Christianity did not grow and has not survived just ’cause. Successful and enduring religions or worldviews only survive if they answer important questions and offer that which sustains. Even if its founding is full of mystery and the miraculous, its foundation must include the comprehensible and rational for it to stand the test of time.
Christianity gives to its adherents the mysterious and the miraculous for sure, but its chief mystery, that Christ was in fact God, is itself based in plausibility because the existence of God is the only plausible explanation for the existence of anything. That this God might love His creation is for us humans both relatable and comforting because we all understand, for example, the love that a mother has for her wee lil’ babe, and mother’s love is the first fount of human comfort. Likewise we understand the mother’s instinct to protect her child and to sacrifice the entirety of herself if need be. So it is not so far-fetched that this God might care about his creation, as the mother does for hers, and come down from on high and sacrifice Himself for us.
And why shouldn’t He if that is the way He wants to arrange things. He’s God after all.
But He didn’t stop with this. While sojourning here among us He also taught us how we ought to think and live. He taught us to be self-disciplined, to deny our own selves, and instead live for others. And that is certainly a recipe for getting by in a world of want, danger, and decay.
And thus Christianity lives on today because it is a rational philosophy, demanding that we strive to be our better selves.
Progressivism, not so much. And do not be fooled. It is a religion with its own faith assumptions, the chief ones being the belief that freedom, equality, and individuality are sovereign goods and truths.
And it is upon this foundation of sand that we have struggled to build our modern world.
We are in fact manifestly not free or equal, and while we are clearly individuals, we do not exist outside of either family or tribe, neither of which are cultural constructions or institutions, but rather themselves born of our very human nature, as inevitable as mother’s love.
It has been said that you will know something by its fruit. This makes sense. Finding an apple as you stand under a tree is a good indicator of what kind of tree you are standing under.
Now after 300 years of Progressivism we can look about us and see the fruit of our worship of our freedom, our equality, and our own selves.
M.C. Atkins
Look Away... 