The world has always been rather bewildering, but it is tempting to think that it has recently become more bewildering. The Islamist attacks in France have led to mass demonstrations of people, including European political leaders, proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. In one sense, that is understandable after the brutality of the terrorists. Yet, given the decadence and anti-Christian blasphemy of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, there needs to be a cry: ‘Je ne suis pas Charlie’. The Christian gets the impression that we are obliged to choose between being terrorised by crazed Islamists or swept along by degenerate pornographers.
This has been coming for a while, and it is more than a simple choice between two options. Westerners believe in democracy – or they think they do. However, there are essentially two reasons for embracing something that resembles democracy. The first one is that one believes in humanity, and there is nothing higher to which one can appeal. This was the view of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract, published in 1762. Rousseau declared that ‘Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than he will be forced to be free.’ The second approach is the Christian one, as presented by C. S. Lewis: ‘I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man.’
This difference is crucial and is increasingly coming to the fore. Rousseau’s version of democracy is prevailing over Lewis’. Many Westerners who do not know what is going on still think that democracy equals freedom. We may well find that, having assaulted decency, democracy will take away our freedoms. Blaise Pascal noted back in the seventeenth century that ‘It is odd, when one thinks of it, that there are people in the world who, having renounced all the laws of God and nature, have themselves made laws which they rigorously obey.’ This explains, for example, the growing virulence and confusion of the political Left. It sees itself as expanding freedoms when in reality it is taking them away. Those who stand in the way of the juggernaut will have to undergo compulsory counselling programs in equality.
The West, having embraced Rousseau’s version of democracy, is trampling all over Christian freedoms. The mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, dismissed his fire chief, Kelvin Cochran, in January 2015 because Mr Cochran published a book which condemns homosexual acts as ‘vile, vulgar and inappropriate’. This dismissal, of course, was done in the name of tolerance and equality. Back in October of 2014, the mayor of Houston, Annise Parker (who is a lesbian), issued subpoenas to five local pastors who had preached against the homosexual lifestyle. She was eventually forced to rescind the order, but it is a straw in the wind – not so much an indication of where we are going, but where we already are.
Spurgeon once commented that ‘Truth lies between two extremes, and man, like a pendulum, swings either too much this way or that.’ Actually, we are living in dangerous times where two fiercely anti-Christian world views are feeding off each other. Indeed, like the Herodians and Pharisees of old (Mark 3:6), they sometimes find themselves making common cause against the hated Christians. The violent Islamists attack the decadent West, and the decadent West replies by promoting more decadence. Both sides have adopted the tactic of ‘Playing the victim and acting the bully.’ Motivated by a different affection, and seeking a different way, Christians will press on as sojourners and exiles in this world (1 Pet.2:11), seeking a better country (Heb.11:16), and serving a heavenly king (John 18:36-38).
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes