In Andrew Wilson’s terrific book, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West, he tells the story of one of the most famous lines ever written in the English language. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Few people know that this wasn’t the original wording. After Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he sent it to his friend, Benjamin Franklin, to edit. Franklin didn’t make many changes, but he did add the critical word “self-evident.” Despite his own personal skepticism regarding traditional faith, Jefferson had stated that such truths were “sacred and undeniable,” grounding them in religious convictions. Franklin saw fit to ground these truths in reason. They were just obvious, self-evident truths. Jefferson should have held his ground because of course there is nothing self-evident about something like human rights.
Best-selling author and Bond villain, Yuval Harari makes this exact point in the clip below.
You may not like what he’s saying. You may be justifiably appalled as you think about the implications of what he’s saying. But it is hard to reject the logic of what he is saying. Treasured ideas regarding human rights are not self-justifying. They can’t be established by science, and despite the protests of humanists throughout history, they can’t be sufficiently defended by reason. All it takes for these “self-evident” truths to come tumbling down is the Nietzschean strong man to come along and demand, “Says who?”
That we can’t even imagine a good world without significant human rights doesn’t mean that these are self-evident truths. It actually means that we have been so completely transformed by the biblical vision of the world – a vision that includes the monumental belief in the imago dei – that we can’t help but see everything through that lens.
Wilson joins a flood of authors, including a growing number of irreligious agnostics like Tom Holland, who are making essentially the same point. The liberal order that we have come to take for granted rests upon a Christian foundation. Even arch-atheist Richard Dawkins somewhat begrudgingly admits to being a “cultural Christian.”
To say that western nations like the United States are Christian is a fact of history that is beyond dispute. It doesn’t mean that these nations have a majority of people who attend church services or even self-identify as Christians. It doesn’t mean that these nations were at one time or are striving to be “theocracies” (an over-used and rarely understood word). It also doesn’t mean that these nations have always or even routinely lived up to Christian ideals because they most certainly have not. I’m writing this on Juneteenth, a solemn reminder of the United States’ dark history of slavery. But the institution of slavery reminds us that even when these nations don’t live up to Christian ideals, we judge them according to Christian ideals. Is it self-evident that slavery is wrong? Or is it only obvious that slavery is wrong because we can’t help but see the world through the imago dei?
As another example, consider the so-called “secular creed” common among the progressive Left in the United States.
The people who put signs like these in their front yards are not typically conservative evangelicals in their faith. Many of them would likely confess to no religion at all, but literally every single assertion in this creed rests upon a foundation of Christian belief. In a society, where there is no foundation for moral beliefs besides personal emotivism, does it make any sense to simply assert that kindness is everything or even that science is real? Women’s rights are human rights? Black lives matter? Even the meaningless tautology that “love is love” is making an assertion based on the assumptions of individual liberty. Imagine the strong man demanding “says who?” Putting a sign in your lawn doesn’t make something self-evident or justified. These signs only make any sense if they are appealing to a Christian foundation.
The Dawkins clip above illustrates what is becoming a common concern among both religious and secular people in western nations like England and the United States. What happens to these “self-evident” truths when the foundation of Christian belief is abandoned? Is it possible to maintain the liberal social order in a post-Christian culture?
The real star of the old Road Runner cartoons was Wile E. Coyote. As a kid, I loved laughing at his ridiculous antics. It was hard to not feel pity for him at times. He would invest so much time and energy creating ingenious ways to catch Road Runner only to fall into his own trap over and over again. One common gag on the show had Wile E. Coyote chasing Road Runner off the edge of a cliff. Road Runner had the sense to stop running before reaching the edge. Wile E. Coyote, on the other hand, would keep running past the edge of the cliff seeming to float in mid-air. It wasn’t until he looked down and understood his tragic predicament that he plummeted to the bottom of the gorge. People like Richard Dawkins are having a Wile E. Coyote moment. They realize western society has run off a cliff and our deepest held convictions are floating in mid-air. They fear a crash is coming.
Indeed a crash might be coming. A future society without moral foundations is a society where individual and group desires reign unopposed. In such a society, the loudest and strongest win out. Collaborating with those who differ from you is abandoned for coercion through bureaucracy (in the most optimistic scenario) or violence. We already see ample evidence of this happening. Our politicians are no longer interested in building big tents based on shared convictions and hopes for the future. Instead, they build their arguments on paranoia and gas lighting, creating a constant sense of panic that the other party (which is full of degenerates and deplorables) will come to power. Activists are no longer interested in convincing the world of the goodness of their cause. Activism today is more interested in intimidation and fear. They don’t shut down traffic in order to win you to their cause. They shut down traffic to prove that they can bully you into submission. Those who take Christian bakers to court or clamor for a professional athlete to “lose his job” for wrongthink are guilty of the same attempted coercion and bullying. Because the secular creed no longer rests on a foundation, it must be enforced through power.
To his credit, Wilson argues for a more positive future, and I hope he’s right. Could it be that our Wile E. Coyote moment might lead to a revival of religious belief? There is some faint evidence that this might be happening as the polemic atheism of a decade ago is giving way to a new openness to the importance of religious belief. Personally, I think that western societies and especially Christians in western societies should remember the unsettling truth that all is vanity including western society. We are given promises regarding God’s kingdom and His purposes. We are not given promises regarding any particular society. While there are things in our society that should alarm us and spur us to action, we should reject any notion that God’s purposes are linked only to “the West.” We delight to see God’s kingdom continuing to advance in non-western cultures. So, we rest in God’s promises whether our future is dark or bright or some combination of the two.
Chad Ragsdale 
Leave a comment