. On the advice of St. Athanasius, we’re using the Psalms to guide us in praying through these emotions, preaching truth to our hearts, and reorienting our souls in light of what God has done for us in Christ.
If that sounds like it’d be helpful to you, then you can check out our first sermon on Psalm 42 and subscribe to our channel to keep up with the series as we go.
Until next time, may the Lord bless and keep you all.
Kenny