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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If you have been visiting this site for any length of time, you will have seen some SquareQuotes—the quotes combined with graphics that I release every day both here and across social media. A couple of years ago I teamed up with Jules Koblun (the artist who creates them) and Harvest House Publishers to create a devotional book, Knowing and Enjoying God. Subtitled “Words from the Wise,” it combined 101 original quote graphics with short devotionals. Today I am pleased to announce that we have released a second volume which is titled Understanding and Trusting Our Great God.

These devotionals were all inspired by a question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism which asks simply, “What is God?” The answer is glorious in both its use of the English language and its deep theological truths: “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” The devotions are all based on particularly helpful quotes from Christian authors, pastors, musicians, and theologians. It is my hope and prayer that these devotionals provide comfort and encouragement and that they better equip Christians to both better understand God and to trust in his works and ways.
Understanding and Trusting Our Great God is available in hardcover and ebook formats. You can find it at all your favorite stores including:

The Bible can be an intimidating book. I suppose any book of the Bible’s size can be intimidating merely by virtue of its page count. But then there’s also the claims people make about the Bible—that it’s a book that transforms lives, that it’s a book that reveals the mind of God himself, that it’s a book that is without error. And beyond that, there’s the nature of the Bible as a collection of writings that span centuries, peoples, cultures, and genres, not to mention the outsized importance of the Bible in shaping the Western world as we know it. For these reasons and many others, the Bible can intimidate people to such a degree that they read it without confidence or perhaps fail to read it at all.

It’s little wonder than that Christians have often written books meant to help introduce people to the practice of reading the Bible and to help them read it profitably and in its entirety. New among them is The Epic Story of the Bible: How to Read and Understand God’s Word by Greg Gilbert. Using his own trek to Mount Everest (base camp, not summit) as a backdrop and illustration, Gilbert says his book is meant to “give you a briefing about what you’re going to see, what you’re going to experience, what you should look for and look out for as you set off on the long trek of reading the entire Bible.”
The key to reading the Bible well, he says, “is to understand that all of those authors and books—all 1,189 chapters of them—are actually working together to tell one overarching, mind-blowing story about God’s action to save human beings from their high-handed rebellion against him, and from the effects and consequences of that rebellion.”
That story is nothing short of epic as he illustrates in this very brief overview: “Wars between angels rage in the spiritual realm, while on earth kingdoms rise and fall, empires clash, cities are built and destroyed, priests perform sacrifices, and prophets point their bony fingers to the future. And in the end, a great throne is toppled and a great crown falls to the ground, only to be given finally to one thirty-year-old man—a subjugated peasant from a conquered nation—whom God enthrones over the entire world as the one who alone can and does offer mercy to rebels. If there’s ever been an epic story told in the history of mankind, this one is it!”
A story so epic is certainly worth reading and Gilbert means to help by introducing his readers to some of the things they will encounter and come up against as they attempt to do so. He begins with a description of what the Bible is and where it came from. From there he traces its grand storyline in a way that may be at least somewhat familiar to those who have read Graeme Goldsworthy—an author whose work on this subject Gilbert much admires.
Having done this, he turns to some of the major themes readers will encounter as they make their trek from Genesis to Revelation, which is to say, he introduces some biblical theology, a practice that “tries to see how different truths sit and develop as the storyline of the Bible unfolds.” In other words, rather than systematically studying what the whole Bible says about a theme, it studies how a theme develops from beginning to end and how it helps propel the narrative forward. Thus over four chapters he traces the theme of God’s presence, the theme of covenant, the theme of kingship, and the theme of sacrifice. The final chapter, “Setting Out,” offers a number of tips and practices that will assist people to make the journey well and to take it all the way to completion.
It is an unfortunate fact that many Christians have read parts of the Bible, but have never read the whole Bible. They have read parts of the narrative, but never followed it all the way through. They don’t know what they are missing! The Epic Story of the Bible is meant to help them not only learn what they are missing but also help them to set out and complete that epic, beautiful, and rewarding trek. And I am convinced it will serve well in accomplishing that very purpose. I highly recommend reading it—and highly recommend buying a few extra copies to give away to others so they, too, can embark on a life-changing journey.

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