Recent events have revealed – to those with eyes to see – how deep is the morass into which Western societies have fallen. There are conflicting views as to what should take place, and the prevailing impressions left are those of moral confusion and disarray. The West seems to be under attack, and yet also is managing to undermine itself at the same time. The problems are both within and without.
First, there is a threat from Islamist terrorism. There have been hundreds of attacks in recent times. On 11 September 2001 four hijacked planes killed about 3,000 people after crashing into the Pentagon and World Trade Center in New York. More atrocities followed: the Bali bombings in October 2002 killed over 200; in November 2003 57 were killed in Istanbul; in July 2005 more than fifty persons were killed in explosions in the London Underground; the Boston Marathon bombings of April 2013 killed three and injured 183; while Paris has suffered a number of attacks, including the Charlie Hebdo murders in January 2015 and the deaths of 130 in the attacks of 13 November 2015. In the midst of all this, Europe especially has experienced tens of thousands of refugees, who are fleeing the Syrian crisis. To many in the West, religion is incomprehensible so it is not uncommon for its intellectual leaders to find no discernible pattern in terrorist assaults, and so they denounce any questioning of Islam as racist.
Charles Blow, writing for the New York Times on 23 November 2015, worked himself up into a lather of moral indignation in claiming that ‘Anti-Muslim is Anti-American’, and that this ‘slippery slope’ could lead to genocide. The ever-vigilant and unerringly imperceptive American Civil Liberties Union declared that ‘Laws that single out Sharia violate the Frist Amendment by treating one belief system as suspect.’ Moral neutrality demands that Satanism and evangelicalism be viewed alike, and that the Marquis de Sade be treated as the moral equivalent of Amy Carmichael. One gets the impression that the Islamists understand the secularists better than vice versa.
This takes us onto the secularist juggernaut which dominates the Western landscape at the moment. Secularists in general consider that Christianity is dangerous because of the Spanish Inquisition in the 1490s, but Islam is to be supported because it is perceived to be downtrodden. Since there are no moral absolutes in the sexual sphere, it is wrong to offend those who engage in homosexual behaviour. Child abuse is wrong, but not in the womb. Love is what matters, but few seem to know what it means. As a result, the culture is breaking down quickly, to the point where a reasonable level of public civility in public debate is becoming somewhat unusual. Even the ABC’s Richard Glover, who is not a believer, has asked: ‘When exactly did Christians become such a derided and ridiculed minority in this country?’ He considers that it has happened in his own lifetime, and laments that ‘Inviting a cleric onto ABC radio, as I do from time to time, brings a torrent of enraged correspondence.’
Christians have to respond to all this, which is not an altogether easy task. The naïve amongst us consider that the problem of Islamic terrorism can be solved by being moderate in religion (if we have to have it at all), and seeing the issue as really one of poverty, to be solved by economic aid. The fearful will try to close our borders to all and sundry, excluding the genuine refugee as well as the criminal. Because Western Christians have become rather more used to Enlightenment secularism than to Middle Eastern Islam, they are often tempted to embrace secularism as a political solution at least, not realising that no society can be built on a spiritual and moral vacuum.
The Christian message includes the claim that Christ is Lord of all, both church and world (Col.1:15-20). Neither Islam nor secularism recognises this, and so both contribute to the morass in different but almost complementary ways. It is as C. S. Lewis suggested: ‘Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.’ It is the kingdom of God and His righteousness that we must seek first of all (Matt.6:33).