It’s the Air We Breathe
At the end of the Second World War the Allied nations began to “denazify” Germany. After the final surrender, they began the long process of identifying Nazis and uprooting the influence of Nazism across all of society—in culture, media, economics, and politics. The goal was to create a Germany that was post-Hitler and, therefore, post-Nazi.
It seems to me that in the West today we are witnessing an attempt to “dechristianize” our society—to identify and destroy the influence of Christianity wherever it exists. The goal, of course, is to create a society that is post-Jesus and, therefore, post-Christian. Christian sexual morals are now said to be bigotry, Christian understandings of marriage and family are now said to be oppressive, Christian notions of justice are now said to be discriminatory. On and on it goes and over time this seek-and-destroy mission is transforming society around us.
But there is a strange irony to all of this—an irony few people are willing to understand or acknowledge: the very tools people use to criticize Christianity are tools they owe to Christianity. The values they hold and the goals they wish to see realized are values and goals that would not exist without the influence and dominance of the Christian faith. People long for equality, compassion, freedom, and progress, ignorantly supposing that these can only exist apart from societies that have been formed around Christian values. The reality, though, is that they only long for these values because they have been so long immersed in a Christianized society.
This is the subject of Glen Scrivener’s fascinating new book The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. “Here’s the contention of this book,” he says. “If you’re a Westerner—whether you’ve stepped foot inside a church or not, whether you’ve clapped eyes on a Bible or not, whether you consider yourself an atheist, pagan or Jedi Knight—you are a goldfish, and Christianity is the water in which you swim.” What he wishes to do is to help his readers awaken to this reality, to help them see that we all “depend on values and goals—and ways of thinking about values and goals—that have been deeply and distinctively shaped by the Jesus-revolution (otherwise known as ‘Christianity’). These values are now so all-pervasive that we consider them to be universal, obvious and natural: the air we breathe.”
He writes the book for three audiences. The first is the “nones,” the growing segment of society who have no religious affiliation. To these he says, “I’d like to take you on a journey from the ancient world to the modern and from the beginning of the Bible to the end of history. I hope that along the way we’ll have some fun, that you’ll get a deeper appreciation for the values you cherish, and, most of all, that you’ll see the power and profundity of Jesus and his revolution.”
The second audience is the “dones,” those who have decided they are done with Christianity. For these people his “desire is to take your critiques more seriously, not less. I want you to embrace those difficulties and press into them since, in truly owning those standards, you may well find yourself coming closer to the essence of Christian faith.”
The third audience is the “wons,” the people who already profess Christ. To these he says “I want to encourage you to see that what we’re witnessing in the world are the ongoing convulsions of the Jesus revolution—a revolution predicted, proclaimed and propelled from the depths of history and experienced in the details of the everyday. In tracing the development of this revolution, I hope you’ll be strengthened in faith and encouraged to share it. Jesus Christ is not a peripheral concern for a few spiritual hobbyists. He’s the Lord of history, and in him our lives, our beliefs, our practices and our world make sense.”
With these introductory matters in place, Scrivener begins a fascinating “journey” in which he first takes his readers to the ancient world to show what kind of society Christianity was born into—a society of slavery, oppression, violence, and partiality. Then, over seven chapters, he explores seven values that contemporary Westerners long for, and in each case shows how they arose from the Christian faith, not apart from it. Thus he dedicates a chapter to equality (the equal moral status of all human beings), compassion (the idea that a society is best judged by its treatment of its weakest members), consent (the powerful have no right to force themselves on the weak), enlightenment (education and opportunity for all), science (the conviction that studying the natural world helps us understand the world and improve our lives), freedom (people are not property and each of us ought to have control over our own lives), and progress (moral improvement over time that allows us to reform the evils of society). The final chapters wrap up the arguments and call the reader to not only acknowledge the influence of Christianity but to turn to Christ.
The Air We Breathe has many notable strengths and space permits me to list just a handful of them.
The first is the way it corrals and extends the arguments of a number of contemporary historians and sociologists. Those who read widely may recognize the influence of scholars like Larry Siedentop, Tom Holland, Rodney Stark, Kyle Harper, and Joseph Henrich, with Jordan Peterson making a couple of key appearances as well. Scrivener shows how even many non-Christians are making these very same arguments.
The second is in keeping the writing simple. Though this could be a very heavy topic, and though it has been debated and analyzed in scholarly tomes, The Air We Breathe is meant for the general reader and is written in such a way as to be accessible to all. Those who wish to dive deeper can easily follow the trail through the many careful citations and recommendations.
The third strength is in making the book not merely educational (though it is certainly that) but also evangelistic. Scrivener does not merely want people to understand that “a man on a cross has made our Western world” but also to acknowledge that “the reason a man on a cross has made our world is because he is our Maker—God himself.” This book may well prove a spiritual encouragement to “nones,” “dones,” and “wons” alike.
The Air We Breathe is one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year and one I appreciated from beginning to end. I hope many people will buy it, read it, and allow it to give them a deeper appreciation for Christianity’s influence on our society. Better yet, I hope it will give them a deeper interest and deeper confidence in the Christ of Christianity.
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A La Carte (January 20)
Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today there are new Kindle deals on books from Kevin DeYoung, Ray Ortlund, and others.
Meanwhile, Westminster Books has pre-order deals on some of the books due to be published in the weeks ahead.
(Yesterday on the blog: You Just Can’t Have It All)
Job and the Deadly Spiritual Equation
Pierce Taylor Hibbs: “Job is one of my favorite books of the Bible. That usually catches people by surprise. Why would a book about a holy man falling prey to Satanic torment be something you want to read? Despite the initial fear the book induces, it’s extremely comforting and relevant for our understanding of trauma and suffering. Job shows that the worst still leads to the best. And of the many ways in which the book is still relevant, there’s one that stands out to me because of how prevalent it is in our times. It’s what I call ‘the deadly spiritual equation.’”
Did Jesus die for the sins of every person or only for the elect?
Here, courtesy of Ligonier Ministries, is a solid series of answers to a common question.
Humility Is the Main Ingredient of Prayer, Repentance, and Thanksgiving
Thomas Schreiner: “C.S. Lewis famously said, ‘If you don’t think you are conceited, you are very conceited indeed.’ Certainly that applies to humility: if you think you are humble, you are probably suffused with pride. In this article, we will consider briefly how prayer, repentance, and thanksgiving are related to humility.”
While You Were Sleeping
In this article, Madelyn Canada reminds us that God’s plans carry on, even when we can’t clearly see them.
Glue Sticks and Bible Songs
I enjoyed this little celebration of children and their teachers. “In his wisdom and grace, God gives us people, situations, and experiences that we often don’t recognize as priceless gifts at the time. Some of those gifts were given to me 20 years ago, and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to truly appreciate those busy days of teaching, corralling, discipling, and loving the lively and earnest little children that were entrusted to my care every Sunday morning.”
By Steps and Degrees
“Certain doctrines of Reformed theology, and their associated sub-doctrines, are brought into the limelight more than others. For example, there is a rich endowment of Protestant works on the doctrine of justification. One cannot say the same, however, of the sub-doctrine of ‘preparatory grace,’ which has not historically garnered much public attention within Protestant soteriology.” Here’s a short introduction to it.
Flashback: How to Make Accountability Work
Here are seven principles for effective accountability; each is further explained by showing what effective accountability is and is not.Living like Christ without ever teaching our children about Christlike living is similar to lifestyle evangelism without ever sharing our faith. —Bob Kellemen
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A La Carte (August 15)
Grace and peace to you today.
Crossway has a number of Kindle deals on theological books.
(Yesterday on the blog: God Means To Make Something Of Us)
The twisted self
“Many of us are familiar with books and movies in which plots revolve around characters who find themselves trapped in worlds where nothing works in quite the way they expect. Whether it is Alice wandering through Wonderland or Keanu Reeves trapped in the Matrix, they feel disoriented, confused, and anxious. And that is the way many people feel today in our world, where everything that seemed certain only the day before yesterday—the definition of marriage or the meaning of the word woman, for example—seem now to be in a state of flux.”
For Those who Thirst
This is a sweet reflection on how God satisfies those who thirst.
What Catholicism Teaches About the Supper
“Here in Rome, Italy, near the heart of Roman Catholicism, it is not unusual to pass by one of the city’s countless Catholic churches and see people prostrate on the floor or on bended knee as the priest carries around the bread of the Eucharist.” Reid Karr goes to on explain what the Catholic Church believes about the Lord’s Supper.
Why Keep Reading the Bible?
Why would someone not only read the Bible, but read it again and again? Barbara offers a whole list of good reasons.
another Friendly Reminder
This is a friendly and perhaps necessary reminder about the ways we think about one another and relate to one another.
Imagine Reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ the Way You Read the Bible
This is actually a good thought exercise: How would it change The Lord of the Rings if you read it like so many people read the Bible?
Flashback: A Prayer for Parents of Teens
This is a prayer for matters of first importance. May it give you words to pray for the child you love…The night is mother of the day; trust through the dark brings triumph in the dawn. —Theodore Cuyler
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A La Carte (January 4)
The God of love and peace be with you today.
There continue to be at least a few Kindle deals pretty well every day.
(Yesterday on the blog: On Being a Heroic Man)Rachel Ware puts out the call for students to consider getting an education overseas for the sake of the nations. She offers six reasons to pursue a degree while helping a healthy church in a foreign country.
This author makes a compelling argument. “Ubiquitous pornography does not simply lead to privatized vice, but also destabilizes human culture and civilization to such a degree that the state should seek to degrade and destroy it as a menace to society. Such a proposal will likely find opponents among libertarian republicans and centrist liberals for whom individual autonomy is the highest political good. But opposition to pornography should command overwhelming support from religious conservatives on the right and opponents of misogyny from the most progressive portions of the left.”
Nicholas Lewis draws some lessons from Tolkien’s world and applies them to our own.
Jen Oshman analyzes a popular contemporary axiom: “new year, new me.”
This article asks an important question based on a biblical parable: “Do you view God as a hard man? I know that I am tempted in this way. Especially in times of trial, it is easy to acknowledge God’s sovereignty, but what about his goodness? Does he truly have my good in view? Does He love me?”
“Whatever changes await us in the year ahead, there is one solid foundation we can stand on that never moves: ‘I the LORD do not change.’ He won’t go back on his promises. He won’t revoke his offer of salvation, or quietly update his terms of service. He won’t adjust his commands to suit the sensibilities of the masses, and then adjust them again when the masses change their minds.”
Books on marriage can be wonderful, and I have benefitted from reading many of them. But the best and most helpful books on marriage are the ones being lived out by husbands and wives in your family, in your neighborhood, and especially in your church. Read them longer and more thoroughly than any other.
…if you want to be much less of a follower of Jesus Christ five years from now, make church marginal in your life. If you make church an afterthought, you won’t be thinking about centering your life on Jesus five years from now.
—Kevin DeYoung
