A beautiful cut flower sits elegantly in the vase. Its charm can enthrall you. Its fragrance can captivate you, reminding you of a walk in the garden where the flower natively grows. In a moment, you can be transcended to think that you are there — in that garden where the flower came from. But the truth, though it may not make itself evident immediately, will eventually emerge with each day that the color fades and the petals fall. It may be slow, but it is sure. The flower is dying.
For some, this is the dilemma of the Western mind in a post-Christian society.
Tom Holland, historian and author of the book Dominion, is an atheist who ironically has written one of the most compelling books on Christianity of our day. Dominion is praised by many scholars, agnostics, atheists, and Christians alike.
The book tells the story of the influence of Christianity. Holland proposes that like it or not, Christianity has unequivocally shaped the beliefs of our society today.
“People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything. . . All of us in the West are a goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilisation.”
Holland’s book focuses much on the idea in Christianity that “The last will be first and the first will be last.” He argues that this thought in the Roman empire, which was known for its brutality and dominance, was so radical and repulsive that it shocked the world and subsequently turned the pages of history and society as we know it in a completely different direction. He argues that all modern concepts of human rights stem from this idea.
What value does a human have? A woman? A person of the LGBTQ community? A person of a different race? A person with a disability? A person who believes differently than you?
Christianity is the only belief system that protects all human life with the utmost dignity and honor — even to lay one’s life down for your enemy. As it shocked the Romans, it can still shock us in our divided country today. Christianity doesn’t just go against the grain; it rewrites it altogether.
If the great nation of freedoms that we have today can be owed to Christian visionaries, where does that leave us in one of the most secular times of our country’s history?
Like the flower, we may be able to play the part for a time, but without the roots, we cannot survive. Our concept of human dignity without the roots of the Bible can leave us with good intentions but no compass. This is how good activism becomes extremism. It’s how we can find ourselves having ridiculous debates over gender, claiming to protect the vulnerable yet really attacking the masses in the way.
Douglas Murray, an atheist but self-proclaimed cultural Christian, has been outspoken about his journey of losing his faith. Still, he recognizes that without our Christian roots, we are in danger of losing what has made our society great. Although he does not provide a solution for the dilemma, he gives us good advice on where to start. We can start by honoring where we come from, even if we don’t know how to be that now.
“There is this idea that Western civilization’s like a cut flower and you can look at it and enjoy it, but it’s going to die… So how do we make sure that it isn’t a cut flower? The answer to that is that we find the seeds that planted the flowers and we reseed the land… That doesn’t mean the dogmatic Christianization, or some people might like to go that route, but it does mean a recognition of the wellspring… nothing good can come without that. We will simply be a flower that withers and dies.”