The Soul of the West
"The West has lost its soul. It is no
longer distinguished and admired for its ideals it once had, for these
have either vanished or are viewed only as the spurious claims of a
hypocrite. Increasingly now, if the West is admired, it is only for it
technological prowess, its economic prosperity and its military power,
all of which will soon fade too. Yet while the West is no longer
Christian in its foundations, it is not yet fully non-Christian
(secularist or pagan) either, though post-Christian phase may soon reach
the point of no return.
But we can say with an organic
certainty, which is as sure as any mathematical certainty, that the
growth and the flowers that they produced [benefits from a
Biblical-based culture] will eventually die.
The
blunt truth is that secularism and other alternative philosophies that
claim to replace the Jewish and Christian roots have no adequate root
system of their own with which to nourish the ideals. Witness, for
example, the inability of the new atheists to provide for an adequate
foundation for such notions as the sanctity of life, the dignity of the
individual person, the responsibility of freedom, justice, equality and
universality--let alone the antidote to the mounting inequalities and
polarizations in society. Once rooted in the belief that every last
human is precious and has an inalienable dignity because he or she is
made in the image of God, and that freedom is the gift through which
humans most resemble their Creator, such biblical roots have been cut
and their fruits are withering."
- Os Guinness in his newest book, Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization
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