VALUES WORTH DEFENDING

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Read what Konstantin Kisin an immigrant from Russia to England says about what he sees as the biggest threat to the country he has grown to love over the past 25 years. It is extracted from his new book “An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, by Konstantin Kisin”. 

I can still remember the day I arrived in the UK with a wonderful sense of promise and expectation. Twenty-five years on, that feeling of freedom has never gone away. Nor has my adopted country ever disappointed me. Despite all the ups and downs, it has always been wonderful to me. That’s why I’ve written this love letter to Western civilisation. In short, Britain – and the West in general – saved me from a terrible fate. Now, as people seek to destroy it, I want to save it in return.” [p. 26]
Konstantin Kisin was born in Russia and immigrated to England on his own as a child of eleven; sent there by his parents who knew his life would be much better there than in newly post-Soviet Russia. He has since become a prominent British comedian, social commentator, and podcaster, who has stood up to censorious mobs in his own field of comedy and lived, indeed, thrived to tell the tale. He describes himself as a political centrist and does not fit easily into either of the major British political parties. Kristin claims:

  • The biggest threat to the West is internal, especially accusations that Western institutions and heritage are intrinsically and irredeemably racist, sexist, and oppressive
  • ‘Woke’ ideology sees free speech as a threat to diversity, because ‘woke’ diversity is really uniformity of thinking about gender, sexuality, and race relations
  • To control the meaning of words is to control public debate
  • The ideological activism of the media has encouraged widespread distrust not only in the media but in other authorities, like science.
  • The prosperity and political freedom of the West has allowed people to live healthier, longer, and freer than ever in human history – the Christian and Enlightenment values upon which this is built are worth defending.

Several chapters should be required reading for all switched-on citizens, particularly the section on why people have lost trust in our institutions, which is a tour de force and worth the price of the book [96-104]. Kisin’s book is an especially ideal read for young people because it is written in a very engaging and non-technical style. For an engaging and honest introduction to what is good and bad in the modern West, and why it is worth defending against its critics, An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West will be hard to surpass.

PROGRESS ACCORDING TO WHO?

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The Air We Breathe: How we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, and equality Glen Scrivener Good Book Company, 2022

I gave a brief review of this book by the Australian pastor Glen Scrivener (now living in the UK) in a recent post. However, I would like to share more and encourage you further to purchase his book. It will equip you to engage in good conversations with the lost and with the Holy Spirit’s guidance help you to bring them to a knowledge of the truth. As a reminder Scrivener’s main thesis for his book:

“Today in the west, many consider the church to be dead or dying. Christianity is seen as outdated, bigoted, and responsible for many of society’s problems. This leaves many believers embarrassed about their faith and many outsiders wary of religion. But what if the Christian message is not the enemy of our modern Western values, but the very thing that makes sense of them?”

SCRIVENER ON PROGRESS

Progress does have a dark side. Darwin proclaimed biological progress (evolution by random chance versus creation by an intelligent designer), Hegel, historical progress (Hegel’s providence is not the providence of the Judeo-Christian God. Rather, Hegel argues that universal history is itself the divine Spirit or Geist manifesting or working), Freud, psychological progress, and Marx, economic and political progress. The ugly fruit of such philosophies notwithstanding, Christian ideals run through them like veins in blue cheese. But without a vertical reference (God unacknowledged), the desire for progress all too easily spawns violence. The 20th century was the most blood-stained in history, the ‘murder century’. Think of Stalin’s Holodomor (Ukrainian: murder by famine) and purge of tens of millions in the 1930s, or of Chairman Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forwards’ (1958–1962), where over 45 million died of overwork, starvation, or murder—not to mention the horrors of death camps like Auschwitz. Post-WWII, a moral standard was needed to establish the ‘self-evident’ moral truths so bespattered by the Nazis. As with slavery, those atrocities were deemed “crimes against humanity” but few admitted they were crimes against God. If they were mere “crimes against humanity”, we have a dilemma, for humanity was on both sides (evil oppressors and their victims). Scrivener states pithily, “If
we’re all squabbling apes, then there’s no transcendent justice in condemning Nazism” (p. 181). So what price progress?

Secularism today, having fled past evils, now pursues values like rights, freedom, and progress, but divorces them from their source. This concurs with Tom Holland’s thesis in Dominion—without Christianity’s humanity-enhancing teaching about the image of God, the ruthless suppression of weaker minorities fits evolutionary logic: “To believe that God had become man and suffered the death of a slave was to believe that there might be strength in weakness, and victory in defeat. Darwin’s theory, more radically than anything that previously had emerged from Christian civilization, challenged that assumption. Weakness was nothing to be valued. Jesus, by commending the meek and the poor over those better suited to the great struggle for existence, had set Homo sapiens on the downward path toward degeneration. For eighteen long centuries, the Christian conviction that all human life was sacred had been underpinned by one doctrine more than any other: that man and woman were created in God’s image.”

Transgender advocates want equality, compassion, and consent, but they divorce these from Christianity and recombine them
differently. Equality becomes a radical individualism as people emphasize rights over institutions and community. Compassion risks becoming what sociologists have termed ‘competitive victimhood’, and perceived victim status is used to gain an advantage. This leads to clashes between different minority groups—e.g. feminists versus trans-rights activists—so whose suffering takes precedence? Divorcing sexual consent from Christian values is a wrecking ball as far as marriage, family, and the wider community are concerned. As Scrivener points out, “Consent is vital, but it is not a sufficient foundation for sexual ethics” (p. 194). Progressive secularization is not a sustainable strategy! The WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) values upon which Scrivener’s book focuses are strongly believed by all, but people in Western society are
making a hash of applying them in everyday life. Compared to the ancient world, equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress were given a makeover by Christianity, and these are dear to the hearts of modern people. As
Scrivener says, “These are our creedal convictions, and, by and large, we are a society of believers” (p. 197). But even as people are straining to discard Christianity, they continue with their moralizing: “If anyone blasphemes our WEIRD values … we ‘cancel’ them—that is, we ostracise them socially and professionally. This is really a modern form of ‘ex-communication’ for modern kinds of ‘heretics’” (p.198). And anyone can find themselves a target, especially, as the author wryly observes, with the turbo-charging of outrage made possible by social media. In today’s ‘cancel culture, there is plenty of guilt, but without grace, forgiveness is nowhere in sight! Scrivener is right on the money in noting that the denial of King Jesus while trying to retain Christian ideals,
brings judgment, not liberation: “In order to pursue the kingdom without the King, we have had to dethrone the person of Christ and install abstract values instead. … [But] Values can only judge you” (p. 200). People need the Gospel of hope, so the author invites readers to consider how history will judge them— more especially how will God judge them? Wonderfully, Christ came not to police people’s morals so much as to heal them, cleanse them, and forgive needy, despondent human beings.

Scrivener skilfully defends the Gospels and their accounts of Christ, and he does so in a highly original and compelling manner,
demonstrating their sheer genius. The strong evangelistic approach is fresh, not hackneyed. Jesus, the History Maker, is the One behind the values so cherished by the West—He embodies them. In fact, Christ loved this world to death, pioneering life for all violators of those values through His Resurrection. This is not a book that fizzles out toward the end. In its closing pages,
Scrivener appeals in turn to the three categories of readers mentioned in the second paragraph of this review. It is refreshingly honest and very well executed. To Christians, he writes, “In all this, great wisdom is needed to discern the Christian-ish values of a
WEIRD culture from true Christianity” (p. 230). Absolutely, and this book deserves to be very widely read to equip us to convey the truth to those the Holy Spirit brings across our path.

TRUTH ABOUT DECLINE IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES

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The following is taken from The Hon. John Anderson AC inaugural Tim Fischer Oration in Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on 18th August 2022, where he spoke on the factors behind Australia’s political division, cultural breakdown, and intergenerational inequality.

Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4

“Any critical assessment of the West will be found profoundly inadequate without acknowledgment of the crucial influence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

History reveals the boons of the West – prosperity, democracy, science, mass literacy, modern freedom, commitment to humility, and service of others – emerged from Christianity. Indeed, our longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia in the 50’s and ’60s, said that “democracy is more than a machine; it is a spirit. It is based upon the Christian conception that there is in every human soul a spark of the divine.”

For Menzies, democracy could work only if we remember that “with all their inequalities of mind and body, the souls of men stand equal in the sight of God”.

And so we must ask: Can the best of Western civilization survive without its spiritual nourishment any more than a flower plucked from its soil?

In the case of the West, including Australia in particular, the God that inspired many of our great feats of architecture, the rise of modern human rights, and modern democracy, was no philosopher’s God.

He was the personal, redemptive God of Abraham, who became flesh in Jesus Christ.

Properly understood, the cross is the ultimate act of extraordinary love and service. Christianity demands of us the humility to use power only for the betterment of others, not for ourselves. Much as the demonstration of the cross was in stark contrast to the lust for domination that characterized the Roman Empire in the first century, it still stands in stark contrast to the grasping for power that so marks our modern life.

How many aspirants to our nation’s highest political office would even know that the term “Prime Minister” actually means “first servant”: ‘minister’ – from the Latin meaning ‘inferior’ or ‘servant’?

Tim Fischer rose to one of the highest offices in the land seeking to use power for the benefit of others rather than himself.

It was through millions of people turning to Jesus that Western civilization as we know it was achieved. And yet Jesus did not come to save civilizations, all of which he assured us would ultimately fade away, but to save individuals through faith in Him. May none of us miss this ultimate point.

It was in this Christian milieu that character and service prevailed to give us what we now so enjoy, but tend to take for granted. It was this civilization that blessed us with men of character like Tim Fischer. It is in this context that I stress the need for courage, truth, and engagement if we are to survive, as free people, the challenges of our age.”

WHY GOVERNMENTS AND NATIONS ARE FAILING

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The first US president, George Washington, said: “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of a civil society.”

The founding fathers had little enthusiasm for Christian theology but they valued Christian tradition. This distinction is pivotal. You don’t need a belief in the Holy Trinity to grasp the civilising role of Christian tradition.

In recent times the great British religious figure and philosopher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put the issue most clearly: “A free society is a moral achievement. We’ve forgotten that without a shared moral code to which we are all accountable, into which we are all educated and which we have internalised, we will lose trust in our public life on which our very freedom depends.”

Sacks argued that our societies in the evolution of laws, education, and norms had abandoned, one after another, the moral principles in the Judaeo-Christian heritage. He, again, likened this to an experiment – but an experiment with a history. Invoking the Greek and Roman civilisations,

Sacks said: “We have begun a journey down the road to moral relativism and individualism which no society in history has survived for long. If men and women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about good and evil, they will fail.”

The backdrop to the demise of Christian religion in the west is no surprise. Every moral axiom on which our shared culture rested is dismantled, disputed, or lost – we cannot agree on freedom of speech, how we should live, how we should die, how children should be raised, what is a woman, what is a man, on the meaning of marriage, on what our schools should teach, on our nation’s history, on the limits of privacy, on whether religion should be allowed in the public square and, ultimately, on what is virtue.

In his study of the origins of the political order, Fukuyama said: “The rule of law in Europe was rooted in Christianity.” It was church law that initially broke down tribal norms by recognising the claims of the soul. This was a revolutionary event. It reveals the universalism of the Christian concept while also revealing its focus on the individual – as distinct from tribe or clan. Christianity asserted the fundamental relationship was between the individual and God.

The deadly tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2018

Thank goodness, God warns us beforehand in His Word. the Bible, that what we are seeing unfolding in our world is exactly as it was in Noah’s day, a godless, lawless world, a world that will embrace the Antichrist. Jesus gives us incredible detail of the events that will unfold in the last seven years of this era before His Millennial Kingdom. We need to prepare for His return and do whatever it is that He calls us to do so that the Gospel is proclaimed to all the world. We also know that God allows tribulation for a short period of time before He takes out those that remain faithful to Him and pours out His wrath upon a rebellious world.

“For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.”
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:7-14

US RECOGNISES JERUSALEM’S LINK TO AMERICA’S FOUNDING VALUES

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In a special ceremony in the City of David, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman dedicates a plaque commemorating the bond between Israel and the United States.

‘Prophetic Messages of Freedom’: US recognizes Jerusalem’s link to America’s founding values
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman (l) and chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad Paul Packer (second from right) at a ceremony in the City of David, Jan. 18, 2021. (U.S. embassy in Israel)

Friedman said that he hoped that the plaque would prompt all those who read it to think of the Judeo-Christian values upon which America was founded and “how those values were inspired by ancient Jerusalem and its inhabitants.”

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, along with the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, held a special ceremony at the City of David on Monday in recognition of the “seminal role” the archeological site plays “in connecting its visitors to the origins of the values that helped shape America.”

On June 30, 2019, Paul Packer, Chairman of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad participated with other American dignitaries in the City of David’s inauguration of the “Pilgrimage Road,” the path taken by millions of pilgrims ascending from the Pool of Siloam up to the Temple more than 2,000 years ago.

In his remarks, Packer commended the City of David for its contribution to America’s heritage, adding that with the ceremony, “we are fulfilling another, larger purpose: to unify Americans around our foundational principles and values. The City of David serves as a living testament to those enduring values, and it is our duty to ensure it remains for generations to come.”