Today we are aware of environmental pollution. We protest if our children breathe in dangerous fumes. But what about the ‘air’ of current ideologies? Lies have become embedded into the worldview of our culture, which like poison gas, cannot be seen but have deadly effects.
‘There is no Creator God’
By the end of the nineteenth century, increased acceptance of evolutionary theory had contributed to a naturalistic worldview. ‘Truth is only about physical reality. Belief in God was understandable in a pre–scientific age. Now that science can explain everything we can ditch religion.’
But how does this work out in practice?
Denying that God created humans in his image with unique dignity leads directly to the idea that the value of a life can be assessed by criteria such as usefulness, enjoyment, or awareness.
Denying that God created humans in his image with unique dignity leads directly to the idea that the value of a life can be assessed by criteria such as usefulness, enjoyment, or awareness. It’s then an easy progression to believing that the ‘less fit’ should be eliminated: there’s no reason to oppose abortion, infanticide or assisted suicide. Frances Schaeffer (1912–1984) warned that if man is not made in the image of God, nothing stands in the way of inhumanity.
The logical deduction of evolution through random mutation and natural selection is that all life is on a continuum. There’s no absolute reason to protect human life above animal life. Some radical environmentalists say that the earth itself is the greatest good. Best–selling Finnish author Pentti Linkola (1932–2020) believed that humans are like a tumour on the earth. The majority should be killed, and the remainder controlled by an environmentalist state, with people forcibly sterilised and private cars confiscated.
‘There is no absolute morality’
In 2011, 60% of young American adults claimed that morality is just a matter of personal choice. If there’s no God, we won’t have to give account to God, so who has the right to tell us what to do?
The dream of unlimited personal freedom unravelled into a nightmare during the twentieth century.
Abandoning belief in a transcendent God (to whom even rulers must give account) meant that sometimes the State became ‘god’ – with fearful results. Solzhenitsyn offered an eye–witness description of the way that society was corrupted and destroyed by nihilism and totalitarianism, the inevitable outworking of Marxist ideology. In 1983 he observed:
. . . if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
In the ‘free’ West, once it was believed that we are simply driven by natural biological instincts, it was increasingly assumed that behaviour is inevitably determined by sexual desires. Guilt was viewed as a harmful emotion. Christian morality was condemned as repressive. Sexual ‘freedom’ resulted in globally unprecedented levels of fatherlessness. It also fuelled the ever–expanding pornography business.
The spread of Christianity had led to the elevation of women: one factor being promotion of universal education (the single most important factor in advancing women’s rights). By contrast, the global sex–trade has resulted in people–trafficking, sex–slavery, and the abject objectification of women. Of the 600,000–800,000 people trafficked across international borders each year, 70 percent are female, and 50 percent are children; the majority of them forced into the commercial sex trade.
‘There is no Ultimate Truth’
Deriving certain knowledge by based on individual reason alone is doomed. How do you judge between competing claims? ‘My truth’ or ‘Your truth’? Confidence that our problems could be solved by human reason collapsed into the radical doubt of post–modernism. The project of ‘deconstruction’ was instigated by radicals who wanted a society where all inequalities in outcome were removed.
They believed that inequalities are perpetrated by institutions such as church, family, and schools. The credibility and authority of all such institutions could be undermined – by persuading people that ‘words’ don’t carry any universal meaning. We each define our own reality!
Beginning in academia, the cancer of critical theory has taken root in all the major institutions of the West. You can now be regarded as a bigot for affirming the scientific truth that a boy cannot become a girl.
Those who demand absolute equality of outcomes regard Western civilisation as inherently evil. They want to pull down all the structures which created freedom and prosperity. Smash the patriarchy (aka the family); Smash capitalism (aka wealth creation and private property); Smash the police (aka law and order); Smash down the statutes (aka our collective memory and history); Smash Christianity (aka the foundational worldview of Western civilisation).
‘We Can’t Trust the Word of God’
How has the Christian church responded to all this?
Confusingly, many who claim to be Christian also deny absolute truth and absolute morality!
During the nineteenth century, a host of challenges to the authority of Scripture were posed by proponents of liberal theology. Doubting the reliability of God’s Word led to the rise of unbelief within the professing church. Today, some ‘Christian’ ministers paint evil as good, good as evil, and mock the idea of judgement and hell.
Walk down any high street, and you’ll probably see church buildings now transformed into offices, flats, or shops. Why would anyone bother to go to church if, when you get there, the clergy don’t believe the foundational Scriptures of the faith?
Bad Ideas bear Bitter Fruit
Many today care about inequality and campaign for social justice. Such concern demonstrates that we are not just products of evolution. We are created in the image of God with moral awareness. But attempting to fix human problems on the basis of lies just makes things worse. Bad ideas bear bitter fruit!
Our Creator God reveals truth – in creation, in his Word, and supremely in his Son. We will see in Part 2 that God’s truth provides the only firm foundation for human dignity, real justice, and genuine freedom:
‘Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32)
