Back to the Roots

Thanks to Cell UK for this article.
Do you agree with Bill Beckham?

Dear friend
Renowned British historian Arnold J. Toynbee concluded that civilizations self-destruct when they no longer have a spiritual base for moral actions and ethical decisions. “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

Many modern day prophets confirm Toynbee’s research: Western civilization is facing the danger of self-inflicted spiritual wounds. The West has aimed the pistol of humanism at its head, has placed the bullet of unbelief in the chamber of the gun and has its finger on the secular trigger.

The only questions are: Will the West actually pull the trigger? If so, when? After pulling the trigger will the death throes be immediate or drawn out? Some of us also wonder if the West can reverse the suicide process and the death wish? Can and will God intervene through the Church one more time?

The god of humanism

The West is suffering consequences in the 21st Century for things that went terribly wrong in the 19th and 20th Centuries. These wrongs attacked the core roots of society. Aleksandr I. Solyhenitsyn recognized the importance of roots: “In order to destroy a people you must first sever their roots.”

The 21st Century West has returned to the roots of ancient familiar gods. These ancient gods were reborn in the vacuum left when 19th Century man rejected God as the absolute for his thinking and 20th Century man rejected God as the absolute for his life and actions. Three of these major gods have grown into a 21st Century pagan unholy trinity: humanism, materialism and hedonism.

Humanism is “any system of thought based on the interests and ideals of man.” Materialism is the doctrine that “everything in the world, including thought, can be explained only in terms of matter.” Lived out to its conclusion, materialism means that Man is a machine with no soul. Hedonism is “the self-indulgent pursuit of pleasure as a way of life.”

Humanism is the root deity of this unholy trinity. All of these gods are expressions of the first sin in the Garden of Humanism: “You will be as God.” During the 20th Century Man in the “Christian” West reverted back to the most primitive sin: Man is the absolute and center of the universe. Solyhenitsyn described this root god as: “Rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy; the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him.”

Roots

The West will not think its way out of this situation, work its way out, spin its way out, spend its way out or educate its way out. Familiar and trusted social and political structures are now powerless to save the West. The West must return to its Judeo/Christian roots from which it was born and from which it has detached.

The West cannot reconstitute or re-root itself because it has rejected the very soil from which the roots have grown: Christianity. Only the Church can re-root Western Civilization. Therefore, the Church must be the ethical and moral root of Western civilization. The first step to saving the West is not to change civilization but to change the Church within civilization.
If the Church withdraws from society it condemns the West to its slow suicide.

Therefore, the church must engage society but not at the point of law and conflict. The church cannot maintain ethical influence in society because of favorable laws and the cultural pressure of a Christian majority. The church must become the roots of society by its love, truth and justice. The Church must speak the truth in love and must love to live the truth.

Roots are unseen and under appreciated. Roots do not share in the glory of the flower or the fruit. Roots find their place down in the dirt and the darkness of death.
The Church must once again out-live, out-think, out-love and out-die all other philosophies and belief systems down at the roots!

Yours for His Kingdom
Bill Beckham