A big surprise when I was doing my research on the historical impact of Jesus was how crucial His ideas were to the advances of modern medicine. As usual, let’s begin with the context, health care in the Greco-Roman world of Jesus’ day. There were a number of positives in that context. Hippocrates (460-c. 370 BC), contemporary of Socrates and Plato, is often called the “Father of Medicine”. He established medicine and healing as a distinct discipline of study. He believed diseases had natural causes, they were not punishment from the gods. But his work only went so far, because he was largely ignorant of anatomy and physiology. Like the Greek philosophers of his time, he seems to have felt that hands-on research was beneath his dignity.
A century or so after Jesus, Galen (129-c. 216 AD—Greek: Klaudios Galȇnos) crossed the boundaries of hands-on research to dissect monkeys and pigs, since dissection of humans was strictly forbidden at that time. In this way he developed a rudimentary understanding of anatomy and physiology. He also broke with the traditions of his day in seeing mind and body as a unity, the one affecting the other. So he pioneered theories of psychosomatic healing. He also performed some rudimentary surgeries. He is, perhaps, most famous for founding the great medical school in Pergamum, the ruins of which can be visited today. Because of his philosophical convictions, a number of psychosomatic treatments were performed there, so he could be called the father of whole person care.
But there is in fact no direct line from Galen to modern medicine. He was so famous later on that his erroneous theories were as influential as his promising ones, holding back the advance of medicine in the Middle Ages. And there were other problems. The last time I visited the ruins of Galen’s medical school and clinic, I noticed an 820 meter roadway leading to the entrance. Triage involved the patient having to walk that whole distance. If they made it, they were admitted for treatment, if they didn’t make it they were sent away. Health care in the Greco-Roman world was for “useful” people, not for general public. Among those useful people were soldiers, elites and gladiators. Helping the sick was considered a sign of weakness, so the sick were often ostracized, unless they were wealthy and powerful. “imperfect” children were often drowned, as they would never be “useful”.
A stronger foundation for modern medicine could be found in ancient Judaism. The sanitary practices in the Pentateuch, for example, foreshadow many public health practices today. Belief in one God steered the Jews away from magic as a response to sickness. Belief in the wholeness of human beings and in the goodness of the body would have made a huge difference in the Greco-Roman world had it taken Judaism more seriously. But then Jesus came and transformed these biblical ideas in a way that changed everything.
The first thing one notices about Jesus is that He seems to have spent much more time healing than teaching or preaching. And He not only commissioned His disciples to preach, but also “to heal” (Luke 9:2, ESV). Whenever His disciples entered a town, the first thing they were to do after having something to eat was to “heal the sick” that were in that town (Luke 10:8-9, ESV). Not only that, Jesus’ healings were in the context of great compassion for those He was healing (Matt 14:14; 20:34; Mark 1:31; 5:19; 6:34, etc.; Luke 7:13). And who can forget the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46), where Jesus tells His disciples that he identifies with the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and the sick. Along with Paul, Jesus acknowledged that the human body was a temple of God and should be treated with similar respect (John 2:19-21; 1 Cor 6:19-20). These teachings and practices of Jesus were in direct contrast with those of the Greco-Roman world.
It is clear that the early church understood Jesus’ commission to heal the sick to apply to them as well as His disciples. In the early centuries, before the church became the religion of the Empire, Christians did not prioritize the elites for healing but helped those who needed it the most, such as orphans, widows, the poor, the deformed, and the disabled. Once Christianity had become the religion of the Empire, one of the first actions (at the Council of Nicea) was a decree that hospitals should be erected wherever there were churches. Basil in the East and Fabiola in Rome founded the world’s first true hospitals. In contrast to Galen, these Christian hospitals focused on the poor. The wealthy were treated at home or at elite centers of healing. The cross-fertilization between the cathedral hospitals and cathedral schools created the seedbed of modern medicine, which we will explore in the next blog.
Let me close by acknowledging the dark side of the church on this issue. The early Christians went along with Greco-Roman society in forbidding the dissection of human bodies, so scientific medicine didn=t advance dramatically until after Reformation. Then things began to take off.
Tag Archives: the legacy of Jesus
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Jesus, Science and Research II (What If– 12)
As noted in the previous blog, the Greeks made an advance toward modern scientific research in seeing the world as something that ought to be understood. This was a big step in the direction of scientific research, rejecting the ideas that the world was the abode of gods that should be left alone, or that it was an illusion. But the Greek advance in scientific thinking never produced a scientific revolution because they despised matter and manual labor. These are two things you have to be engaged in and with, in order to advance scientific knowledge. In seeing matter and manual labor as goods Jesus set the table for a major change in people’s thinking.
The first impact of Jesus’ attitude toward the world was on the church. If God made the world and declared it good, science (based on scientia, the Latin word for knowledge) is simply “thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” in the words of Johannes Kepler. And if human beings are designed in the image of God, then they are to be as thoughtful and creative as God is. So the seeds of the “Scientific Revolution” were planted in early universities, which were all grounded in Christian principles and idea. As noted, these included freedom of thought and inquiry (not just rote learning), but also the dignity of labor and positive view of natural world. These “Jesus ideas” laid the foundation for what would later become known as scientific method.
To some degree the dominance of the medieval church and general ignorance of the Bible held the potential for scientific advances back until the Reformation rediscovered and again promulgated the teachings of Jesus. With the Reformation came an explosion of science. A number of factors were in play. It was a time of spiritual revival and intense Christian belief. Protestant society was open to reading, learning and independent thought. But the Reformation added one further ingredient, the idea that human beings are essentially sinful. If human hearts are sinful and perverse (Jer 17:9), then ideas cannot merely be asserted, they need to be demonstrated. Science, then, needs to be based on replicable experiments, where ideas are held accountable to data. Because even the results of experimentation can be manipulated, the only safety was to subject the results of science to Scripture. And so the Reformation came up with the idea of the two books of revelation, the Bible and the evidence of the natural world. The words of God and the works of God should be in harmony.
If one has any doubts about the impact of the Reformation on the development of the scientific revolution, one need only look more closely at the kind of people who laid the groundwork for modern science. Virtually all scientists until 1750 were fervent, believing Christians, including the key founders of scientific research. The names are legendary, their Christian commitments, not as well known. We can start with Isaac Newton (who studied at Cambridge University). He is widely considered the father of calculus, the laws of motion, and the binomial theorem, all foundational to scientific research. Less well known is that he took time to write commentaries on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation. He studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. There is no better window on his Christian commitment than his own diary, where he puts in writing his innermost thoughts. There you will find lines like the following: “We are in . . . his son Jesus Christ, this is the true God.” “Christ died for our sins.” “Christ hath loved us and hath given himself for us.” Newton was clearly no secular humanist. He was driven and motivated by his relationship with Jesus.
Johannes Kepler is thought of as the father of modern astronomy, celestial mechanics, and even the pinhole camera. Interestingly, he began his studies to become a pastor, but he was too good in math and his teachers quickly urged him to consider moving in that direction. It is a good thing for human history that he did. But he never abandoned his commitment to the gospel and kept it in mind as he pondered the universe. In his diary you will find statements like, “Before the universe was created, there were no numbers except the Trinity. . .” Like Kepler, Blaise Pascal was a committed Christian. He was also the father of geometry, physics, the scientific method, and the mechanical computer. His commitment was put on record in his diary: “Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you . . . . Jesus Christ . . . may I never be separated from him.”
The Royal Society of Great Britain was the first great scientific association. Yet its founder were not only Christian, 62% of them were Puritans, the strictest branch of English Christianity. And the founder of most branches of science were not only Christians, they were creationists. To believe that God created the universe does not mean you will do bad science, some of the greatest of scientists had no problem integrating their Christian beliefs with their scientific endeavors. The list of names is extensive, I will share only a few. The following scientific disciplines were founded by committed Christians: Antiseptic surgery (Joseph Lister), bacteriology (Louis Pasteur), calculus (Newton and Leibniz), celestial mechanics (Johannes Kepler), chemistry (Robert Boyle), comparative anatomy (George Cuvier), electromagnetics (Michael Faraday), galactic astronomy (William Herschel), genetics (Gregor Mendel), glacial geology (Louis Agassiz), isotopic chemistry (William Ramsey). No less an authority than Rodney Stark affirms that 51 of the 52 most influential scientists of the Scientific Revolution were committed Christians. At least half of them would be what we might call “born-again” believers, active and devoted followers of Jesus.
With all these historical facts in mind, it is fair to wonder if science as we know it would exist had Jesus never been born. Had Jesus never existed would there be an internet, cell phones, cars, airplanes, central heat and AC, electric lights? I suspect the world would be a very different place if Jesus had never been born. Much of what brings us comfort and joy in today’s world we ultimately owe to Jesus.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Jesus, Science and Research (What If– 11)
When it comes to the origins of modern-day science and research, there is a popular narrative that goes something like this: The ancient Greeks were fledgling scientists that, left alone, would have brought the world to where we are today even sooner. But then, unfortunately, Christianity took over the Mediterranean world, put a stop to scientific thinking, and the result was the Dark Ages. It was the Muslims in the Middle East that invented science and they passed it on to the Europeans, resulting in the Renaissance. To this day, Christianity is doing all it can to stifle science. Conclusion: Christianity and science are fundamentally incompatible. Get rid of Christianity and science would flourish as never before and everyone would benefit.
But this popular narrative ignores a number of historical facts. So once again, let’s take a closer look. It is likely true to say that scientific thinking, at least in the Western world, began with the Greeks. But the Greek philosophers never produced a “scientific age”. The main reason for this is not the interference of Christianity, but the methodology of the Greek philosophers themselves. You see, the Greek philosophers were deductive thinkers rather than experimental researchers. They despised the material world and they despised manual labor. As a result, while they came up with many brilliant theories of how things work, they didn’t test their theories (what we call research), as that would require literally getting their hands dirty. They thought long and hard about how many teeth might reside in a horse’s mouth, but never actually opened a horse’s mouth to find out (gross!). There were exceptions to this general trend, like Archimedes and Galen, but as a rule they did not encourage the kind of hands-on research so characteristic of today’s world. As we noted in the previous blogs on education, they also emphasized memorization and conformity over critical thinking. The proof of that? They never produced universities and they did not produce a scientific revolution.
Elsewhere in world, it was no different. The Arabs were inherently fatalistic, so they didn’t try to transform the world, they believed only God could do that. Animists, on the other hand, equated the natural world with the gods and you don=t experiment with “the gods”. In India, the prevailing philosophy was that the physical world is unreal, an illusion. And if that is the case, scientific experimentation doesn’t make a lot of sense. Things were more promising in China. Chinese people invented the abacus, the crossbow, gunpowder, paper, and printing. But without anything like the Reformation, Chinese science didn’t go very far. There was no “Scientific Revolution” in China until recent times.
Then Jesus came. Like a mustard seed, His view of the world gradually brought about changes in the way people thought, and these changes made all the difference over time. Jesus rejected the idea that the material world was evil and, therefore, unworthy of investigation. For Him the world was a gift from a loving God to the human race. Rather than being despised, the world was to be mourned as a victim of sin, but delighted in as a gift of love and a glimpse of the glory of God. It was not to be worshiped, as the animists did, but it was to be cherished, cultivated, investigated and enjoyed. In this Jesus was building on His Jewish heritage, which affirmed that God created the world and that the world He made was “very good” (Gen 1:31). Human beings were created to care for the earth, to understand and shape it (Gen 1:28). The material world was a positive thing that human beings could preserve and transform with their labor (Gen 2:15). Jesus affirmed the Jewish belief in the dignity of labor by His own practice as a carpenter or stone worker. A great philosopher, Jesus did what the Greek philosophers would never do, get His hands dirty improving the world around Him.
While Jesus and the Jews of His day shared this view of the earth and the dignity of labor, Judaism had only a marginal influence on the Greco-Roman world. It was the influence of Jesus and the Jesus movement that eventually prevailed in the Greco-Roman world. Jesus set the foundation for scientific research and also the basis for critical thinking (Isa 1:18; John 8:32, 36). The search for truth was affirmed as a central task for those who would follow Jesus. In the words of Alfred North Whitehead: “Science is grounded in the Christian conviction about the rationality of God.” On what basis would Whitehead make such an assertion? We will look at the evidence for that in the next blog.
Summing up. The Greeks made an advance toward modern scientific research in seeing the world as something that ought to be understood. The Hebrews provided support for that idea in seeing the world, not as an object of worship, but as a cause for worship, it is a record of God’s mighty acts. Collectively, this was a big step in the direction of scientific research, rejecting the ideas that the world was the abode of gods that should be left alone, or that it was an illusion. But the Greek advance in scientific thinking never combined with the Jewish idea of the world as a gift of God worthy of investigation. At least not before Jesus came. Only then did the idea that the world should be both understood and shaped begin to transfer people’s thinking.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Jesus and Education II (What If– 10)
In the first part of our analysis of Jesus and Education we noticed the transforming power of Jesus’ teachings on education within the church. But in this second part we will discover that Jesus not only transformed education within the church, but ultimately the entire world. While institutions of higher learning existed in ancient Europe, Persia, China and India, and later in the Islamic world, universities as we know them today were an outgrowth of the cathedral schools in the High Middle Ages. From 1180 to 1210, the Universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge were chartered along the lines of the universities that have been so central to our lives today. So the concept of today’s university (the free and critical study of everything that is knowable) is a Christian innovation. The earliest universities were founded on the principles of fostering the image of God, freedom of independent thought, and encouraging intellectual exploration and critical thinking. While these universities began with programs in Christian theology, canon law and the Greek classics, they laid the foundation of both the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
Some might question the influence of Jesus on the founding of these universities. So it may be helpful to review some historical artifacts that demonstrate the connection. The motto of Oxford University is: “The Lord is my Light.” This is associated on the Oxford crest with three crowns, representing the Trinity. Cambridge University was founded shortly after Oxford. Its motto is: “Here is Light and Sacred Draughts”. Cambridge produced such famous world-changing Christians as Isaac Newton, Sr Francis Bacon, John Milton, and John Harvard (more on him later). The development of universities was greatly supported by the invention of printing in 1456 by Johann Gutenberg. Up until then, most people saw a Bible only in church, if the church has a hand-written copy (many or most did not). Gutenberg was deeply motivated by the idea of putting the Bible in everyone’s hands, so the gospel of Jesus could penetrate deep into the heart of Europe. While it was Jesus that motivated universities and printing, the impact of these developments went far beyond religion.
The combination of freedom of thought, critical thinking and the availability of the Bible and other books made the Reformation possible. And what the Reformation did was to put the Bible at the very center of society. John Calvin believed that if everyone read the Bible, the Reformation would last. He also believed that if education were not grounded in the Bible, it would ultimately do more harm than good. Something to think about today. It was also in Protestant Europe after the Reformation that many educational innovations were developed. Martin Luther promoted education and literacy for all, without exceptions. Johann Sturm, a Lutheran layman, developed the idea of graded education. Friedrich Froebel, a Lutheran pastor, founded the idea of Kindergarten. Gallaudet expanded education to the deaf, and Braille to the blind. All of these individuals were committed Christians and were motivated by the teachings of Jesus and the gospel.
The earliest American universities also had Christian origins without exception. John Harvard, a graduate of Cambridge mentioned earlier and a pastor, founded Harvard University (1636), along with other Cambridge grads. It is no accident that the town where Harvard is located is called Cambridge, in honor of the Christian university that inspired the founding of Harvard. The spirit and motivation of the founders of Harvard is witnessed in the founding stone at the heart of Harvard Yard. There one can still read today: “After God had carried us safely to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God=s worship, and settled the civil government; one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning, and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” The motivation for Harvard’s founding was an educated Protestant ministry. In case that seems impossible today, not the Harvard motto which is found on the Harvard crest: ATruth for Christ and the Church.@ And at the center of Harvard Yard is the Memorial Church. Yale was founded by pastors. Princeton was founded Ato promote the Kingdom of the Great Redeemer.@ Today, the top ten universities in the world were all found by Christians. While one might dispute one or the other of these, the ten names need no introduction to most people: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, Yale. As we will see, a disproportionate percentage of the world’s scientific and medical advances arise out of these ten, all a part of the legacy of Jesus.
Universal public education in America was founded by the Puritans in early 1600s. Every town to provide free education for all children, so everyone can read the Bible. In fact, American public education was almost totally Christian until 1837. Secular public education, promoted by Horace Mann and later John Dewey, was a reaction to the Christian dominance of education up to that time. While public education has strongly supported the ideal of education and literacy for all, the increasing demand for charter schools in the United States indicates that Christian education is still considered the best by many. Interestingly, literacy in the United States was nearly 100% in the year 1900, before the full secularization of education was accomplished. Today it is more like 89-90%. Could the secularization of universal education be part of the problem? Without the motivation of reading God’s Word, literacy may not seem as critical asa it once did.
In light of that, Adventist education was founded to continue the American Protestant heritage of education for all grounded in the Bible. This has had profound impact around the world. Fernando and Ana Stahl, for example, revolutionized Peruvian society by providing the indigenous population with an Adventist education in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. In many countries today, SDA colleges and universities are considered the best in the country. One could perhaps say that Andrews and Loma Linda Universities are the Oxford and Cambridge of a new Christian university movement. It remains to be seen what the outcome of that movement will be around the world outside of Europe and North America.
Some scholars believe that if Jesus had never been born, literacy around the world might be 10-15%, much as it was in the ancient Greco-Roman world. It is possible that there would be no universities like the ones we have today, the seedbed of most of the scientific and technological advances in today’s world. If there were no universities as we know them today, there might be no scientific revolution and no revolution in health care such as we enjoy today. I would argue, on purely historical grounds, that Jesus is likely the most influential person who ever lived.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Jesus and Education (What If– 9)
Our first historical account of the impact of Jesus on human history will explore the topic of education. In the Greco-Roman world (a term for the world of the Roman Empire in which Jesus was born, lived, died and rose again), education developed a number of elements that have influenced us today. But it was a fairly limited operation. For one thing, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not bother to educate girls. Their place was in the home where there would be no need for them to know philosophy, history, science or geopolitics (or so it was thought). Even with boys, it was only the sons of the elite that got an education. It is estimated that, at the most, only 10-15% of the population of the Empire could read. And the education offered by the Greeks and the Romans did not invite critical thinking, but focused more on memorization and conformity with previous opinions. Conformity and memorization are important values up to a point, but they would never have led to the advances in science, technology and health care that we enjoy today.
Then Jesus came. As a First-Century Jew He affirmed some fundamental teachings of the Old Testament that ran counter to the Greco-Roman standards and added some important wrinkles of His own. According to Genesis 1:27 all human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God. That implies high value and dignity for all human beings, who were designed in special ways to be like God and to continually grow into great knowledge of God and God’s creation. Jesus’ behavior toward the poor, the marginalized, and women was a living demonstration of His belief in that teaching. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 is also a foundation piece of Jewish education: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” According to this passage, education is important and requires literacy. One must read the Bible in order to understand it. And it is important for all children all the time. But by Jesus’ day Jews, like their Gentile counterparts, were educating only male elites, which blunted the force of Moses’ teachings on education. They lost focus on the Mosaic mandate, Jesus came to restore and enhance it.
Jesus did not just come for Jews, for men, for elites, He came as the “Light of the world” (John 8:12) which “enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). The ideal education is one that has Jesus at the heart of it. He was both the greatest teacher and the greatest subject ever. And in case the “light of the world” concept was too subtle for His disciples, Jesus was explicit in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go and teach the whole world.” Education was for all nations. And it was for all people, including women. There is evidence in the gospels that Jesus had female disciples (Luke 8:1-3; 10:39-42; John 11:28). Jesus also taught that true education sets people free to reason and think critically (John 8:32). The Bible can be misunderstood (John 5:39-40), so it must be carefully studied. In contrast with the Greco-Roman world, Jesus encouraged people to think for themselves rather than simply conform their ideas to what has been taught before.
The impact of Jesus’ teaching and practice on the early church was dramatic. Acts 5:42 reports: “They did not cease teaching.” So Christian schools educated everybody from the first, including females and slaves. Literacy was a high value, so people could study the Scriptures for themselves. This phenomenon was revolutionary in the Greco-Roman world. After the first couple centuries, education was strongly located in monastic schools. But as Christianity went mainstream with Constantine, it was mandated that every major church or cathedral was expected to house a school. Wherever early Christian missionaries went, they introduced education for all classes of people in their own languages. So it is not surprising that Ulfilas (4th Century), the Christian missionary, created an alphabet for the Goth languages, so the Gothic peoples could become literate in the Bible. Cyril and Methodius (9th Century) did the same for the Slavic languages. In subtle ways, the teachings of Jesus transformed the world in very practical ways. Even today, the Wycliffe Bible translators are at the forefront of providing literacy to tribes that do not have written languages.
But as impactful as they were, the cathedral schools were still the equivalent of today’s K-12 education. As time went on, the need was felt to advance beyond the cathedral schools to create institutions of higher learning. By the year 1000, early developments in higher education were beginning to happen, particularly in the Benedictine monasteries. In the next blog, we will explore how Christian higher education ended up transforming the entire world.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? The “Mustard-Seed Principle” (What If– 8)
When talking about the impact of Jesus we are not talking about a straight line. The world did not just magically change the moment Jesus arrived. Jesus introduced principles that fundamentally challenged the world of His day and gradually, over centuries, altered the way many human beings thought and lived, resulting in massive transformation of the existing order of things. This can be demonstrated in so many areas of human thought and action: Education, science and technology, health care, the value of human life, slavery, civil rights, religious liberty, even music, literature and the arts. Some call this the “mustard-seed principle.”
In Luke 13:18-19 Jesus said: “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” The Kingdom of God was one of the analogies Jesus used to describe His mission in the world. In this passage He explains the analogy of the Kingdom with another analogy, the analogy of the mustard seed. His ministry was like the mustard seed, which is so small as to seem incapable of changing the world. But that tiny seed can grow into a tree-like bush, large enough for birds to make nest in its branches. The act of putting the seed into the ground does not immediately change the landscape. But given enough time and the right kind of environment, the resulting plant can make a major impact on the landscape.
To deepen the point on that same occasion, Jesus used a different analogy to illustrate the same basic principle: “And again he said, ‘To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.’” Luke 13:20-21. Jesus’ life and teachings were like leaven added to a dough of bread. There is no immediate visible difference between the leavened dough and the unleavened dough. But the leaven begins doing its work in the dough and over time, it rises and changes the outcome of both the dough and the baked bread that results. The impact of Jesus’ life and teachings cannot be fully assessed in terms of their immediate impact. One has to view a gradual, almost imperceptible transformation of the world over the course of human history.
Paul addresses the same issue in Romans 12:1-2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” The gospel of Jesus Christ does not always have immediate, visible impact. It involves a gradual transformation of people and societies. It requires critical thought and application to achieve maximum impact. It may require deep commitment and sacrificial action on the part of many to achieve its impact on the world. It often requires going against the grain of prevailing orthodoxies.
The early Christians didn’t set out to change the world. They didn’t see overthrowing Rome as a major task. But the transformation of the world would happen gradually, as a by-product of changed lives. The influence of Jesus was and is not obvious in the world. But it ended up overturning the world of His time and has resulted more recently in massive transformation of the way human beings do things and experience life. I will be exploring several of these transformations in blogs to come. We will begin next time with the theme of education. Education is, perhaps, the greatest agent for transforming the world today. But the transforming power of education today is largely a by-product of Jesus’ life and teachings. Seem like an over-reach? Just stay tuned.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? My Goal for the Rest of This Series (What If– 7)
Anyone can draw up a moral code, the challenge is getting anyone to follow it without some sense of a divine standard. There are really only two options for developing a societal code of morals and ethics. You can follow an inspirational figure like Jesus or you can bow to some superior power who enforces its moral and ethical will on others. In the history of the human race, it appears that no one has been more inspirational than Jesus of Nazareth. Remove Him from the equation and His message becomes like a cut flower. Separated from its roots, it is still beautiful, but it won=t last long. The 20th Century showed us what the world would be like if Jesus had never been born. It also showed us what the universe would be like, if Satan were in charge. For all its horrors, the 20th Century is crucial evidence in the Great Controversy. God=s desire is for our good, He truly can be trusted. And the best evidence for that is Jesus’ impact on history.
I cannot prove to you, as a historian, that Jesus was God in human flesh. What I can say is that He was the most influential human being who ever lived. If you have committed your life to Him and He is real to you, you are not an idiot. If you have not committed your life to Him, you would be wise to consider it, it might be the smartest decision you=ll ever make.
But is the whole story of the Jesus of history really being told? Would the world really be better off if Jesus had never been born? A good historical researcher will not be limited by one side of the story, but will consider the whole body of evidence. Based on the whole body of evidence, I would argue that Jesus= life and teaching unleashed more innovation and positive outcomes than any other human being in all of history. Our very familiarity with Christianity as it is today can blind us to the revolutionary and transformative implications of Jesus= life and teachings.
In this series, I am not aiming to prove Jesus was God and that all should follow Him. History alone cannot do that. But I aim to show that purely as a human being, Jesus did more to influence subsequent history than any other person who ever lived. In the blog to follow, I hope to show that if Jesus had never been born, higher education as we know it would likely never have happened. And if higher education had never happened, the fruits of higher education, like science, technology and advanced health care, would likely not have happened either. I can’t wait to take you on this journey with me.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? What the World Could Be Like Without the Influence of Jesus (What If– 6)
With the death of Christian faith in Europe in the Twentieth Century, we got a glimpse of what the whole world might be like had Jesus never been born. The Twentieth Century saw the rise of brutal totalitarian states like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Millions of people were confined to Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps. Millions of these were either shot, gassed, hanged or died of starvation and disease. The century also witnessed the return of abortion and infanticide, things that had largely been eliminated under Christian influence in the past. There were brutal wars in which tens of millions were killed. And all of this centered in the formerly Christian continent of Europe.
With the rise of relativity in physics and the uncertainty of quantum mechanics, people began to apply these ideas to the realm of morality and ethics. Albert Einstein, for one, would have none of it. For him, relativity applied to physics only, it had no implications for ethics and morality. But most people don’t think as deeply and consistently as Einstein. There was a natural tendency to think that relativity and quantum uncertainty pull the rug out from under the Christian moral compass, and open the way to a greater kind of freedom. But even a great atheist like Nietzsche was not fooled. He warned already in the Nineteenth Century: “The collapse of the religious impulse would leave a huge vacuum.” The history of the Twentieth Century told us how that vacuum was filled. It was filled with the kind of inhumanity toward others that most people thought had been eliminated from the human race through evolution, education and material progress.
During the 20th Century a horrific total of more than 170 million people were killed. Of this number at least 130 million were killed because of atheistic ideology. 15 million deaths can be attributed to the Nazis. 40 million deaths can be laid at the feet of Stalin and Soviet Russia. An even more horrific total of 70 plus million died at the hands of Maoist China. Additional millions were killed in Cambodia due to the Communistic ideology of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. In these horrific slaughters we can see the first fruits of a post-Jesus world. In the words of David Bentley Hart: “The will to lead modern humanity onward into a post-religious promised land of liberty, justice, and equality has always been accompanied by a willingness to kill without measure.” This echos the words of Edmund Burke a couple of centuries earlier: “Human behavior needs restraint, the less within, the more is needed without.” I would suggest that whatever positives the 20th Century brought to the West were a legacy of Christian culture. The distinctive contribution of that century was unparalleled atrocities.
If these numbers do not trouble you in a world that contains nearly eight billion people, keep in mind that in the 2000 years of Christianity, with all of its horrors, the total number of people killed unjustly by Christian governments totals about 17 million maximum. The Inquisition is rightly criticized as an affront to human freedom and dignity, but its 30,000 victims pale in comparison with Auschwitz’s minimum of 1.1 million and possibly as high as two million. Consider also the great amount of criticism leveled against Christianity on account of the Salem Witch trials, which killed 20-25 people. Every one of those executions was a tragedy, but compared to Auschwitz, where technology allowed the killing of people on a mass scale, this was a relatively minor event in the history of humanity’s inhumanity of others.
Without God, moral relativism reigns. There is no solid foundation for ethical or moral thinking. When moral relativism takes hold of a society, human life becomes cheap. When you devalue God, you devalue human life. I understand that Napoleon once said he saw first hand what men without God look like during the French Revolution: “AOne does not govern such men, he shoots them down. They have descended to the level of beasts.@ The bottom line is: You become like the God you worship. If you worship actors, athletes and politicians, you become more and more like them. If you worship power, you become cruel and self-serving. If you worship wealth, you become greedy, and you lose compassion. If you worship self, you become your own worst image of yourself.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? How Can the Dark Side and the Bright Side of Christianity Co-exist? (What If– 5)
Some people see only the positives of Christianity and find in it a source of pride and a sense of superiority over others. Others see only the negatives of Christianity and find it a curse to humanity that would be best eliminated. In this series I am trying to be honest with both aspects. But seeing the negatives in all their horror (in contrast to the transforming power of Christ’s life and teachings) raises the question, how can the same religion be so powerful for good and so evil at the same time?
You see, religion is a human response to the perception that God is at work in a particular context. To celebrate God’s actions and teachings in a particular context, and to create a context in which others can learn about these, humans beings create a religion. And as a response to the perception of God’s presence in the world, religion is a beautiful thing. But over time, religions tend to become less and less focused on the original mission and more and more focused on preserving the institution. And so every religion has a beautiful side and a dark side. The overall biblical explanation for this is that all religious institutions, including Christianity, are a battleground in the universal conflict between Christ and Satan. God is at work in Christians and in Christian institutions. But Satan is also at work in the same. History is the evidence that both forces have been and are at work among the followers of Jesus. So the broader, biblical answer to the problem is that Christianity is an arena in the cosmic conflict between Christ and Satan over the character and government of God.
In the New Testament, more specifically, there are a number of considerations that address this issue. One of them is the concept of the two ages (Mark 10:29-31; Luke 20:34-35), the now and the not yet. Jesus brought in the new age of the Kingdom (Matt 4:23; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43), but the old age of sin and suffering is still with us (Rom 8:18-23). So the New Testament speaks of the same things as present realities (the now—Heb 6:5), yet not fully so (the not yet—Heb 9:26-28). The life of heaven has been realized yet not fully realized (I Cor 10:11 and 15:22-24; 1 Pet 1:20 and 1:5). So the life of the church was expected to be a struggle more than a foretaste of heaven. There would be tares among the wheat, even in the church (Matt 13:24-20). There would be a Judas, even among the disciples. So the New Testament predicted in advance that the church would include people of all kinds, some of them teaching things contrary to the teachings of Jesus (Luke 12:51-53; Acts 20:29-30; Rom 2:24; 1 Tim 4:1). The founding document of the Christian faith was very clear that the future church would portray a very mixed picture (while very symbolic, Revelation 13 seems to offer a similar prediction about the church).
The mixed picture of the church can also be understood in terms of behavioral science. Sociologists speak of two types of religion that people may embrace. Intrinsic religion is freely chosen as a good in itself, worth pursuing on its own merits. One goes to church because one wants to, not because of outside factors. Extrinsic religion is a means to another end. One goes to church to please others, to keep a job, or to look good within a particular community. From a Christian perspective one might distinguish between genuinely converted and those who are there for other reasons, whether or not they realize that. Christian faith as a whole should not be judged on the basis of those who are not truly committed or do not truly understand the implications of Jesus’ teachings. So there needs to be a distinction between “Christianity” (as the faith of Jesus) and “Christendom” (the institutional version that is often compromised by the desire for wealth and power in this world. For many the faith goes no deeper than commitment to a football team. Not everyone who identifies themselves as Christian has been transformed by the gospel. While the history of the Christian church is very disappointing, it should not be surprising.
In today’s world the only church that will have positive influence on society is a church that goes back to the basics of Jesus’ teaching. It will avoid worldly forms of church government.
It will renounce political power and influence. It will root out corruption (enhancing wealth and worldy power) within itself (both systemic corruption and individual corruption). It will renounce intimidation in religion or church politics. In short it will be a church that embraces weakness out of an overwhelming focus on the character of God that embraced the cross. Those who truly know God will not settle for less.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? The Dark Side of Christian History III
The saga of misdeeds performed by seemingly committed Christians is not only out there in places like Germany, Spain, France, and Rwanda. America has its own questionable history. One incident that is frequently mentioned is the Salem Witch Trials, which occurred in colonial Massachusetts in 1692-1693. Over that time period several hundred people, both men and women, and including small children, were accused of witchcraft. Some twenty were executed and others died in prison. What is particularly horrifying is that these executions all occurred in a relatively small twin community where people largely knew each other, and they were encouraged and supported by the famous preacher Cotton Mather. The communities of Salem Village and Salem Town were, in fact, rather fractious to begin with. Personal vendettas, combined with some extreme views regarding the operations of Satan in everyday life, led to an escalating situation in which many people seem to have been falsely accused, and many people wrongly executed. Torture, even of children, was at times used to gain both confessions and accusations. While such witch trials in colonial America were not unique to Salem, Massachusetts, the scale of the Salem witch trials was unprecedented and led to the general rejection of “theocracy” as a model for American government. On the positive side, the biblical requirements of “two or three witnesses” led the church to see that these trials and executions were not based on sound religion, so the church belatedly brought them to an end after a year and several months. But that intervention could not recall the toll in lives and in the emotional and spiritual consequences of these witch trials.
As we will see, slavery was pretty much the norm around the world until movements in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries finally brought it to an end. But before that, the slave trade was often practiced even in Protestant lands and was frequently justified by the misuse of biblical texts. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slavery was brought to an end in America, but continued on for another hundred years in a different form through segregation and the power of the lynching tree. While lynching usually took place in the hours of darkness, at times it occurred in the light of day with the full blessing of Protestant churches and pastors. And the consequences of slavery and its aftermath still impact African-American communities to this day. In South Africa, apartheid became official government policy in the Twentieth Century, with the strong support of the prevailing Protestant church.
From the Fifteenth through the Twentieth Centuries, colonialism was the public manifestation of the “Enlightenment” sense that white Europeans were inherently superior to others in science, technology, and even religion. While some Christians in general and many Adventists in particular, protested the exploitation of native peoples around the world, Christian missions often benefitted from and participated in activities that led to the marginalization of many non-European cultures around the world. To this day, lighter-skinned people often expect and get preferential treatment around the world, a lingering legacy of colonialism. And this legacy has resulted in some non-Christian cultures claiming the moral high ground in their interactions with the Christian West.
The above examples are probably sufficient to show that I am well aware of the kinds of accusations leveled against the Christian church today and of the validity of many of those accusations. There is much more that could be said, including the exploitation of child labor in England during the Industrial Revolution and the corrupt behavior of some television evangelists and their treatment of women. One could also add the sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse of children by clergy, most prominently Roman Catholic priests. All of this must be acknowledged as part of the legacy of Christianity. As a result, unprecedented numbers of young people in the West have abandoned religion entirely and often all faith in God. The Asins of the church@ are used as an excuse to reject Jesus and all the good He brought to the world.
But is the whole story really being told? Would the world really be better off if Jesus had never been born? A good historical researcher will not be limited by one side of the story, but will consider the whole body of evidence. Based on the whole body of evidence, I would argue that Jesus= life and teaching unleashed more innovation and positive outcomes than any other human being in all of history. But before we get to that more positive story, I want to explore the question of why? If the impact of Jesus’ life and teachings is so positive, why have so many of His followers had such a negative impact on the world?