Can we Learn Anything from History?

Some believe that history doesn’t teach us any lessons. At a round table discussion with a group of secularists, I asked:

• Do you think we can learn from the past? Can we apply the lessons of yesterday to today and to the future? Can they instruct us to build a better world?

Almost all proclaimed that this was a new day – a New Age – and, therefore, the lessons of the past no longer applied.

Their answer was shocking. I had worked for the New York City Department of Probation for 15 years. There was an underlying assumption that the past would tell us a lot about the future. Therefore, when we wrote a report to the court, we always included a copy of the Rap Sheet, which recorded the perp’s criminal history, assuming that the past said a lot about one’s present legal entanglements and his future.

However, progressives seem to be unwilling to regard these lessons. Why? Jason Morgan calls it “the pathology of pride”:

• Most of today’s intellectuals are still lost in this present progressive tense, deaf to the subtle tones that ought to modulate their voices from behind. They dismiss all who came before them, rejecting whatever wisdom our ancestors might have won through hard trial and costly error. They want the future now, and will not let any notes of caution dissuade them from their project. (Salvo Mag., #33, 12)

This is most apparent in the area of human sexuality. Morgan writes:

• Gender Studies departments assure us that there are no differences in sex, only in gender indoctrination. Our bodies seem to indicate otherwise, but dual sexuality is so last century. (13)

Do these departments provide any historical justifications for their bizarre proclamations? No! In fact, they overlook all of the historic lessons, which point to the contrary. These same departments had claimed that traditional values and family had enslaved wives, depriving them of sexual fulfillment. However, studies have shown the exact opposite thing:

• Women without religious affiliation were the least likely to report always having an orgasm with their primary partner – only one in five … Protestant women who reported always having an orgasm [had] the highest [percentage], at nearly one-third. In general, having a religious affiliation was associated with higher rates of orgasm for women. (The Social Organization of Sexuality, 115; quoted by Salvo, Spring 2013, 35)

This is consistent with previous studies. A Redbook Magazine survey of 1970 found that:

• The more religious a woman is, the more likely she is “to be orgasmic almost every time she engages in sex.” Conversely, irreligious women tended to be the least satisfied with the quality and quantity of their intercourse. (35)

Writing for USA Today, William R. Mattox:

• Suggested that “church ladies tend to be free from the guilt associated with violating one’s own sexual standards” – a factor that a University of Connecticut study found to hinder sexual satisfaction among unmarried college students. 

Are the gender studies people creating a better society? The evidence would not suggest so. According to Brian Fitzpatrick, the most “definitive work on the rise and fall of civilizations, was published in 1934 by Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin”:

• In Sex and Culture, Unwin studied 86 human civilizations ranging from tiny South Sea island principalities to mighty Rome. He found that a society’s destiny is linked inseparably to the limits it imposes on sexual expression and that those sexual constraints correlate directly to its theological sophistication and religious commitment.

• Unwin noted that the most primitive societies had only rudimentary spiritual beliefs and virtually no restrictions on sexual expression, whereas societies with more sophisticated theologies placed greater restrictions on sexual expression and achieved greater social development.

• In particular, cultures that adopt what Unwin dubbed “absolute monogamy” proved to be the most vigorous, economically productive, artistically creative, scientifically innovative, and geographically expansive societies on earth. Absolute monogamy is a very strict moral code. Under absolute monogamy, sex can occur only within one-man/ one-woman marriage. Premarital and extramarital sex are not tolerated and divorce is prohibited.

Even from our limited, contemporary perspective on human thriving, we can see how Unwin had been spot-on:

• According to the Family Research Council… more than half (54 percent of American teens 15-17 years old do not live in a home with their married mother and father. The benefits to children of being raised by their married parents are significant, including higher educational attainments levels, better emotional health, and better self-esteem. Conversely, the risks to teens of not living with a father in the home are notable. Teenage boys are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior, and girls are seven to eight times more likely to experience a teen pregnancy. (Salvo, 19)

Besides, if we regard the stats, the fallout from extramarital sex is horrendous. We can only close our eyes to history at great cost, even in terms of lives.

The French Revolution, which promised freedom, brought a Reign of Terror through their “enlightened” reason. However, the communists were unwilling to learn from this horrible experiment. Morgan writes:

• Communism, which promised the ultimate in a rationally based society, found, much to their embarrassment, that in order to liberate humanity it was necessary to put tens of millions of its members into an early grave. A clearer view of history might have reminded man of his record of depravity and of the inadvisability of relying on his fallen nature to achieve perfection.

Morgan is not simply concerned about the disregard of history, but he claims that the “pathology of pride” is actively involved in tearing down or revising history to coincide with their narrative:

• The problem, beyond bad scholarship, is that young people flock to these madhouses every year, told by cynical university bureaucrats that they need to learn contempt for their own tradition if they want to get a well-paying job. Professors are being paid to take battle-axes to the roots of Western civilization.

In such a repressive climate, even conservative professors are afraid to come to the defense of Western Civilization. Oddly, commendation for the Christian West is more likely to come from Muslims turned atheists. Pakistani former-Muslim, Ibn Warraq, has written:

• The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.

• In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. In many non-Western countries, especially Islamic ones, citizens are not free to read what they wish. In Saudi Arabia, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith—clear violations of Article 18 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• The edifice of modern science and scientific method is one of Western man’s greatest gifts to the world. The West has given us not only nearly every scientific discovery of the last 500 years—from electricity to computers—but also, thanks to its humanitarian impulses, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. The West provides the bulk of aid to beleaguered Darfur; Islamic countries are conspicuous by their lack of assistance.

• Moreover, other parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom. Nor would any Western politician be able to get away with the anti-Semitic remarks that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad made in 2003. Our excusing Mahathir’s diatribe indicates not only a double standard but also a tacit acknowledgment that we apply higher ethical standards to Western leaders.

• Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

Another Muslim-turned-atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also speaks highly of the Christian West, in a way the Western scholars would not dare to:

• The Christianity of love and tolerance remains one of the West’s most powerful antidotes to the Islam of hate and intolerance. Ex-Muslims find Jesus Christ to be a more attractive and humane figure than Muhammad, the founder of Islam. 

These are willing to listen to history, as any rational person would. A good farmer once told me:

• If you want to grow corn, find the farmer who always has a good stand of corn, and ask him how he does it. 

His advice was unimpeachable. However, I had asked my secular associates a similar question - if we could learn anything from the principles that had made the USA wildly successful. They were even appalled at my question.

What Makes Nations Thrive while others Die?

Why do certain nations fail while others abundantly succeed? Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi concluded that trust based on trustworthiness was a major factor:

• Why are the Dutch or the English able to trust each other in a way that the Indians or the Egyptians cannot? What makes some cultures more honest, less corrupt, more trustworthy, and therefore more prosperous? And why is the postmodern West discarding the moral secret of its success? (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations)

Mangalwadi became convinced that the way we believe is the way we behave and even grow the economy. He observed:

• People in the Netherlands had money to give because generation after generation was taught to work hard and give tithes and offerings to God. The Dutch made money to give to the poor in India because the Bible taught, “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28).

The contrast he observed between the beliefs of his Hindu Indian and the Christian West were profound:

• Acharya-turned-Bhagwan-turned-Osho Rajneesh, who gave widespread publicity to the tantric idea of salvation through sex, summarized the Indian as well as the postmodern Western worldview in similar terms: “We have divided the world into the good and the evil. The world is not so divided. The good and the evil are our valuations [not God’s commandments]. There is no good, there is no bad. These are two aspects of one reality… The data collected by Transparency International shows that the least corrupt countries are overwhelmingly those whose soul was nurtured by the Bible.

It should be no surprise that if we do not believe in an objective right and wrong, we will begin to act in concert with this belief. Immediate gratification will inevitably triumph over moral truth. However, we might not see this transformation in the Western world because Christian habits still remain even as postmodernism and moral relativism have co-opted the Western mind.

Mangalwadi reasons that Hindu philosophy is directly related to the impoverishment of India:

• India’s religious philosophy taught that since the human soul was divine, it could not sin. In fact, our most rigorous religious philosophy teaches that everything is God. God is the only reality that exists, and therefore there is no ultimate distinction between good and evil, right and wrong.

Who would want to enter into a business deal with someone who doesn’t believe in right or wrong! Wouldn’t we rather affiliate with someone who has such a high commitment to moral truth that honesty would govern his life? The answer is plain. Therefore, Mangalwadi reasons that economy is inseparable from morality:

• Their chronic poverty proves what Adam Smith, a father of capitalism, knew: real- world economics are the result of the kind of morality you have, which in turn is a fruit of the kind of philosophy you have. For example, why have health care costs become so obscene in America that they are destroying the very culture of compassion? Insurance and pharmaceutical companies that sustain health care are blamed only because the intellectual elite can no longer calculate the economic costs of academic godlessness that separates economics from moral truth.

The relationship between morality and economy can be observed in many instances. Mangalwadi relates a revealing experience. He was experiencing frustration trying to purchase tickets from a machine on an Amsterdam tram. He asked a couple of American tourists for assistance. They responded:

• “Why do you want to get tickets?” they responded. “We’ve been riding around for a week. No one has ever come to check any tickets.”

Mangalwadi was startled more by their hardness of conscience than by their theft of service:

• Their shamelessness shocked me more than their immorality. They represented the new generation, liberated from “arbitrary” and “oppressive” religious ideas of right and wrong. University education had freed them from commandments such as “You shall not steal.”

Someone has to pay the price for sin. Eventually, the Dutch will have to hire additional personnel to collect the fares. Who pays for them? Everyone! I too have met many such travelers. They are intelligent, likeable, knowledgeable, highly educated, and even sensitive to victimization in its various forms, but they were unable to connect the dots to their own behaviors. Not a twinge of shame!

However, their conduct serves as an omen of the coming tsunami that will inevitably submerge the economy along with everything we value. It is already at our door, but no one sees it. When I talk about this coming destruction, my secular friends look at me as if I am from another planet. Instead, their hope is in this world, and it is just too difficult to question their sustaining hope. Mangalwadi also marvels at what is happening in the West:

• This good news [of the Christian faith] became the intellectual foundation of the modern West, the force that produced moral integrity, economic prosperity, and political freedom. If moral integrity is foundational to prosperity, why don’t secular experts talk about it? The reason is that the universities no longer know whether moral laws are true universal principles or mere social conventions made up to restrict our freedoms. And why don’t they know? Economists have lost the secret of the West’s success because philosophers have lost the very idea of truth. Why? The truth was lost because of an intellectual arrogance that rejected divine revelation.

I think that it is not simply the arrogance of the West but the disdain of the West towards objective moral does-and-don’ts along with the judgments they inflict for transgression. The West wants to be free from such judgments – anything that will tell them that they are wrong, anything that will cause them to feel guilty or shamed.

However, their quest for absolute freedom has made them slaves and has deprived them of their dignity as human beings. They are so intent to escape from guilt, shame, and their resulting negative self-images that they have adopted philosophies that will degrade them. They have exchanged the concept of human culpability for the belief that we are simply products of our society and upbringing, convinced that this belief will give them the freedom from their painful feelings. After all, they are just a product or result.

However, when we degrade ourselves in this manner, we pay a big price. Psychologist James Hillman observes that we can deaden our lives through the way we interpret them:

• We dull our lives by the way we conceive then… By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents. (The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, Random House, 6)

Some even go a step further and deny freewill, opting instead for the belief that everything that we do has been predetermined by previous bio-chemical events. Therefore, they claim that we needn’t feel guilty for anything we do. They have even become evangelists for this new faith. One gentleman, with whom I have had considerable contact, leads a group entitled, “The illusion of freewill,” and insists that this belief is necessary to liberate us.

I joke, “I don’t talk to machines, even wet machines.” More seriously, it just becomes too easy to cheat your business partner, if you believe that you couldn’t have acted otherwise. In fact, it becomes too easy to give into any temptation. Without any substantial rational resistance, we become slaves to our impulses.

• The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly. (Proverbs 5:22-23)

Once we do wrong and refuse to admit it, we condemn ourselves to a never-ending pattern of rationalizations. We deny our guilt whether through denying freewill or through the many methods of “mindful” dissociation, which have never helped those nations that have practiced them.

I often ask people if we can learn any lessons from the past. Their answer is usually, “No! The situation is now different and requires a different solution.” They can anticipate my next question, “What then has made the West successful,” and skillfully avoid it. Why be encumbered by the lessons of past, if this will interfere with finding the “truth” within one’s own desires! However, according to King Solomon, they will reap the fruits of their own choices:

• Since they hated knowledge and did not choose… the LORD, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them (Proverbs 1:29-32)

Politics, Christianity and Cal Thomas

 Should Christians abandon the political arena? To put this question another way – Is there any arena where the light of Christ shouldn’t shine? Evangelical Christian and widely read columnist, Cal Thomas, seems to answer “yes.” For one thing, he claims that Christian attempts to bring about political change have been for naught:

• We’ve tried to change culture through government for thirty years, since the forming of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition and all these other religious/political groups…and what happened? Nothing. (Salvo, Spring 2013, 29)

Even if Thomas is correct about the “nothing,” this shouldn’t represent a reason to abandon politics. Perhaps instead, our failures might serve as a call to reexamine ourselves, our methods, and the need to better prepare the societal ground through reasoned argumentation.

Besides, perhaps we use an unbiblical measure to assess “failure” and “success.” Fundamentally, for the Christian, success is a matter of faithfulness:

• This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. (1 John 5:3-5)

The world’s response should not govern our assessment of success and failure. Instead, we should measure it in terms of our responsiveness to our Lord, and this might be a matter of being the light, whether individually or corporately.

If we are to use Thomas’ measure of success, then the Prophets of Israel were utter failures. Ultimately, Israel rejected their measure and Israel went into captivity.

Thomas’ measure of success is extreme in other ways. He argues against political involvement because it fails to change hearts:

• You cannot convince the unredeemed to behave in a way that is pleasing to God absent conversion. (29)

Although conversion is the optimal change-engine, we shouldn’t disdain more modest changes. In this regard, I like what Martin Luther King stated:

• “It may be true that a law can’t make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

There are many things that are important that fall short of conversion. In another breath, Thomas admits this:

• People talk about William Wilberforce [and how, as an MP, he was instrumental in outlawing slavery] and use him as an example. But what they don’t really focus on is that Wilberforce prayed for hours every day…That’s why he was effective. (29)

I certainly agree with Thomas, and for this reason, we can and should infiltrate all areas of society with the light and in prayer!

When Thomas was asked about same-sex marriage, he responded:

• I think they ought to fight harder to protect their own marriages. (28) 

This is certainly true! Our morality begins at home. If we leave our wives, we have sacrificed the right to speak out against same-sex marriage, and we also make the church look like a hoard of hypocrites. (However, once we confess and renounce our sin, we then can speak.)

However, Thomas seems to want to restrict sexual issues to the home and church:

• Even if we could organize and harness the entire Christian population of America and even if they all agreed about everything – which they never would…- this still wouldn’t achieve the goals we seek, because such goals are not reached through the political system…You don’t cure societal breakdown through the government. You cure it through the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. (28-29)

However, I wonder if people will listen to us after we show them that we are utterly uninterested and uninvolved in the social-political arena – the horrors of slavery, communism or National Socialism come to mind – and thereby confess that the Christian faith is irrelevant to these public matters?

While it is true that our detractors deplore our involvement in politics, they also hold us accountable for our non-involvement! One atheist wrote:

• “European Christianity failed to prevent the mass slaughter between the faithful in the Great War and actually contributed to World War II, insofar as conservative churches supported fascism. The failure of the churches to provide sound moral guidance may help to explain the [European] Continent’s postwar lack of enthusiasm of religion.” (“The Big Religion Questions Finally Solved,” Free Inquiry, Jan. 2009, 29)

Darned if we do; darned if we don’t! Perhaps instead, we need to refocus on what our Lord would have us do. Perhaps we need to revisit the Hebrew Prophets and their prophetic calling before Israel.

Even today, many point the indicting finger at the Evangelical Church for its silence in the face of injustice and victimization. This shouldn’t be! We have a mandate to expose evil (Ephes. 5:11) and to be the light and the salt of the world (Mat. 5:14-16) not only within our own homes and churches. Meanwhile, many evangelicals are understandably praising the Catholic Church for its public stand on various social issues.

Sadly, our silence has given the Muslims ample political and religious capital. With some justification, they point to the moral decay of the Christian West – condoms, pornography, sex-trafficking, abortion, promiscuous sex, single parent families, drugs, crime – as evidence of the failure of Christianity.

Even when conversion is not in view, we still have the obligation to pursue what is right, irrespective of the arena:

• Amos 5:14-15 Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts…

I wonder if some of the weakness of the church is the result of abandoning our responsibilities. Amos promises that if we seek what is good – and this even includes “justice in the courts” – “then the LORD God Almighty will be with you.” This principle is true even apart from the likelihood of conversion!

Today, there is much talk about partnering in politics as opposed to oppositional politics. This seems to be Thomas’ favored approach. He has just written a book – Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War that is Destroying America – with his friend, the liberal Democratic strategist Bob Beckel.

While partnering – you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours - might be an answer to the “Partisan War,” it also presents many dangers to the Christian witness. I cannot imagine Elijah partnering with King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Nor can I imagine Jesus partnering with King Herod or Agrippa. How could we resist the temptation to compromise our message and calling and become “unequally yoked” in the context of such partnering?

Although there are Biblical precedents for partnering – Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah – and opportunities to promote the Gospel (Daniel’s witness before Nebuchadnezzar), too often, we send Christians into these trenches without adequate preparation. We send our children to “partner” with the university, and they return as their clones - not partners - while the university remains as secular as ever. But even the trenches belong to our Lord and are places to illuminate with His light.

Lord, grant us wisdom:

• Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)