The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “So You Think You Understand Christianity?”
“If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.”—Elon Musk
There are indeed a lot of things that we take for granted. Many people don’t realize Christianity’s influential role in shaping today’s world. Modern science, the university, and the hospital exist because of Christianity’s influence.
I don’t believe that it is common knowledge that Christianity was one of the primary driving forces behind the scientific revolution and the scientific discoveries that laid the foundation for many of the great innovations that we enjoy today.26 Our most revered scientists were Christians who believed that we can study nature precisely because God created the universe to function consistently and in predictable ways. Scientists like Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, and others believed that God is glorified by observing and learning about the physical world which God spoke into existence.
Many of the ideas that we hold dear have developed over the years because of the influence of Christians who took their faith seriously. For instance, we take it for granted that the earth revolves around the sun. But it took many years for this idea to become universally accepted. Galileo famously championed the idea. Yet, even though the Catholic Church opposed him—though this had less to do with the fact that he proposed that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the opposite and had more to do with his prickly demeanor—Galileo was a Christian.27 It was his belief that God’s glory is revealed in nature which caused him to look at the heavens. Galileo famously wrote, “Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.” Yet, many today have no idea that Christianity was the driving force behind the people who drove scientific discovery and the scientific revolution.
It’s not just the advent of modern scientific knowledge that Christianity’s theology enabled. Some of our culture’s most fundamental values have developed through Christianity’s influence. Take for instance the belief that compassion is a good thing. The ancient world didn’t value compassion as we do today. The Romans viewed it as weakness. It took time to get to this point in history.
It wasn’t until Christianity came onto the scene that compassion was considered a quality worth embracing. Jeremiah Johnson writes: “There was no such thing as humanitarian aid in the ancient world. Outside of caring for certain aristocrats, or soldiers, medical services were almost nonexistent. If you were sick, a Roman would go out of his or her way to avoid you and you would likely have died without care. From its earliest days, though, ‘Christianity demanded that all of its adherents aid needy and sick people,’ says medical historian Guenter Risse. The early Christians read the New Testament in such a way that they interpreted and put into practice its command to welcome the outsider and alien and to build ‘special communal shelter(s) and nursing services.’ These shelters became the hospitals we depend on today.”28
Indeed, the modern hospital system was born out of Christian compassion. As were orphanages. The product of Christianity’s moral code is often taken for granted as if values like compassion and mercy are self- evident. History tells us that this is not the case. Modern liberal culture borrows much from Christianity without acknowledging its dependence.
Our world is much richer because of Christianity’s influence. Sadly, our culture is in the process of rejecting Christianity’s wisdom. As it does, the foundation for many of our society’s great ideas and values is being eroded. What some don’t seem to understand is that, without the foundation and influence of Christianity, the culture will slowly return to a more barbaric state.
Christianity is a bulwark against humanity’s individual and collective depravity. Christianity is a civilizing force on society. As its influence wanes, compassion takes a backseat to self-interest. Our society will still claim to believe in compassion and other values but will redefine them just as it has other fundamental concepts. In doing so, it will give permission to the depraved nature of man to behave according to that nature. And as Christianity’s influence declines, the culture will be given over to further depravity, to the detriment of all.
26 Rodney Stark, “The Victory of Reason,” Kindle edition.
27 Ibid.
28 Jeremiah Johnson, “Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity,” Kindle edition.
