Tuesday, August 16, 2016

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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