It is Easter and we celebrate the ground-breaking philosophy of Jesus Christ. In a revolutionary manner, his teachings brought a fundamental new view of the value of human life, which later led to the Western principle of human rights.
Jesus also advocated strongly for equality regardless of race, creed and gender – demonstrating throughout his life an attitude of love towards people from all walks of life.
In essence, our most cherished traditional Western values originate from the pool of Christian ideals. Let us take a look at the essence of the true Christian principles that formed the historical fundament of Western civilization.
Christianity was central in creating Western civilization and Jesus born in Bethlehem established a system of values that revolutionized the way we perceive the value of human life.
Many do not even know which these are now, assuming that most of our central values are “secular” of origin as has been taught the past century by atheist writers who seek to demolish the traditional values in the West, writes founder of The Herland Report, historian of comparative religions Hanne Nabintu Herland.
Christian philosophy was truly revolutionary in that its definition of humanity was inclusive of all people, an altogether new view on the value of human life.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Christianity’s influence on Western values. It was Christianity that introduced the principle of equality, which unleashed the revolutionary idea that each man, regardless of class, gender and race, has a unique value.
As we live in an age of atheist intolerance in an unprecedented and highly intolerable level, where the mainstream media constantly focus negatively on Christians, Muslims and religions in general, we should rekindle the knowledge how how groundbreaking the message of Jesus Christ was.
Contrary to what many think, brainwashed as we are by the liberal-progressive Western atheists, a number of our most important values come from the Judeo-Christianity heritage and its ethics.
Vast Majority in the West are Believers in God
Christian Values: The statistics in favor of faith in God are remarkably high in the West. More than 80 percent of the American people believe in God, over 70 % in Europe believe that Jesus is the son of God, according to surveys.
The number do not even include the high percentage of Muslims in Europe. The attendance in the institutionalized Protestant churches is remarkably low, an average of 2-6 % go regularly to church.
Whether this is connected to the rampant atheist attack on the churches, demanding its message to be “politically correct” or else priests lose their jobs, is hard to say. The remarkable difference between the high percentage that state they believe in Christ and those who regularly attend church should be a topic of further study.
Research shows that only 2-8 percent of the world population is atheist. These statistics are according to Pew Research Forum, Encyclopedia Britannica, ISSP 2008.
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Christian Values: Still, believers in God are told by the current New Left atheist elites that they are old-fashioned, outdated and simply out of touch with reality.
So, everyone except the 4 % atheists in the world, are out of touch with “the real world”? How do atheists know that there is no Creator, have they visited outer space and confirmed that God is not there? Do they have empirical proof from this journey that may be presented to the rest of us?
Atheism turns out itself to be a faith as no atheist has been outside the universe to examine whether there is a God out there.
Christianity’s revolutionary view of Human Value
Christian Values formed Western Civilization: So, how did revolutionary message of the philosopher and spiritual leader, Jesus Christ impact Western civilization?
Robert R. Palmer, formerly a distinguished historian at Princeton and Yale, and Joel Colton, professor at Duke University, state in A History of the Modern World that Christian philosophy was revolutionary in that its definition of humanity was inclusive of all people, an altogether new view on the value of human life.
The early Christians worked to relieve suffering, help the poor and so on. They taught humility and that all men were brothers.
In Ennemis Publics, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and one of France’s well-known authors, atheist Michel Houellebecq, state that they are convinced that we would never have human rights without the originally Jewish and later Christian hypothesis: The incredibly bold idea about the creation of man, formed in the likeness of God, and therefore also sanctified.
Christian Values: Palmer states that it simply is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Christianity’s influence on the development of Western values.
It was Christianity that introduced the principle of equality, which unleashed the revolutionary idea that each man, regardless of class, gender and race, has a unique value.
Despite the fact that this viewpoint would later be seen as a secular idea and one of the cornerstones of secular society, there is no doubt about its religious origins.
Famous German philosopher and atheist Jürgen Habermas states in The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion that Christian theology in the Middle Ages and Spanish scholasticism as the origins of what we today call human rights.
Habermas points out that modern moral philosophical and political theory pays a high price for excluding the very Christian ethics that in history has demonstrated the ability to motivate individuals to care for one another, to perform just actions.
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Christian Values: In “Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures,” Pope Benedict XVI seems to concur, stating that after years of emphasis on scientific and technological progress alone, Western culture now suffers from a lack of emphasis on moral energy.
This is the greatest threat to contemporary culture. Without solidarity, individuals become destructive. Democracy itself depends on citizen solidarity to avoid becoming the tyranny of the mob.
Jesus’ worst enemies were the religious leaders
Early Christianity came into existence, marked by revolution, and developed among the lower classes of society, with a radically new view of the poor.
This is symbolically well illustrated by Christ being born in a manger.
The radical Jesus, went starkly against the political and religious elite associating himself freely with the feeble, the sick and – as the first feminist – broke the customs regarding how to engage with and validate women.
Regardless of the historical institutionalized church practice, the example of Christ is crystal clear on this matter. The very example of Jesus’ life illustrates how he steadily criticized the church leaders of his time, calling them hypocrites, dead graves, poisonous snakes and so on.
His all out humanist approach to human kind stood in stark contrast to many a religious leader’s focus on shallow, worldly religion. In the first four books in the New Testament, the ongoing fight between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders at the time is one of the main themes.
In fact, the religious leaders were central in the killing of Jesus, hated as he was among them. So, the difference between true spiritualism as found in Jesus and the contemporary religious leaders could not have been sharper.
Central Christian values
Christian Values formed Western Civilization: Christian ethics became the source of human rights and one of history’s most important contributors to the leveling of class differences.
Socialism took several of its most famous values from the pool of Christian thought.
The idealized dignity of the worker, the willingness to fight for the rights of the common man and those with lower income not to be degraded by rich landowners, clearly reflect Christian attitudes.
Respect for all, regardless of rank, is a genuine Christian idea.
It is pointed out by Melanie Phillips in “The World Turned Upside Down” that Berger, Hegel and Max Weber saw Judaism as the main victory of rationality and secularization over paganism.
The sociologist Peter Berger asserts that it was in Judaism that radical new ideas of how humans best should act as morally responsible appeared, ideals that later influenced both Christianity and the secular Western world on a massive scale.
So, let’s celebrate Christianity as central in creating Western civilization and hail the little boy born in the manger who revolutionized the way we perceive the value of human life.
